Advice.

I'm sorry for breaking my post-at-least-once-a-week rule again. Rest assured, I've got the final part of that singles round up ready to go for tomorrow or the day after though.

In the meantime, some advice for winners from Stripe Savage:

Labels: funnies, lameness, Stripe Savage

One Last Batch of Singles Before the Year-End, Part # 2


The Girls At Dawn –Never Enough b/w Every Night (Hozac)

There’s nothing much I can write at the moment to convey how much I love this single, and the song “Every Night” in particular, at the moment. Piss around all day at work, drag my carcass home, play Girls At Dawn single. Make dinner, piss about the house, play Girls At Dawn single several more times, go to bed. That’s how life’s been this week.

I should do a whole “I Like” post about them really; I could try and write something about the feeling of mystery/creepiness/distance that seems to be becoming ever more prominent in stuff I’m hearing from America at the moment, and how exciting it is when, in the right hand, this feeling can be conjured not by production tricks or effects but by… something intangible in the playing itself. I could do a self-deprecating bit about how Girls At Dawn seem so absurdly tailor-made to pander to all my odd likings and obsessions at this particular moment in time. I could even wax aimless for a bit about what a quietly brilliant and evocative name for a group Girls At Dawn is.

All that would be surplus to requirements though – there’s a delicate balance to this music that allows it to work outside of understanding, outside of cultural context, and I know if I start blundering around getting verbose, taking it apart with words, I’ll be in danger of destroying that.

Everything about Girls At Dawn here is SPARSE – they begin with that Raincoats/Marine Girls/Shaggs sense of daring open space, as the remnants of stern chords hang in the air for several breaths, challenging you to object before the song continues. The kind utilitarian approach to homemade rock music, where every note, every sound, is weighed for its usefulness, and excess baggage is stared down and forced out; it’s uptight, but also incredibly comforting, as chillingly beautiful vocal lines can rise bravely from the spaces between notes with no accompanying fanfare. This still being the notional realm of weirdo lo-fi art-punk, there’re no tedious intrusions of ‘perfection’ or perfect tonality here, with everything giving the appearance of a jolly, half-assed clatter. But every element that comprises Girls At Dawn’s self-produced songs is simple, perfect and devastating. A single “la la-la la-la-la la” fleetingly catches the essence of psychotronic British folk more purely than a whole troupe of crumhorn-wielding chancers, before the ‘Planet Caravan’ tremoloed backing vocal on the chorus just floors me once again, making me wish I could step through a gateway into the purple/pink psyche forest on the sleeve, to commune with the three witch-oaks and set out in search of Angel Blake and that spectre from the first ‘Sabbath album, as Girls At Dawn echo through the branches like a siren’s call…

I know, I know, I just did precisely what I said I wouldn’t do.

And I know, I know, what AM I talking about? You just listened to their myspace, and it’s just more scrappy, so-so, faux-naïve Brooklyn hipster music…

Well you didn’t really expect the enchanted village to still be there when you came back with the police did you? Jeez.

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

Horowitz – Supersnuggles EP (This Almighty POP)

Aah, god bless Horowitz, back again with yet more achingly beautiful home-recorded lovelorn fuzz-pop. Y’know, it’s perhaps an obvious observation, but it only just occurred to me – Horowitz are all about reflecting a deep, deep love of independent British music circa 1997, from the Helen Love tribute cover art to the Urusei Yatsura transatlantic vocalisms to the kinship with Boyracer to… well they must have a certain fondness for Dweeb, I’m sure. Needless to say, this is home territory for me, and it’s great to know they’re still out there, fighting the good fight, singing of their love for Winona Ryder over dizzy sherbert fizz guitar scuzz and melodies to die for. Track three here, ‘The Boy From Whatstandwell’, is a bit of a departure though, it being a Horowitz ballad, complete with 3/4 time, clean guitars and wistful – like, even more wistful than usual – lyrical concerns. It’s really nice, although maybe I’m just saying that because the sleevenotes, in which Pete or Ian or perhaps someone else entirely, relate an age old tale of teenage railway station kisses, made me shed a tear. “I wished they could last forever, but they never could, because I had the papers to deliver the next morning and needed an early night”. Amen, fellas.

http://www.myspace.com/horowitzband
http://www.thisalmightypop.com/

Invasion – Spells of Deception 10” (This Is Music)

I thought I’d take a chance on this one after reading about Invasion on The Quietus and thinking, good grief, THAT’S a band I need to hear! The basic recipe takes one Sleep/Wizard worshipping doom metal guitarist, adds a high energy drummer with a penchant for setting her kit on fire and a ball-busting female soul singer, and calls upon them to compress their combined essence into songs that frequently don’t even break the two minute mark, resulting, so one would hope, in flaming juggernauts of musical bombast the like of which the world has never before seen.

That’s the theory, anyway. In practice, “Spells of Deception”s title track is something of a disappointment, a classic example of what happens when some individually potent musicians get together and somehow emerge with results that seem far less than the sum of their parts. The trio crucially fails to gel here, with Marek Steven’s workable sludge riffage left growling in the corner in the face of Zel Caute’s sledgehammer dance-punk rhythm track (too much cowbell), whilst Chan Brown sounds equally lost, her pitch-perfect Aretha-isms sounding lonely in the otherwise empty high-end and searching for a tune to latch onto amid a complete lack of melodic counterpoint. Sounding like the kind of warmed over studio experiment that you can imagine the post-fame Gossip might have come up with before shaking their heads and going back to the drawingboard, it’s a bit of a dog’s dinner to be honest. Thankfully, the other track on the A-side here, “Behind The Black Gate” (alright!) shows the band really getting their shit together, with Steven and Caute locking into a filthy downtuned groove that’ll instantly win the heart of anyone who ever swung hair in the front row at a Winnebago Deal or Orange Goblin gig, and Brown stepping up to the plate as an appropriately mighty rock frontwoman, declaiming Ozzy-style over the song’s sinister middle section. I was hoping she’d utilise the pleasantly mental space-echo to mimic both the Robert Plant and Sandy Denny parts on Zep’s ‘Battle of Evermore’ at the same time, but sadly things lurch to an end that’s WAY too premature, lacking any conclusion or even a restatement of the awesome opening riff. Crucially, NO SOLOS seems to be another Invasion rule, as necessitated by the bare-bones line-up and Steven’s strict reliance on the bottom three guitar strings. Whether or not that counts in their favour, I’ll leave you to decide.

Clearly a band with a mighty potential for awesomeness, I hope Invasion manage to realise it. Personally, I’d like to hear them get longer, heavier, slower, weirder. You’re not gonna get any mainstream indie crossover appeal outta this stuff guys, so do the decent thing and Embrace The Doom. The B Side of this 10” is taken up by a remix of “Spell of Deception” by Optimo, to whom no offence, but we’ll skip over it just cos, well… when was the last time you heard a ‘remix’ of a track by a rock band that wasn’t a waste of plastic? (That’s not a rhetorical question – in my case it was Oneida’s “Caesar’s Column” 12” from back in aught three.)

http://www.myspace.com/invasion
http://www.thisismusicltd.com

Labels: Horowitz, Invasion, singles reviews, The Girls At Dawn

Slasher Risk.

Slasher Risk, from New York, are rapidly becoming my new avant/noise/improv/whatever crush band, combining some of the same elements that used to make Magik Markers and Charalambides so unmissable with plenty of the malevolent horror movie tension and sonic violence their name implies.

And like the reference points mentioned above, I suspect they're also the kind of band whose recordings are likely to capture only a mere shadow of what they're able to do live. Luckily though, we have the internet. So, until someone is foolhardy enough to bring Slasher Risk to your town/country/continent, I'd advise all unrepentant skronk fiends in the audience to dim the lights, put half an hour aside, curl up with a mug of cocoa, and put this on full screen:

Labels: I like, skronk, Slasher Risk, videos

One Last Batch of Singles Before the Year-End, Part # 1


Cyanide Pills – Suicide Bomber (Damaged Goods)

The second single from inexplicably ignored Leeds power-pop-punk upstarts Cyanide Pills is also the first of two a-sides on this batch of singles to take a queasily misguided shot at…. well I hesitate to say “contemporary relevance”, as that doesn’t seem quite what they had in mind for a song that begins with “my girlfriend she’s so fine / she lives in Palestine” and proceeds to a bridge of “that girl she’s dynamite!”. It’s just goofy, stupid fun of course – small beer next to the routine nastiness of KBD era punk. What’s a far greater sin is that it’s a slightly lesser tune that either of the songs on their excellent first single. B-side “Black Lightning” is better – it’s a great Chuck Berry derived car chase number about getting wasted and crashing your car into a train, if you can believe that! Utterly daft good fun on electric blue vinyl, and even at their worst these guys are still hitting way above par as regards making gleeful, catchy rampaging rock n’ roll. Make the other single a priority if for some ludicrous reason you’ve gotta choose between the two, but if you like this kinda thing (that being Adverts/Damned/Buzzcocks/Undertones amped up via The Exlpoding Hearts), do the decent thing and get both for chrissakes.

http://www.myspace.com/thecyanidepills
http://www.damagedgoods.co.uk/

Drink Up Buttercup – Mr. Pie Eyes (More Than)

I bought this one blind for the cool artwork, low price and promising title. Lord, I wish I hadn’t. Sounds as if some recent graduates heard The Move, decided LET’S DO THAT (it worked for Elephant 6) and proceeded to rampage way across the line into the no man’s land of total quirkiness, with subtlety and good taste rendered forgotten, ancient tongues as they drown in a slobbering mess of clod-hopping nursery rhyme melodies, faux-operatic shrieking, charmless, convoluted thudding and ghastly sub-muso wank. Yes, they wrote a song called ‘Mr. Pie Eyes’, the chorus to which goes “this is the story of Mr. Pie Eyes, Mr. Pie Eyes, Mr. Pie Eyes”. Then it goes “yah yah yah-ya-yah yah yah yah, yah yah yah yah-ya-yah yah yah yah”. I don’t think they ever get around to the story, but never mind, it was probably a shit one anyway. You know what was great about all those whimsical old ‘60s bands? The fact they matched their eccentricities with ideas and talent and didn’t come across like obnoxious dickheads shoving half-formed juvenilia in our faces, more often than not. I should have known: much as I love patronising their shop of a weekend, Rough Trade are canny counters of pounds, and if they put a 7” on for £1.99, there’s probably a reason.

http://www.myspace.com/drinkupbuttercupband
http://www.myspace.com/makemine

Fergus & Geronimo – Blind Muslim Girl b/w Powerful Lovin' (Tic Tac Totally)

Fergus & Geronimo’s huge-hearted, speaker-busting Sam Cooke-meets-Nobunny soul-punk is a beautiful thing that makes me very happy indeed, although I still know next to nothing about these guys, so seeing how they approach a tune entitled “Blind Muslim Girl” could prove a dealbreaker re: revealing their true intentions. As it turns out, it’s neither a bad taste goof nor some earnest politicising (god, how unthinkable would THAT be in this day n’ age?), just a straightforward, lightweight pop number in which F&G sing of their affection for a blind muslim girl. They want to take her hand and around the world, and they don’t care that she can’t see. If you can bring yourself to believe they’re playing it straight-faced, it’s all quite weird and sweet, with almost a Jad Fair sort of vibe. B-side “Powerful Lovin’” helps us believe they’re fighting the good fight by virtue of just being plain fucking fantastic – one of their best, most exultantly wrecked homages to ‘60s soul to date. And frankly, I could happily believe in flat earth theorists and guys who make a fuss about fluoride in the water if they were able to bust out tunes this mighty on their Vox organs and second hand drum kits of an evening. Fergus & Geronimo are ALRIGHT. What I wouldn’t give to be in Texas next month to see them play with Greg Ashley.

http://www.myspace.com/fergusgeronimo
http://www.myspace.com/tictactotally

Frankie Rose – Thee Only One (Slumberland)

Behold – the immaculately presented debut solo release from Ms Rose, former/current sticks-woman with Vivian Girls, Dum Dum Girls and Crystal Stilts (two out of three ain’t bad), and composer of one of the finest songs of recently years, ‘Where Do you Run To’. It’s funny how I still think Crystal Stilts are one of the most dreadful rock bands of the modern era, but here, backing up Frankie on her own songs, their personnel sound plain beautiful, shimmering like the ethereal Velvet Underground back alley sprites they wish they were. “Thee Only One” is a perfectly realised, reverb-heavy girl group stomper that probably sounds exactly the way you’d expect it to. That’s because it’s the way it SHOULD sound, and you’d be a fool to change the recipe at this stage. B-Side “Hollow Life” slows things down to a halt for an absolutely exquisite snapshot of a Bout de Souffle bedroom scene eternal now, vast faux-cathedral organ tones and distant guitar-drift making a bed for Frankie’s oh-so-delicate voice. Like “I’ll Be Your Mirror” medicated to the point of total bliss-out, it’s exactly the sound I want to hear last thing before I go to sleep, gently rising to a Cocteaus-y grandeur in, like, ninety seconds, then falling away to nothing. I see a tick next to “leave them wanting more” on a rose-scented to-do list. A flawless first record – I’m inclined to think that if Frankie Rose disappeared off the planet tomorrow, she’d have a healthy cult following twenty years from now, just on the basis of these three and a half minutes.

http://www.myspace.com/saintoftherose
http://www.slumberlandrecords.com

Labels: Cyanide Pills, Drink Up Buttercup, Fergus and Geronimo, Frankie Rose, singles reviews

Vivian Girls – Everything Goes Wrong
(In The Red)

So, ‘difficult second album’ time for the VGs, and, boy, they’ve really taken that ‘difficult second album’ conceit and gone to town with it.

One thing ‘Everything Goes Wrong’ definitely is NOT is the refining/reframing of the band’s pop song-writing sensibilities that would have seemed the natural next step for them, as suggested by all those tantalising pre-album singles cuts that threatened to win over doubters by amping up the three-part harmonies and the just-plain-beautiful melodies.

Another thing that ‘Everything Goes Wrong’ definitely is NOT is the potentially promising move toward a more strung out, ragged glory kinda sound, as trailed by the album artwork, and the profusion of four minute plus songs with names like ‘The Desert’ and 'Out For The Sun'.

Those were my best pre-listening guesses and expectations. But as becomes clear pretty quickly after actually dropping the needle on this one, my best guesses and expectations can fuck off. No outreach to a wider audience is to be found herein, and no pleasant developments for existing fans either. No pop, no style - they strictly roots. The roots in question here are punk, and as such ‘Everything Goes Wrong’ comes on like a total assault.

Well, maybe assault isn’t quite the right word – assault suggests an attack, whereas this album is all about defence, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Point is: I don’t suppose many people were expecting Vivian Girls to bounce back with an LP that’s as bleak and relentless and punishing as any grim-faced hardcore/noise band’s opus. I’m sure nobody asked them to make one. But they made it anyway – take it or leave it.

One more thing that ‘Everything Goes Wrong’ is NOT, contrary to what some reviewers still insist, is lo-fi. This record was made in a studio on a record label advance, and, y’know, I’m sure they had people around who knew where to put the microphones and stuff – fidelity-wise, it’s as loud and clear as you like. The fact it STILL sounds like a chaotic maelstrom of roar and clang, with buried vocals and excessive reverb and accidental open string skree, is simply a reflection of the kind of noise these girls want to make.

That the songs here sound like brooding playground chants, with flat, brutal, monotone choruses that are hammered home again and again like anxious, narcissistic curses and banishment rituals – I have no fun; I can’t get over you; this is the end; you don't even seem to care; don't turn around and miss me when I’m gone - that’s deliberate.

That Ali Koehler just won’t let up on that fucking ride cymbal at all, ever, beating it into your skull until you feel like jumping in front of a train – that’s deliberate too.

And that Cassie’s guitar sounds gigantic and screechy and wrong, dominating the mix like a whole room full of suffocating solid state Fender amps wheezing out their last trebley death rattles as they crawl over each others corpses, looking for a place to die..? – yeah, that’s how she wants it to sound.

The idea of self-defined, punk-birthed musicians paying tribute to the mechanised emotion of girl group pop is a fascinating one, and it won’t have escaped your notice that it’s become a pretty ubiquitous notion in pop culture over the past few years. Which is no bad thing, obviously – it’s easy and fun to tip a wink to the classics and vamp on some Spector-isms. But what sets the Vivian Girls apart, particularly on this LP, is that they approach this terrain with the spirit of total, deadly seriousness that’s necessary to give such angst-driven material life, recognising the Spector/Morton canon for the bloody heart of darkness it is, and responding in kind with an album that’s dead-eyed, blank-faced, introverted and drained of all the usual affectations and signifiers. It’s got its fingers in its ears, and it’s not listening, especially not to YOU. Tantrum music.

Like the classic NY girl group productions, ‘Everything Goes Wrong’ strikes me as an urban record – a barrier to block out the noise of the city, to create a safe space for internalised melodrama to thrive. This album is the sound of The Shangri-Las out on their own, beaten, rejected and building a wall; a wall the like of which those fucking producers couldn’t even imagine. Not an exotic, enticing wall to trap the listeners inside, but a razor-wire topped prison wall of senseless repetition and tinnitus-inducing distortion, compressed to fuck to keep the hurt inside and keep EVERYONE. ELSE. OUT. Just like some pissed off hardcore kid jamming a tape in his walkman circa 1985.

Inevitably there are moments where individual songs make an impression – “Can’t Get Over You” might as well have “STAND-OUT TRACK” written next to it in permanent marker and “Before I Start To Cry” plays the bittersweet closing credits tearjerker ok – but song-wise there’s nothing here to rival my beloved “Where Do You Run To” (which, er, it turns out was written by acrimoniously departed drummer Frankie Rose anyway – just as well I wasn’t fool enough to shout for it when I saw ‘em play). This is an album that works more as a total, unified sound thing than as a collection of songs. Like an early Husker Du record, it’s a wall-to-wall whiteout, burying triumph and disappointment alike beneath a uniform, tar-covered roar.

If you find yourself navigating rush hour public transport with your heart torn out at any point in the near future (I’ve not recently, glad to say), this is the album you’ll need. You might not like the sound of it much now, as you hang about at home chopping vegetables or making tea or whatever, and it’s probably freaking out the cat, but trust me: keep it on standby. This is ugly, gut-level pop, exhilarating, broken-hearted punk rock, and when the time comes you can crawl inside it like a cocoon. It won’t make you feel better, but it’ll make you not feel dead, and that’s a start. I like music like that.

Mp3> The End

Buy Links: Norman, In The Red

myspace

Labels: album reviews, The Vivian Girls

A Perfect Monster Has No End:
Halloween Mix CD 2009

(cross-posted with Breakfast In The Ruins.)





download (92mb .zip file).

For reasons too dull to go into, last year’s Halloween mixtape actually dated from 2007 (give me a shout if you’d like me to re-upload it), so I’ve had a whole extra year to stockpile creepy tunes for your enjoyment.

Unlike the last one, there’s no film soundtrack / narrative type gimmick year, just a whole heap of the usual twisted rock n’ roll and such, with obligatory appearances by Roky and The Cramps, and taking in witches, demons, zombies, psycho killers, werewolves, vampires, demonic ghost-cats and the like. Like any good horror movie, it will hopefully succeed in being broadly enjoyable and atmospheric, with occasional lurches into the realm of genuinely disturbing mania. Try it out at parties.

So, simply my gift to you to celebrate what’s self-evidently the coolest day on the calendar, and if you’re stepping out this weekend, remember, play safe:



Further useful advice from Beat Happening:

Labels: Beat Happening, halloween, horror, mixtapes, videos

Brendan Mullen, The Masque and LA Punk ‘77

A few weeks ago, I happened to pop into that shop on Charing Cross Road that sells fancy art books for knock-down prices, and was delighted to find a copy of Live at the Masque: Nightmare on Punk Alley, a huge hardback tome showcasing photographs and ephemera from the heyday of seminal LA punk club The Masque circa ’77-’79 that’s been on my xmas list since I learned of it, for about one third of the RRP.

Thus, it can now claim the honour of being the one fancy hardback photograph book that I own. And well worth owning it is too. For all of its legendary baggage, LA punk has kept a surprisingly low profile within popular culture, and as such practically every page of the book is dynamite from both an informational and aesthetic point of view, an absolute motherlode for anyone who shares an interest in the history of punk, rock n’ roll and American youth culture.

It wasn’t until this week however that I learned that Brendan Mullen, founder and manager of The Masque who edited and provided the text for the book, died of a heart attack earlier this month at the age of sixty.

I’d been vaguely meaning to do a blogpost based on the book, with some scanned pictures and mp3s etc, but in tribute to Mullen I thought I’d move that intention way up my priority list for a combined deathblog/photos/music tribute post.


By all accounts Mullen was far, far more than just a club manager – he was an instigator of, participant in and spokesperson for the punk scene, and The Masque stands out as the definitive early example of a DIY “by the fans, for the fans” music venue/rehearsal room/community space of the kind that’s become such a vital part of the American music scene in recent years (far less so in the UK sadly, but thems the breaks), and Mullen, rather than some impresario looking to turn a quick buck, was a late-twenties punk fan himself at the time – just one with the drive and know-how to find a space and make it happen.

Subsequently, he has authored two books on LA punk, We Got The Neutron Bomb (about the scene in general) and Lexicon Devil (about The Germs), both of which are sure to be great reads, if the smart and charismatic prose he contributed to the photo book is any indication.


One of the things I’ve found most remarkable about reading/looking at “Live at the Masque” is the drastically different picture of the time/place it paints to my other major source of LA punk documentation, Penelope Spheeris’ film “The Decline of Western Civilisation” (which you can watch in a series of handy chunks on Youtube, beginning here).

Whilst “Decline..” (which opens with an interview with Mullen) is an amazing and exhilarating documentary, capturing a cultural milieu that might otherwise have come and gone leaving little in the way of visual evidence, I’ve always been irked by the feeling that Spheeris was chasing controversy when putting it together, deliberately choosing the most violent concert footage, interviewing the most troubled/fucked up fans and musicians etc…. not to mention ending the film with an absolutely torturous sequence on the aptly named Fear, whose ugly, audience-baiting jibes and homophobic/sexist bullying closes proceedings on a colossal downer – enough to put the casual viewer off investigating punk rock for life. In short, I get the impression that Spheeris came up with her apocalyptic concept first and set about assembling footage to justify it.

“Live At The Masque” manages to tell a completely different story, presenting evidence of a far more positive and cohesive underground community. The self-made mythology of ‘70s punk may centre on tales of drugs, squalor, nihilism and bodily abuse, but the kids in the crowd (and in the bands) here just look happy and friendly and excitable, each trying to outdo each other with their kick-ass NY/London influenced sartorial style. Flyers, newsletters and notes pinned to the doors are funny and self-deprecating to a fault, full of scene in-jokes, breathless announcements of which bands “might be playing, if they can get it together”, and hand-written summaries of local and international ‘punk news’. Even the graffiti that covers every surface is largely pretty good natured.


The negative vibes chronicled by Spheeris are hard to find anywhere in these photos, and even the self-destructive ‘no future’ ethos that goes hand-in-hand with early punk is undermined by the presence on the scene of cats like Greg Shaw, Kristine McKenna, John Doe, Exene Cervenka and Mullen himself, all providing the kids with serviceable models for how to grow up punk without fading away or selling out. Photos of some of the lesser known bands on the scene reveal a healthy compliment of women and non-whites taking a creative role in proceedings, and, in short, it’s difficult to flick through the book without feeling a pang of regret that you weren’t there to take part in such an awesome explosion of teenage creativity and self-definition.

In fairness, “Decline..” was filmed a couple of years after the heyday of The Masque, when the action seemed to have shifted to bigger, more barn-like venues with cynical managers and security guards, and when the native suburban hardcore pioneered by Black Flag and The Circlejerks was in the ascendant, as opposed to the more urban, relatively arty Pistols/Heartbreakers influenced combos that characterized the Masque scene. But still, the discrepancy between the book and the film is startling. As usual with these things, I guess the truth probably lies somewhere between the two.



Obviously the more artistically striking bands associated with The Masque – Screamers, Germs, X, Flesh Eaters, Dickies, The Dils and the much-underrated Bags – are the stuff of legend, and both The Weirdos, Plugz and my favourite ever Californian punks The Zeros (who played a coupla times) have achieved cult immortality by infusing their racket with a razor-sharp pop sensibility. Late period scene upstarts like The Go Gos and Holly & The Italians may have gone on to varying degree of Hollywood New Wave fame, and the book also has great pictures of awesome out-of-town headliners like Crime, The Cramps, Dead Boys, Avengers etc., but much of the fun of flicking through “Live At The Masque” comes from checking out the legions of less distinguished and/or completely forgotten groups.

The Skulls, Controllers, Flyboys, Backstage Pass, The Eyes, Simpletones, The LA Shakers, Deadbeats, Alleycats, Mutants, Schizos, F-Word, The Nuns…? Oh, if only these photos came with in-built sound.




So without further ado, here’s some choice mp3s, some from the “Live at the Masque ‘77” benefit LP, some from elsewhere, presented in tribute to Brenden Mullen, who saw these people and this culture sprouting up from nowhere around him, and did what it took to put the pieces together.

The Weirdos – Life of Crime
The Zeros – Cosmetic Couple

The Bags – Violent Girl (live)
The Germs – Let’s Pretend (live)

X- Los Angeles
Screamers - In a Better World

Labels: books, deathblog, Germs, LA, photos, punk, punk rock, Screamers, The Bags, The Zeros, Weirdos, X

New 8 Track:
Doomed & Confident

Yeah, another one of these damn things I'm afraid. Let me know if you're sick of me posting 'em here...



(Link.)

This one's got loads of neat stuff, like Francoise Hardy, Grass Widow, Phyllis Dixon, the Velvets, and kicks off with this little number from Canadian punks The Dishrags that gets more perfect every time I listen/watch:

Labels: 8 Tracks, mixtapes, The Dishrags

The Mountain Goats –
The Life of the World to Come
(4AD)

Ah, another baleful, frozen-skied, back-to-work autumn setting in, and another grimly introspective Mountain Goats album, right on cue to accompany it. Long may the annual cycle continue thus.

Those paying close attention to the ebb and flow of John Darnielle’s ever-prolific songwriting mojo (waves hello) will have noted some curious developments in his work of recent, with his attempts to expand his palette and keep his inspiration fresh perhaps showing through a little too clearly at times as he ploughs ever onward through the cathartic possibilities of words and chords.

Fans will have noticed the growth in what, for want of a better term, we might call “referential” songwriting – by that I mean songs that take some specific moment or event from history or popular culture, and deal with it in the abstract, creating an impressionistic picture of the emotions and characters involved, without venturing to spell out any specifics. Darnielle then tends to assign the song a title that hints – sometimes rather obscurely- at the original subject matter, and leaves the listener to do the detective work re: piecing together the song’s eventual significance.

Sometimes this technique works brilliantly, and a song like ‘Sept. 15th 1983’ from last year’s “Heretic Pride” was, if anything, even more fascinating and unusual BEFORE I figured out that its lyrics referred to the murder of reggae legend Prince Far I. Similarly, one doesn’t need a background in South East Asian cryptozoology to appreciate the feeling behind ‘Tianchi Lake’, or to google ‘Roger Patterson Van Crash’ to enjoy the song of the same name.

But on other occasions the device can prove extremely frustrating, serving to alienate more casual listeners. ‘Michael Myers Resplendent’ for instance may be one of the most effective moments on “Heretic Pride” when taken in context, but its significance could easily be lost upon anyone who failed to clock the title at a live show or missed the reference to the cinematic serial killer. This problem became especially galling on last year’s self-released ‘Satanic Messiah’ EP. If you happen to be familiar with the music and influence of cult Brazilian proto-Black Metal band Sarcofago, then sure, ‘Sarcofago Live’ is quite enjoyable. If not, what do you get? Just some verses about some people, somewhere, “raging” in a basement. Even more obtuse is ‘Wizard Buys a Hat’, which still leaves me puzzled. Sure, I like looking at the title, and picturing a wizard buying a hat, but beyond that...? A middling tune and some words about some guy wondering around town, seemingly hiding from some pursuers? Whatever. These songs are ok, but they fail to hit home the way that first rate Mountain Goats material should. When you’re listening to a song with an obscure backstory to it, the power of the song should sell an interest in the context to you, not vice versa, y’know what I mean?

But, for better of worse, this seems to be the way the wagon is heading, and if the stew of literary and cultural reference points successfully weaved into “Heretic Pride” marked The Mountain Goats out as a band whose albums can come complete with an implied reading list, then “The Life of the World to Come” takes things one step further, effectively presenting us with a *compulsory* reading list – albeit one limited to a single volume. Framed in its press release as “twelve hard lessons learned from the bible”, each song on the album takes its name from the bible verse that inspired it. That Darnielle should be a fan of the good book is scarcely surprising, given the fire & brimstone and narratives of sin and redemption that underlay much Mountain Goats material, and that he should prove to be predominantly an Old Testament man is equally unsurprising.

After the macabre blowout of “Heretic Pride”, “The Life of the World To Come” is a more somber, low-key affair, much in the vein of 2006’s “Get Lonely”. It is, some critic with a deathly pallor and dust for brains is laying in wait somewhere to pronounce, the most “ ‘ mature ‘ “ Mountain Goats album to date. So ‘mature’ in fact that much of it veers closer to the perspective of a elderly patriarch contemplating the inevitable from his deathbed than to the desperate, self-immolating young people that Darnielle has often spoken through in song. Within its grooves, a series of anonymous narrators calmly confront such issues as faith, loss, loneliness, earthly devotion and the persistence of hope, leading, inevitably, to the direct consideration of grief and death. It is, to put it bluntly, pretty grim stuff.

Like his fellow bible-basher Nick Cave, I gather that Darnielle now rents an office space that he uses solely to work on his song-writing on a nine-to-five basis, a decision that we might be able to see reflected not only in the two men’s shared interest in the good book, but also in their fondness for funereal tailoring, slow, sustain-heavy minor key piano chords and, most worryingly, a certain emotional detachment that has started to creep into Darnielle’s work, and that has arguably consigned Cave to dreary self-parody for years.

What was always most thrilling about The Mountain Goats material in the past was its immediacy, and its unflinching honesty. Even when working through wholly fictional narratives, Darnielle’s driving need to throw every ounce of his often frightening excesses of emotion and empathy into his music was beyond question, and mistakes, repetitions and self-indulgence could all be overlooked simply because his songs sounded like bulletins from a life being led in a state of permanent flux, all laid down on tape in private in a spare few minutes before the next crisis, the next revelation, the next bus out of town, all suffused with the shadows of experiences too overwhelming to easily deal with. Whether or not they actually were conceived under such circumstances is besides the point – they sound as if they were. Listen to ‘Sweden’ or ‘Full Force Galesburg’ or ‘The Coroner’s Gambit’, and that’s what you’ll hear: truth and desperation; one man against the world; all that stuff.

It’s a state of mind that every wouldbe alt-cowboy singer/songwriter ever has taken a shot at and almost without exception failed to realise, simply because, unlike Darnielle, they’re not there already, and if you find yourself trying to get to some dark, mixed up place just so you can write songs about it – I mean, what the hell dude? Put the stetson away and get a fucking job. The Mountain Goats have never made a virtue of suffering – they’ve just thrown it at the world and hoped for the best.

But, having exploded their approach into widescreen perfection on their initial string of classic 4AD albums, more recent ‘Goats material is starting to show a similar tiredness of spirit to all the Van Zandt wannabes they render irrelevant, and to Cave for that matter – the feeling of ‘songwriting as an exercise’ that presumably comes from sitting at the piano all day staring at the wall for inspiration, and the “reference” songs are only the most obvious symptom of this change of pace.

Nonetheless though, we can put such fears aside for the moment, as ‘The Life of the World to Come’ comes out on top once again. Spending some time in the new record’s company serves to affirm the essential strength of Darnielle’s A-grade material, a strength that lies beyond any change of circumstances or change of pace in the songwriting/recording department. Whilst they may no longer be crashing through your motel room door with flying fists, the songs herein are thematically consistent and assured meditations that aim at universal relevance in a way this band has rarely attempted before. They may be almost entirely removed from the baggage of monsters, teenage runaways, self-destructive addicts and doomed lovers who populate the ‘Goats back catalogue, but, after living with the album for a few weeks, we come to realize how little we still need these familiar faces, and we can be reassured, and moved, perhaps more gently but more firmly than we’re used to, by the way in which these songs attain a solemn, self-contained beauty that is all their own.

Before the new calm takes hold though, we’re still rewarded with one last sociopathic bellow-fest, in the form of the second track here, ‘Psalms 40:2’ (the King James says: “He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings”). With the full band launching into a rolling, melodramatic vamp reminiscent of ‘Sax Rohmer #1’, and John spitting out his words like a crooked preacher, this is the most authentic fire & brimstone moment on the album by quite some distance, and the one that connects most strongly with Mountain Goats past. Through clenched teeth and fists, the song seems to tell the story of some people undertaking a traumatic crime spree/road trip through the bible-belt, investing their actions with a religious grandeur as if daring the Lord to strike down the monsters He has created. “Left that place in ruin”, they growl of a desecrated chapel, “drunk on the spirits, high on fumes”. Startling and unnerving stuff.

Another gift for those of us looking for the cheap thrills of yore is track 5, ‘Hebrews 11:40’, (“God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect”). A brooding little number that comes straight from the playbook of ‘Get Lonely’, it becomes remarkably compelling after a few listens, with Owen Pallet’s deliciously creepy string arrangements (more subtle than Erik Friedlander’s strings on the last album) coming to the fore. Beginning with a wealth of graveyard/horror movie imagery, this song seems to concern a man who is entirely alone in the world, rising from the tomb, either literally or figuratively, and assessing the challenges ahead of him, calm in the certainty that some implacable faith will see him through to his goal… whatever that might be. He talks of having to invent an imaginary family to keep him going, “if it comes to that”, and of his willingness to hurt whoever stands in his way. Although there’s no obvious wider context here, you don’t feel inclined to doubt him as he sings, “If not by faith then by the sword / I’m going to be restored”.

Never before has the idea of The Mountain Goats releasing records on 4AD (“eerie madrigals on the campus eggslicer” and all that) seemed quite so appropriate, as songs like these emerge as beautiful bits of gothic, sounding like miniature Castles of Ontario, the perfect soundtrack to some black-clad early ‘90s Vertigo comics epic.

On any other Mountain Goats album, these outbursts would mark the calm before the storm, but here they’re more like the storm before the calm. The album’s true heart lays somewhere else entirely, in the sparse, ringing piano chords that underscore John’s voice on ‘Genesis 30:3’ (“And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees that I may also have children by her” ), one of the simplest and most beautiful devotional songs Darnielle has ever written. When I say ‘devotional’, I’m not sure whether the song expresses devotion to a lover or to a God, but to be honest it scarcely matters. As with several of the best songs on the record, Darnielle intentionally blurs the distinction between earthy and metaphysical faith, and in the process succeeds wonderfully in rising above the knuckleheaded bickering and terminal point-missing that blights 99% of contemporary discourse on religion, instead cutting straight to essential core of belief. In these songs, he speaks of the reality of feeling something within you that stretches beyond yourself, of the overriding sense of faith in the beauty of the world, and of a sense of purpose and an unwavering certainty that can be clung to throughout the very worst of times, whether it manifests itself as devotion to a church, as a gnostic ‘spark of the divine’, or simply as time spent in the arms of your beloved, or with an equally beloved family – for what, after all, is the difference?

Obviously the rather curious choice of bible verse complicates matters, but that aside ‘Genesis 30:3’ reminds me more than anything of the scene in Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenin’ wherein Levin, the tormented agnostic, realizes for the first time his sense of underlying, unshakable faith when presented with his newborn daughter. As usual, John D. gets it in one; “for several hours we lay there, last ones of our kind / harder days coming maybe, I don't mind / it sounds kind of dumb when i say it but it's true / I would do anything for you”.

This idea of the love song expanded to cover universal faith as well as personal devotion is returned to again and again on the album, as the prisoner serving life and tormented by monstrous imaginings in ‘1 John 4:16’ (“And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him”) testifies as if in prayer, “And I won’t be afraid of anything ever again / because I know you’re thinking of me, as it’s just about to rain”.

Not every song on “The Life of the World..” works for me, I’ll admit; I’m just discussing my favourite ones above. Some of the others leave me cold, some a merely a bit odd, and one in particular I just don’t wanna hear right now – it doesn’t seem like the right time. Sitting at the centre of the record, the cornerstone that puts the rest into context perhaps, is ‘Matthew 25:21’ (”His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord”), a straight-forward narrative about traveling to visit a loved one dying of cancer for the final time. At six minutes, it is probably one of the longest Mountain Goats songs to date. It opens with “They had you hooked up, to a fentanyl drip / to help mitigate the pain a little bit”, and gets progressively more hard going from thereon in. No gospel-aided philosophisin’ here, no declarations of self-belief, just a plain account of death, and a grief that it sometimes seems like the rest of the album exists to try to cushion. Musically, it’s flat, awkward and repetitious, just like the situation described probably would be, and I confess, as a carefree young-ish sorta person, it’s a freaking downer – one I’ll skip through if it’s all the same to you.

But at the same time, I know that if or when I find myself in similar circumstances, it’s the first song I’ll search out on my mp3 player, to see if it helps or reassures, to find solace, to compare notes or just to fill the journey to the hospital with something that won’t drive me to distraction. And that’s what this song, and the others on the album, are essentially all about, the same thing the archetypal good-hearted priest is all about – trying to help. This particular song might not be meant for me, right now, but if it manages to hit even a few people at the right time, if they hold onto it to some small extent in a hard place, Darnielle will have succeeded, and can be proud of his achievement, like a steadfast pastor of no fixed denomination.

You may think this is all getting kinda mealy-mouthed and sanctimonious – hell, you may have reached that decision as soon as you heard about the bible verse song title gimmick. But Darnielle’s success here comes in the way he approaches his subject matter not as a dogmatic Xtian, but as the kind of flawed, spiritually bereft post-industrial human that modernist novels always used to warn us about, picking up the lessons of the scriptures for the first time and finding them more relevant to his own being than he ever suspected. As the chaotic, self-doubting protagonist of ‘Romans 10:9’ confirms for us in a rousing chorus adapted straight from the text:

“If you can believe in your heart
And confess with your lips
Surely you will be
Saved one day”

And if we can put aside our kneejerk secular distaste for such phraseology and take that at face value, is it not a pretty fucking righteous note on which to start the day?

Mp3s:

Psalms 40:2
Genesis 30:3

Buy "The Life of the World to Come":

Norman
4AD

Labels: album reviews, The Mountain Goats

Forgotten Greats of the ‘00s # 1:
Jawbone

Jawbone was (and presumably is) one man from Detroit named Bob Zabor. Jawbone first came to my attention when John Peel played his song ‘What’s Goin’ On’ like three times in a single programme or something. I think if I had a radio programme, I’d probably want to play it three times in a single programme too. It’s wonderful and insane; an outburst of pure, maniac joy that takes every hoary, overcooked one-man-band-bluesman cliché you can think of and blows the whole lot outta your ass. Listen to Zabor’s feet beat out a bone-crunching double-speed bass drum / hi-hat pound, and to his hands layering total idiot, mono-chord guitar downstrokes over the top, whilst his gob puts in a double-shift, alternating between a brutal, honking harmonica riff and yelping out a bunch of petulant nursery rhyme blather, ending each stanza with the frankly inspired battlecry “DADDY GOT A HAIRCUT, MOMMA GONNA MOW THE LAWN!” How does all that make you feel - Startled? Exhilarated? Amused? Unhappy? Hungry? SOMETHING, that’s for sure. It is, in a profound sense, a tune.

And man, Peel absolutely went ape for this Jawbone stuff – I remember one night he had Jack White on his programme for some kind of special interview thing, and he set about trying to persuade him live on air that he should give Jawbone a slot as tour support for The White Stripes; “c’mon Jack, he’s a local boy and everything, what do you say?” Jack sounded pretty non-committal, but then that’s Jack White for you.

According to what I remember from the sleevenotes accompanying Jawbone’s debut album ‘Dang Blues’, Bob Zabor began his musical career when he was working as a furniture mover or a truck driver or something, and would make up stupid blues hollers to entertain himself when there was nothing good on the radio, pounding on the dashboard to keep time. He got more into this, and as time went on he bought himself a harmonica with which to express himself more fully. Eventually he started getting on stage between bands at shows and doing his hollers, but realised that nobody would take him seriously unless he had a guitar, so he got one of those too, and learned the basics. I guess the guitar probably meant he needed something louder than the floor to do his stomping on, so he got the drums, and Jawbone was born.

And indeed, most of the songs on the record sound like they started life as meaningless, a-capella yelling songs, like the kind of thing a really disturbed child might sing whilst sitting alone in a coal cellar after all the other kids have beaten him up, set to the most simplistic of musical accompaniment. I don’t usually have much tolerance for all that quirky “hey look, I’m a one man band, crazy huh?” bollocks, but Jawbone is really something else. And he’s pretty funny too, showing a total lack of respect for dreary blues tradition, making up stupid, surreal shit on the spot and hammering the same punk-ass chord for about three straight minutes, laughing in the face of the expected 12-bar turnarounds.

Naturally I pictured Bob Zabor as some kind of larger than life backwoods wildman - a Hasil Adkins style outsider lunatic, or a hairy, ostentatious king freak of some peculiar kind. And I enjoyed the album, and Peel continued to point me toward to new and exciting obsessions three nights week, and that was that.

That is, until a few years later, when I was surprised to see that Jawbone was doing a one-off gig in Leicester, where I was living at the time, courtesy of self-explanatory local promoters Not The Same Old Blues Crap (who have now also relocated to London).

Cut to darkened, crappy upstairs venue, about 9pm, and in typical Leicester tradition there’s nobody fucking there – just the promoter and a couple of his mates, and me standing quietly in the corner…. and Jawbone. Jawbone, it transpires, is a skinny, nerdy-looking white guy with an army haircut and a flannel shirt. He looks a bit like Steve Albini, or an electrician. Just a quiet, everyday sort of guy who probably went to college and studied something useful. He gives me a free badge.

Then he sits down on a barstool, and stretches around until he’s got all his various implements in the right position, and then his foot and strumming arm go BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG, and the sweat flies, and he commences his hollering, the fiery red eyes and apocalyptic bad kid drool of the coal cellar, interspersed with stunned silence and a minimal midlands clap. Whoa there. So let us consider old Jawbone the next time some insufferable blues bore makes a point of harping on about his authentic hillbilly credentials. Daddy gotta haircut, momma gonna mow the lawn!

Mp3s>
What’s Goin’ On
My Daddy

Jawbone’s website: http://www.dangblues.com/

Labels: blues, Forgotten greats of the 00s, Jawbone

Rock N' Roll Girl.

It's 1980, and The (Paul Collins) Beat are chasin' the dream:



2008 and they're still hot on the trail:



Glorious failures..?

LIFERS. : D

Labels: awesomeness, Paul Collins Beat, power pop, videos

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

Yet More Singles...

Five more gangs of salty customers trying to make our hair stand on end.

Drunkdriver – Knife Day b/w January 2nd
(Fan Death)

Good grief, this is horrifying. Starting with a long drawn out scream, “Knife Day” launches into a pile of sloppy, violent, sociopathic hardcore being blasted out the other end of a wind tunnel and EQed to death, harsh frequencies pummelling like a wifebeater’s fat fists through the tape hiss. “January 2nd” meanwhile sounds like a giant pig monster just stumbled upon punk club and started fucking it with slow, grinding determination as the punks within scream in terror and confusion. I know it’s naïve of me to listen to a basement hardcore/noise record and think “gee, these guys are pissed off about something”, but gee, these guys are pissed off about something.

http://www.myspace.com/drunkdriverusa
http://www.myspace.com/fandeathrecords

Florida – Icarus b/w Once Yr In It (Shadowplay)

Spooky homemade mutant rock here from…. well, Brooklyn actually – fancy that. These guys have a pretty distinctive sound going on though, centred on ominous, slowed-down vocals combined with normal speed instruments and quite crisp recording, to eerie and dramatic effect. Really strong song-writing here too; ‘Icarus’ could almost be some bastardised Duran Duran/Depeche Mode hit, veering briefly toward a declamatory Sabbathian sing-song metal chant on the chorus, with backing that clanks and hisses more like some lost Pere Ubu-worshipping art-punk ensemble from the dawn of time. I know that doesn’t really make much sense as a description, but neither does trying to jam a band like this into any of my critical reference point boxes, so you’re just going to have to put up with it. On the other side, ‘Once Yr In It’ is a more strung out and distant affair, with slithering hand percussion and low acoustic strumming, like an admirable attempt to fuse the sound of this decade’s surplus of avant/creepcore ensembles with, like, y’know, a band that does songs, until a truly majestic lead guitar rises from the campfire halfway through to take us home. When I say ‘majestic’ of course, I also mean creepy. Everything on this record is creepy, and creepy is good. It’s all out-of-time, hard to nail down, like someone’s attempt to make a haunted band. Basically, if you like the wonderful vintage Halloween photo on the cover, you’ll probably like the music within. It’s an inspired image/sound combo.

http://www.myspace.com/plasticpalms

Girls of the Gravitron – Malthusian Love Song EP (Boom Chick Records)

Band from Memphis. Debut 7”. The song on the A-side immediately hits all the warning buttons, sounding on the surface like a hideous, don't-give-a-damn basement-fi fuck-around that makes me want to yell YOU GUYS ARE JUST SPOILING IT FOR THE REST OF US, and go and listen to something recorded with more than one microphone. It would have been unwise of me to do that though, as the two offerings on the B-side soothe and surprise in an extremely pleasant manner, causing me the return to the A with fresh ears. Recording is still needlessly muffled, over-compressed scuzz throughout, but there are some really beautiful, twisted tunes going on here, sung by a guy who sounds like a gently lethargic alien hillbilly and backed up by a rollicking good band mixing foot-tapping garage rock n’ roll with some lovely, light-of-touch psychedelic slide guitar moves zapping out of the top of the mix like shiny eagles, sounding for all the world like some previously unheard wonder-juice guzzling ’67 session excavated from the International Artists vault alongside all those 13th Floor Elevators and Red Crayola rarities. And you’d better believe that’s a recommendation. Third song ‘Violent Appetites’ gets a particular thumbs up from me. I wish the vocals weren’t so distorted, because I’d like to hear the lyrics that go with the oddball song titles, but that aside this is effortless freak-rock goodness, and well worth a listen.

http://www.myspace.com/girlsofthegravitron
http://www.myspace.com/boomchickrecords

Topaz Rags – Tarot Harem (Not Not Fun)

Yes, Tarot Harem. If that doesn’t give you a pointer re: where these guys are coming from, nothing will. As you might expect, this initially sounds like music to accompany somebody’s tiresome idea of a sinister, LSD-fuelled Mansonite occult happening. Apparently the first 78 copies came with a free tarot card taken from the Crowley deck. What larks! “Tarot Harem” mixes disembodied Pocahaunted style female moaning with clattering, vaguely free drumming and a hypnotic five note bass figure that’s really annoying me, because it sounds like a total rip from another piece of music that I know I know really well, but I just can’t place it.

(Oh yeah, I’ve got it now – it’s, er, the guitar bit that underpins “Your Cells Are In Motion” by Jackie O-Motherfucker? Clocking that and then actually bothering to write it down perhaps counts as the geekiest moment of my life thus far. I mean, I don’t even like Jackie O-Motherfucker, aside from that one song, that I used to listen to a lot on a mix CD. Christ.)

Anyway, the other song here, “Black Honey” (ooh, those titles), is effectively identical to “Tarot Harem”, but with the bass and drums hitting a different, ‘slowly trailing victim through the streets’ kinda groove, and the addition of sparse, creeping piano notes. As on Pocahaunted’s recent ‘Passage’ LP, (which I couldn’t really get into), the free-form vocals here are largely devoid of effects and allowed to roam free, rendering them deeply silly in places. I mean, it’s just a few steps away from throwing in some whistling wind and clanking chains from yr sound FX records really, isn’t it? Still, all adds to the atmosphere I guess. And, without wishing to sound like an old grump, it’s actually the straightforward instruments rather than the ghostly groanings that are doing the bulk of the work in Topaz Rags, and they’re doing it very effectively too, and with a lot more subtlety than you’d have reason to expect. Do I hear some ghosts of distant LA noir jazz creeping in around the edges….? Let’s hope they stay around the edges; that’s where they work best. Peer at Topaz Rags from the right angle and you might even find them soundtracking some Maya Deren instead of some Ted V. Mikels. Even within the mightily oversaturated realm of avant-freaky creepscapes, this stands out as a pretty decent and well thought out addition to the catalogue of such things. Nice work.

>http://www.myspace.com/topazrags
http://www.notnotfun.com/

Vermillion Sands – In The Wood (Fat Possum)

I’ve played this single many times of recent, and I can’t quite get an angle on it, although I think it is very, very good and unusual. Hailing from Italy, and winning points from the outset for the J.G. Ballard reference, Vermillion Sands are led by one Anna Barattin, who possesses a raspy, gutsy singing voice that’s faintly reminiscent of Drugstore’s Isabel Monteiro. Having said that, I just listened to some old Drugstore stuff to check, and actually there’s not THAT much similarity, but nonetheless, the comparison may serve to give you some idea of where Vermillion Sands are coming from, emotionally speaking. This 7” sees Barattin and her band bust through three wonderfully idiosyncratic, low-key garage-folk-punk tunes that combine a slightly eerie rural ambience with ramshackle, Basement Tapes good cheer and choruses slow n’ steady enough for you to sing along before you’ve even clocked the words. Powered along by clanging hollow-body guitars, rough fuzz riffs, tambourine and meaty Vox organ swirl, these are some really great songs that demand repeated listens, their exuberant three-sheets-to-the-wind execution belying some dark and foggy feelings buried beneath. “I always felt sick and sad and lonely,” Barattin sings on the chorus of ‘May’ as the band whoop it up behind her, “if only I could move from my bed”. In the wood indeed. Getting more compelling as it gets more familiar, this one’s a flat-out winner.

http://www.myspace.com/thevermillionsands
http://www.myspace.com/fatpossumrecords

Labels: Drunkdriver, Florida, Girls of the Gravitron, singles reviews, Topaz Rags, Vermillion Sands

New 8 Track: Clowns & Locusts

Yet another one I'm afraid; just another bunch of great songs - no theme, although you could probably sum it up as new weird garage vs. old weird garage. I'd also like to take the opportunity to congratulate The Fresh & Onlys on coming up with my favourite stupid/genius song of the year so far (although I'm not really sold on their output as a whole).

Clowns!



(Link.)

Labels: 8 Tracks, Clowns, mixtapes, The Fresh and Onlys

Um Tributo ao GBV!

This week, for reasons hazy at best, I found myself listening to a Guided By Voices tribute album put together by a bunch of unknown Brazilian bands.


The very existence of such a thing brings a tear to one’s heart and warms the cockles of your eyes, doesn’t it? Just to think that fifteen or twenty years ago, a bunch of scraggly lookin’ 30-something dudes in a nowheresville rustbelt town were getting together in a windowless basement to write and perform a seemingly endless series of weird rock n’ roll classics called things like “Jar of Cardinals” and “At Odds With Dr. Genesis”… and a decade or two later a whole community of kids on a whole other continent (well, kinda) who were probably in primary school when ‘Propeller’ came out, with English as a second language at best, are sufficiently inspired to collectively pay tribute to their efforts. That’s a pretty good measure of musical success for you, right there.

Of course, such is the power of Guided By Voices. My own GBV fandom has been growing steadily ever since Matthew of Fluxblog first introduced be to their stuff via the wonders of a 120 minute mixtape around the dawn of this decade, from initial 'hey, these guys are ok' interest to the point where it now borders on obsession. Just as British music fans of a certain age will never, ever be able to get enough of (or stop talking about) The Fall, instead I have GBV. Man, just don’t even get me started on them, if you value your wakefulness. I guess they’ll never be my #1 Official Favourite Band, so long as The Ramones and the Velvets exist, but given their voluminous output, I almost certainly listen to them more frequently than any other band; all the more so since the internet has allowed me to track down a whole secondary canon of rare EPs and odds & ends releases, Fading Captain side-projects, fan-curated rare tracks compilations and the like. According to iTunes, I know have 2.5GB of GBV/Robert Pollard related material stashed away, and I don’t even have any of those ‘Suitcase’ box sets yet. I’ve actually been thinking about putting together an all-GBV Mp3 player that I can carry around and just stick on ‘shuffle’ whenever I feel the need. I should be pitied, probably, but clearly I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think the band were consistently amazing, exhilarating, moving, funny, majestic, fascinating etc. etc. to an almost unprecedented degree.

And it’s always good to be reminded that I’m not the only one still in that frame of mind, even as Bob Pollard’s recent avalanches of disappointingly dreary new material are scarcely helping to win him any new admirers... so let’s get back to this Brazilian tribute album.

Look, here’s the back cover:


Amazing stuff.

As is inevitably the way with these things, the vast majority of the tracks are pretty underwhelming. Many of the bands represented sound like fuzz guitar/drum machine/4-track solo projects, and few of them add much to the GBV legacy, just running through basic chord n’ lyric arrangements with less gusto and conviction than the original recordings. Perhaps taking advantage of GBV’s rep as ‘godfathers of lo-fi’, some contributions sound hasty and tossed off to the point of embarrassment, with a first take, ‘reading lyrics off the screen’ quality to them; poor Grasiela Piasson in particular sounds like she’s being forced to get to the end of ‘Motor Away’ at gun point. Most of the tracks are pretty good natured and vaguely enjoyable though, and it’s nice just that this album exists.

And as is also inevitably the way with these things, when genius strikes, it strikes hard.

To wit:

Sabia Sensivel – June Salutes You

I’m also rather fond of Telerama’s version of ‘Game of Pricks’. It’s just real nice; reminds me a lot of The Breeders take on Shocker in Gloomtown. And is it just me, or does a female vocal put a nice twist on this weirdly universal anthem of open-heartedness vs. cynicism? Neat little melodic guitar break too.

Telerama - Game of Pricks

Of course, this album also allows us the fun of spending a few minutes going “Wot, no ‘Postal Blowfish’? No ‘Do the Earth’? No ‘Shocker in Gloomtown’? No ’14 Cheerleader Coldfront’?” etc. etc., but criticizing a GBV tribute album for not finding room for everyone’s fave songs is like criticizing a paperback movie guide for no including every single motion picture ever made.

Ok, one more: I like this version of “Unleashed! The Large Hearted Boy”. I dunno why really, it’s pretty much just a slightly less good version of the original, but it makes me think more bands should play this song. The way those wrecked guitars plunge in over the opening bassline in that completely dissonant yet completely awesome way: who wouldn’t want to hear a live band unexpectedly launch into that? It’s just ON.

Tape Rec – Unleashed! The Large-hearted Boy

Anybody want to start a Guided By Voices tribute band? Aptitude for transcribing chords and drinking beer an obvious advantage – give me a shout.

“Don’t Stop Now: Um Tributo ao GBV” can be downloaded for free from Transfusão Noise Records.

UPDATE:

The kids in Ireland are way ahead of us on this one:



http://www.myspace.com/voidedbyponces

Labels: album reviews, Guided By Voices, tribute albums