The Runaways on The Old Grey Whistle Test



YEAH! Eat this Bob Harris, you boring folkie git!

...

(Proper posts coming soon, honest!)

Labels: 1970s, JOAN JETT IS GOD, lameness, The Runaways, TV, videos

Ambivalent Rock Star Dreams # 5: Wilco

Every now and then, I have a vivid and comically surreal dream featuring a musician or band – almost like a little mini-series going on in my sleeping mind. Oddly, given the unhealthy proportion of my waking thought that is dedicated to music, these dreams are never about musicians I actually like, or indeed musicians I actively dislike. They are always about people whose work I am entirely ambivalent about. For instance, I have previously had dreams featuring The Hives, Nick Cave, Kyuss and Scott Walker (ok, obviously I do like Scott Walker a lot, but the dream presented him in his contemporary ‘reclusive genius’ mode, which I enjoy a lot less than his ‘60s pomp, so I’ll still count him as “ambivalent”).

I used to enjoy blearily recounting these dreams on forums (fora? – whatever), but since I’ve given up posting on forums, I might as well annoy everybody by doing it here instead.

Last night I dreamed I was a new member of Wilco. Wilco in this dream didn’t resemble the real life Wilco though – in fact they were just two guys, who looked like they might have been in The Faces in the ‘70s or something, and me. We were sitting in a beautiful, ornamental Chinese garden, and the lead Wilco guy was explaining to me that, despite the fact that everyone always assumes they put a hell of a lot of work into their records, they actually just record any old crap that comes into their heads as quickly as possible, and spend the rest of the recording time/budget lazing around by the pool, or whatever.

Fine with me, I thought, I don’t like Wilco much anyway. There was a little tape recorder on the other side of the garden, so they decided they might as well just lay down the whole new album in one go and be done with it. “We’ll just say it’s a formal experiment or something”, they said. I was playing this strange instrument that was kind of like a fretless bass, only with thin, non-bass strings and with extremely wide gaps between the strings. I wasn’t playing a bass line; more like some twiddley, sitar-ish modal bits that seemed to magically fit in with whatever the other two guys were playing. The lead guy sang some made up blather in a gruff sort of voice, then shut off the tape and declared the song was done. I walked around the garden for a bit. End of dream.

Labels: ambivalent rock star dreams, Wilco

News in Brief.

Apologies as usual for the lack of recent words here. By my own shambling, lethargic standards, this past week or so has been pretty busy, and yesterday in particular was a strange and somewhat frantic day, with news of celebrity deaths coming at rate of knots, as I found myself seeing through an evening of no money, no food and much free beer.

So, in the absence of any proper writing, here’s a… bunch of stuff:


1. Sky Saxon died yesterday.

Mysterious to the end, his age was unknown and the ailment that killed him remains unidentified. To wax lyrical re: the extent to which The Seeds ruled and the almost subliminal influence they wielded over the direction of both mainstream and underground rock from the late ‘60s onward would seem somewhat redundant, assuming I’m speaking to an audience who’ve ever taken an interest in good, weird rock n’ roll. I guess I’ve always envisioned Sky Saxon in his prime almost as a cartoon character, the ultimate fusion of punk and hippie, marauding down “The Strip” swinging his love-beads, ranting slurred diatribes against The Man before heading to Pandora’s Box to blow some wretched losers like The Doors off the fucking stage with a set of pre-Monks, pre-Fall grinding, semi-improvised visionary mayhem.

Everybody knows “Pushin’ Too Hard” and “Can’t Seem To Make You Mine” of course – indeed, the latter would definitely be my tune of choice should I ever stumble upon some mythical garage-punk karaoke bar of my dreams… not that I’d have much of a chance of replicating those incredible, lovelorn “Aaaa-AAAAWWWWwwwwww!”s; simply one of the most genius vocal performances of all time. But The Seeds were also one of the only Nuggets bands who successfully managed to channel their initial energy into making great albums too – “The Seeds”, “A Web of Sound” and “The Future” are all totally wonderful, nutzoid LPs that demand a place in anyone’s collection.

Saxon’s resurgence in the past few decades is a bit more problematic for me, given his ongoing association with The Source cult, but he still managed to play his barmy, mysterioso awesome dude role to perfection. I mean, this is the guy who, when somebody in the early/mid-sixties presumably asked him to come up with a new stage name, immediately blurted out “SKY SAXON”, for no apparent reason. What a hero. R.I.P.

Good obit by Nels Cline, via Arthur, here.




2. The Gories are back!

Well, I mean I knew they were back since they dropped the news about that joint, one-off European tour with The Oblivians last year, but still. Man, The Gories! As you’ll recall, I got so over-excited listening to The Gories a couple of years back, I even drew a picture of them.

There’s an absolutely terrific feature on the history of the band over at the Detroit Metro Times – a great example of the kind of straightforward, well-constructed overview I’d love to be able to read about more of my favourite bands of the 80s/90s/00s. (Thanks to Jessica Hopper’s blog for the link.)

There’s a lot more to The Gories than the ‘garage revivalist’ tag they’re often stuck with, so if that descriptor has ever put you off taking an interest, I’d recommend firing up yr last.fms or spotifys or whatever it is you kids have these days and taking a listen to their debut album ‘Houserockin’ – the sound of three untrained bozos in a shed making what’s pretty much a working definition of The Best Music Ever.

Here’s what happened the last time they quit the stage:




3. Veronica Falls

Veronica Falls – an ensemble previously known as The Draculas, before that Sexy Kids and once a faction of Glasgow’s The Royal We – headlined last night, and verily did they blow me away. With their dense Velvets strummage, minimal floor-tom/snare pounding, dreamy girl/boy harmonies, killer tunes, Flying Nun-esque understement and eerie graveyard atmospherics, it’s hard to imagine a band who could tap more perfectly into my current tastes. And that’s BEFORE they played a swoonsome cover of Roky Erickson’s ‘Starry Eyes’, casually breaking the Michael Jackson news to the thirty or so onlookers in the process. They were really something: go listen and befriend.


4. Sonic Youth Raid my Dreams

News at eleven: the new Sonic Youth video is like some kind of dream I’d probably have.

In fact, scratch ‘probably’, I think its entire stock of imagery is ripped straight from my nocturnal mind circa 2003-2004, thus rendering it unintentionally haunting viewing, for me at least.

It’s a great video, although I fear the band missed a trick by rather snootily portraying themselves as vague ‘overseers’ of the radical girls’ scheme, rather than placing themselves (with a wink & a nod) amongst the yuppie-cognoscenti victims.

It’s sad too that the song pretty much goes in one ear and out the other. Oh, hey, it’s another short, punky Kim one. I’ll file it with the rest.

Labels: deathblog, internet round-ups, lameness, Sonic Youth, The Gories, The Seeds, Veronica Falls, videos

Alex Chilton & The Box Tops on "Disc-o-Teen Halloween Special", 1967.



What can I say; I wish TV was like this 24 hours a day.

Labels: 1960s, Alex Chilton, halloween, the Box Tops, TV, videos, weirdness

HOLD A DESERT, FEEL ITS HAND:
Mystery TRAINing Volume # 3

With the heat of the summer already comin’ on etc., it’s convenient that the third instalment of my vaguely thematic psychedelic compilation series concerns itself with THE DESERT.

Truth be told, I’ve never spent much time in the desert. I’m told it can get pretty psychedelic though. If I were in the desert, I think I would probably want to listen to some lengthy passages of really bad-ass heavy rock, so verily you will find some of them within. The more obvious inclusions aside, I particularly commend Northwest Company’s ‘Grey Skies’ to you – proof that, whilst the vast majority of early ‘70s open air festival blues jams may have sucked ass, there is much to be said for the 5% that went TOTALLY RIGHT. Nod those heads!

And I’d want some eerie, beatific drones too. They’re good for the desert. Yes, definitely some of those. Keijo comes from Finland, so I don’t know what the hell he knows of the desert, but…. he seems to fit in nicely.

Similarly, Jamaica’s no bloody desert, but nonetheless it seems like high time we introduced some dub into this series, so take it away King Tubby. What an astounding record! Same can be said of Haiti, but that hasn’t stopped me throwing in an OMGFamazing slice of horror movie voodoun psychedelic soul/folk/other from Exuma The Obeah Man. Hopefully by the time you get to that point in the comp though, you’ll be stumbling ‘round death valley after dark searching for the hole leading to the centre of the earth to sit out the forthcoming apocalypse, so who cares.

West Africa now - that’s the place for desert! So I couldn’t resist the opportunity to throw in a tune from everybody’s favourite Saharan outlaws Tinariwen, lying down some shit with a couple of guitars and hand percussion to make everyone else in the world who’d claim to be ‘funky’ go weak at the knees. I’ve actually been burned recently on a couple of ‘60s/’70s African reissues that were recommended to me as fuzzed out, psychedelic masterpieces but were actually pretty dreary. As with British/American ‘60s stuff though, it’s often the one-off mystery singles that come through where the album artists fail, and as such, OH MAN - Ofo The Black Company! I don’t know who they were or what they thought they were doing, but… OH MAN - Ofo The Black Company! What more can I say.

The Country Joe & The Fish track by the way is from the soundtrack to the counter-culture western ‘Zachariah’, in which they play an outlaw gang called The Crackers. The bit where they play this song is the best thing in the whole movie. No, scratch that, the best bit is where Elvin Jones shoots three guys with the same bullet and then plays a four minute drum solo. But CJ Fish definitely come in second. The James Gang rocking out in the middle of the desert with big amp stacks comes in third, and, sadly, everything else in the film is pretty crap.

Anyway, I seem to be straying from the point a bit, so let’s wrap this up:

I think everything on this compilation is awesome. Burn it onto a disc, put it on somewhere as you stare into a vast open sky and feel your toes sink into the sand or whatever, and I hope you’ll agree.

Tracklist:

1. Grouper – hold a desert, feel it’s hand
2. Country Joe & The Fish – we’re the crackers
3. The 13th Floor Elevators – livin’ on
4. “The Happening” radio spot
5. King Tubby & The Aggravators – I trim the barber
6. Tinariwen – dualahila ar tesninam
7. Ofo The Black Company – allah wakbarr
8. John Fahey – the portland cement factory at monolith, ca.
9. Charalambides – the good life
10. Northwest Company – grey skies
11. The Grateful Dead, Merry Pranksters & Friends – peggy the pistol
12. Keijo – stellar wind
13. Bhagavad Gita – long hair soulful
14. “Satan’s Sadists” radio spot
15. The Jesters of Newport – stormy
16. Exuma – mama loi papa loi
17. Dead Meadow – beyond the fields we know (live)
18. Moe Tucker – blue, all the way to canada
19. Greg Ashley – apple pie & genocide

Download:

Here.

(90mb .zip file)

Labels: mixtapes, Psychedelia

SINGLES!
March/April/May ’09, Part # 3:

* * *

Psyched To Die – Sterile Walls EP
(Grave Mistake/Firestarter)

Going by the cover, track titles, band name and lyrics sheet, one could easily mistake this for a generic hardcore release, but it’s actually an unusual and thoroughly enjoyable exercise in pre-h/c American punk rock. Sure, there are fast tempos, gang shouts and some mosh-riff sections, but there’s also loads of warped guitar hero soloing, comprehensible vocals high in the mix, trebley, clean sound and a nervy, over-caffeinated quirky kinda energy, recalling The Weirdos, Pagans and ‘Plastic Surgery Disasters’ era Dead Kennedys.

Songs are blasted out tight as fuck, machine gun style, each one wrapped up in about a minute, like the New Bomb Turks with less fat, and the lyrics offer relentless nowheresville nihilism throughout. Composition & vocal duties seem to be split between different band members, so, uh, at least they must share a common goal I suppose, even if it is total hatred of everything. “Sick and tired of the free-range life / the outside world is a fucking mess” contributes bassist J Nixon on the title track, “pretending to be crazy’s the only way out / and I won’t even have to fake being depressed”. Guitarist Mike Yannich, not to be outdone, gives us ‘Permanent Solution’; “I got a permanent solution / living life is just a waste of time / I gotta find a fucking way out”. Nixon wins outright on the hilarious ‘Onward Armageddon’ though, managing to sing “People think of the apocalypse / and dream up stupid fantasy bullshit / about being in the small percentage of survivors / and piecing society back together”, before concluding “I don’t want to be part of no post-apocalypse / I wanna be one of the people it hits!”

Perhaps my favourite song here though is drummer Brian Yannich’s ‘Five Year Plan’, which perfectly captures the spirit of classic Descendents loserdom. As all the smarter punks knew well, this I-hate-everything-and-I-hate-you shtick can turn to self-parody pretty quickly, and these guys sound frighteningly honest when they bring things down to earth to sing “Couldn’t cut it in college / work for minimum wage / I see old faces from high school / they think that I’m a waste” ; “My friends are all getting married/ buying suburban homes / I just sit here complaining / in my room all alone”. Not exactly the most original sentiment that’s ever been expressed in a punk song, but these things can still cut hard.

I guess it was defiance in the face of this kind of terminal failure and depression that was at the heart of late 70s teenage punk – or at least the raw, Californian variety that informs Psyched To Die – and, 30 years down the line, we can still hear it pretty bluntly put by bands like this, for whom adult life apparently hasn’t brought much in the way of improvement.

http://www.myspace.com/psychedtodie
http://www.myspace.com/firestarterrecords

Total Abuse – Demo 06 (Even Worse)

Whoa. Demo-tape-reissued-on-7” action here in a similar brutalist lo-fi hardcore vein to those Sex Vid records that so thoroughly kicked my ass last year. And if Total Abuse lack the brooding, knife wound negativity of Sex Vid, in fact sounding almost cheery by comparison, well they more than make up for such deficiencies with sheer THUNK, taking their triple-speed Sabbath-weight riffage and flailing skronk bursts straight from The Book of Ginn and somehow imbuing it all with an immediacy and momentum that this music has lacked since their hero was still knocking it out pre-‘Damaged’. Nothing new here, but after nearly three decades of identikit eight song h/c 45s, bands like this can still seem like fresh air in a stale cavern. Go figure.

For my money, the recording here is perfect for a band like this – scuzzy and muffled in a GOOD way, just like the early ‘Flag stuff, only with the levels cranked the way they *should* have been on ‘My War’. The guitars are solid brick wall roar, the drums sound like they’re being torn from the overdriven bass-bins of the terrifying, lunatic-driven car that’s about to mow you down from behind. Musicianship I suspect is tight as a whip (the drummer fucking kicks it), but there’s so much bass fuzz and degraded roar it wouldn’t make much difference either way. Song titles: “Breathing Down My Neck”, “Enraged/Pissed”, “I Can’t Live Like This”. Indeed. Things reach their apex at the end of side # 1, sounding like the noise a brave eight year old might hear whilst pushing his ear against the concrete wall of the utterly terrifying underground rock club that his mum has told him never to go near because the patrons might EAT him. Fascinating, repulsive, violent, wrong and irresistible.

Side # 2 actually lightens up a little, playing to the gallery by slowing down for some headbang/mosh pit worthy groove sections on almost pleasant chord sequences, and demanding yet another ‘Flag comparison with good ol’ Rollins shout-alongs on the choruses of “I Give Up” and “Ain’t Got No One”. That said, Total Abuse’s gallery is probably largely comprised of leering indie tourists such as myself in search of total destruction, so you can’t blame ‘em for wanting to give us the finger and give the h/c faithful what they paid for.

http://www.myspace.com/totalabuse
http://www.myspace.com/evenworserecords

Vivian Girls - Moped Girls b/w Death
(For Us)

Yeah, it’s yet another non-album 7” from Vivian Girls, yet another one they’ll be able to shift by the bucketload until the hype spotlight moves elsewhere. And why not, eh? It must be nice to be able to immediately press your latest creations onto little artefacts like this, knowing you’ve got the interest & appreciation of a sizable audience to make it worth your while. And it’s not like there’s a quality control issue or anything – the tunes are still great! In fact, for all that they may be derided in certain quarters as lazy, self-satisfied so-and-sos, VGs are becoming a pretty consistent and prolific outfit, maintaining an admirable cruising speed as regards the essential band-business of making lots of songs, and making them all good.

Their second album is due out in a couple of months, and word is that, in classic 2nd album tradition, it’s going to be a more nuanced affair, slowing down the frantic punk of their earlier material in favour of more classic rock/pop inspired slow-burners. Seeing as how regular readers probably got pretty sick last year of hearing me harping on about my love for the first album’s stunning “Where Do You Go To?”, this strikes me a potentially welcome development. It’s also a shift in tone that seems to be clearly signalled by this 45, with both sides staying strictly mid-tempo, both featuring hazy, uncertain guitar solos and hinting at a beguiling mixture of self-conscious girl group pop (‘Death’ has a beautiful Shangri-Las spoken opening) and hypnotic desert jangle, executed with the kind of singular, indefinable spirit that made fans of this band fall for them in the first place, and that their detractors will likely be scratching their heads over for all eternity. I mean, yeah, obviously I could tick the same crit boxes as them and acknowledge that the Vivian Girls music is formally unremarkable, technically adequate at best, that they probably haven’t done the legwork to justify global indie-fame… but do you think I care, when their music makes me shiver, changes the weather, throws pictures into my mind, makes things better, the way pop music should?

Sadly, it’s the recording that lets them down to a certain extent here though. Put bluntly, these sound like big songs recorded on the cheap, sounding flat where the the LP roared. The lo-fi approach is cool n’ all, don’t get me wrong, but as the Girls move toward a sound with less flat-out distortion, more harmonies and more subtle, reverbin’ depths, I don’t know if the old ‘one take / one mic’ set up is really serving them best.

http://www.myspace.com/viviangirlsnyc
http://www.roughtrade.com/

Wake The President / Je Suis Animal split 7”
(Electric Honey / Lucky Number Nine)

I think I quite like Glaswegians Wake The President. Quite is odd, because they sound a lot like The Smiths, and I hate The Smiths. I guess it’s a bit like how I really liked Camera Obscura’s first album back in the day, despite the fact I (at the time) hated Belle & Sebastian. An example of an unassuming little band taking on the more easily enjoyable elements of the sound in question, without the preciousness or cultural baggage of their precursors perhaps? And crucially in this case, without the distraction of an overbearing vocalist whining on incoherently like a self-important parish priest cursing god for the indignity of having to deal with two blown tyres in the same week. (Hate mail welcomed in the comments box, Moz fans – I loves ya really).

So yes, Wake the President are definitely perched at the more tweedy, un-rocking end of the indie-pop spectrum, so it is to their credit that here they turn in neither a snorefest nor a groanfest, but a really nicely turned out, toe-tapping couple of minutes of this-sort-of-thing, thankyouverymuch. The singer’s delivery is natural and engaging, the rhythm section is all prim and bouncy and the tune is pretty catchy. The guitarist wants to be Johnny Marr so much it hurts, but unlike Johnny Marr, he turns in a wicked little solo towards the end. File under “hard to dislike”.

Je Suis Animal’s side is an altogether more curious prospect, marrying early Sonic Youth ‘building the tension’ guitar lines to an arch, sing-song Laetitia Sadler style female vocal that seems almost entirely disconnected from the band’s backing. Music and vocal proceed to stalk each other as the track develops, the guitars appearing to triumph at around the two minute mark with a dramatic stabbing-you-over-the-dinner-table Blonde Redhead noise-out, before the singer reasserts herself with another run through the song’s cyclical chorus, and we’re out. I say, this doesn’t seem like very ‘indie-poppy’ behaviour at all! Count me officially INTERESTED in whatever Je Suis Animal are up to.

http://www.myspace.com/wakethepresidentband
http://www.myspace.com/jesuisanimal
http://www.myspace.com/luckynumberninerecords
http://www.myspace.com/electrichoneymusic

Labels: Je Suis Animal, Psyched To Die, singles reviews, The Vivian Girls, Total Abuse, Wake The President

Reissue Now!

To celebrate the fact that I've finally got my own internet connection again, here's a new 8-Track.

THEME: The '60s may be pretty thoroughly picked over, but there is still tons of great, great music from the late '70s / '80s / early '90s that remains unfairly stuck in out-of-print obscurity, some of it never even issued on CD, surviving only as weblog-posted vinyl rips consumed by geeks like me, rather than the wider public who deserve a chance to enjoy it. So, er, here are some of my favourite examples of such, I suppose. Enjoy, and on the unlikely off-chance you've got some of these artists' master-tapes mouldering in yr basement: give it a thought, huh?

(Link.)

Labels: 8 Tracks, mixtapes, REISSUE NOW

SINGLES!
March/April/May ’09, Part # 2:

Part #3 coming up before you know it!

Graffiti Island / Rapid Youth / Old Blood / Male Bonding split 7”(Paradise Vendors Inc.)

Four way transatlantic split between some up and coming art-spazz-noise types, with a big ol’ lysergic alsatian on the front! Nice! Of the four groups represented, I’m only familiar with Male Bonding, who I caught live one time and quite enjoyed. A quick listen to this one might save me wasting a few sweaty evenings up at Barden’s Boudoir though, right?

So let’s see….

Graffiti Island: Wow, I take back all my expectations, this is AWESOME. I mean, really awesome! Sounds kinda like… Nodzzz if they were totally evil? Ok, maybe not, but man, this is some wonderful, weird-ass mutant nerd-rock with fuzzed-out swooshing noises, odd-ball lyrics, strong rhythmic backbone and a killer tune – real deviant Cleveland vibe, like Electric Eels hectoring meets early-Pere Ubu art-noise-pop? Their song is called “long-necked tribe”, and it’s actually about a tribe of people with long necks. Right on. I wanna see these guys, and shake them by the hand too, if possible/ advisable.

Rapid Youth: Oddly, sounds quite similar to Graffiti Island – especially the singer’s voice. Not sure I like this one quite as much though. The guitar is somewhat over-busy in it’s high-end doodling, and the vocals verge into a kinda Liars-esque chant thing that’s a little annoying. To further my Cleveland state of mind, it sounds a bit like Paul Marotta’s work in The Styrenes, if you get me. You don’t? Well fine, you’re not missing much, and I’m just being an obscurist bore.

Old Blood: Christ, this is rather less welcome. Overloaded no-fi sound that pushes all the harsh frequencies ala Times New Viking, but unlike TNV I don’t hear much pop or positivity worth digging for beneath. The drumming literally sounds like somebody banging on some bins with a stick, which I’d usually be into, don’t get me wrong, only nobody in this band sounds like they give a fuck, so I don’t see why I should either.

Male Bonding: Wheee! Rocking, high-energy dual guitar cartoon prog-punk here, served with a mischievous grin. Far more light-of-touch and good-of-feeling than the name ‘Male Bonding’ would tend to suggest, but with all the rock muscle and low-end fuzz present and correct. Actually reminds me a lot of Deerhoof – same undeniable rad-ness, only less precocious and annoying. Result! I’m not sure I could stand listening to these guys for very long at a single sitting, but their songs are short, and so are their live sets, so it’s not like they’re not asking anyone to. Gentlemen to a fault!

CONCLUSION: Hey, all in all, that was a great listen, and a lovely surprise. I kinda expected a lot of ‘rainbow vomit’ types with squelching pedal noise and bad, self-indulgent drummers, but actually at least half of it takes a trip down some interesting, non-conformist punk rock avenues, and, in Grafitti Island’s case, a pretty damn exciting one. All that, and I bet I just managed to wreck some idiot’s one-search-result googlewhack thing by laying down ‘lysergic alsation’ in my preamble too. I don’t think it even is an alsation. I’m not into dogs. Rock on!

http://www.myspace.com/graffitiisland
http://www.myspace.com/rapidrapidyouth
http://www.myspace.com/oldbloodmusic
http://www.myspace.com/malebonding
http://www.myspace.com/paradisevendorsinc

The Hot Melts - Edith (Epitaph)

Yeah, I confess, I bought this one just based on the cover art. I mean, a record that looks like this has got to be a hit, right? (Ok, if you share my aesthetic sensibilities, a record that looks like this has got to be a hit.) It was only then that I noticed it’s on Epitaph; oh well - could go either way. As it turns out, it’s none too great – kinda watered down Rocket From The Crypt on the a-side, with a flat recording nullifying whatever life used to be in the big guitar riffs. The song never really makes an impression; singer sounds like he’s trying too hard. The b is better, in that it’s a total rip-off of ‘Sweet Jane’, which is always welcome. I kept waiting for them to spoil it by launching into a big, dunderheaded chunk riff….. and they held out for so long, I was just starting to think they’d bring the whole thing into harbour safely, but no, the predictable ‘hey, let’s go loud and sing all gruff’ bit cleaved into view to sink my hopes. Basically I suspect this record is the work of lifetime card-carrying Rock Dudes trying to write pop songs and then realising they’ve got no idea how to make the deceptively simple geometry of pop work for them. Oh well, you live and learn. Gimme Foxburo Hottubs any day!

http://www.myspace.com/thehotmelts

Jacuzzi Boys – Ghost Ghost b/w Age of the Giant Jellyfish (Florida is Dying)

Sounding like a ready-made support band for Thee Oh Sees, I must admit that Florida’s Jacuzzi Boys press a lot of the right buttons with me at present, and it’s swell to find an actual, physical copy of this 7” after surviving on a few downloaded mp3s for a while. Totally spooked-out, propulsive garage-psyche is what Jacuzzi Boys do, and if that description already has you reaching for the bat-phone then their warped 12-string jangle, overdrive pedal lead vocals, droning echo, inscrutable harmonies and admirable lack of quirk should be right up your alley.

Maybe it’s reading too much into things to say there’s a distinct Florida feeling to this band’s music, an atmosphere slightly suggestive of the state’s queasier, weirder cultural legacy? Like the almost hallucinatory turquoise on some rotting roadside motel in bright sunlight? If somebody took acid in a Hershel Gordon Lewis movie, it might sound like this. Great cover shot only drives home my point, with the band bearing lanterns, looking sinister. They have another 7” out called “I Fought a Crocodile”. I love it.

http://www.myspace.com/jacuzziboys
http://www.myspace.com/mutinyproductions

Kim Phuc – Wormwood Star b/w Freak Out the Squares (Criminal IQ)

“You just had to find the most horrible record in the shop, didn’t you?”, said my friend Pete in regard to his 7” as we sat in the park surveying our respective purchases the other day. And yes, apparently. Yes I did.

It was the lyrics as printed on the back of the sleeve that sold me I think. Opening lines of ‘Wormwood Star’ are:

I knew it right from the start
That your were born to be a witch
Should have carved ancient sigils
Across my chest

‘Freak Out the Squares’ meanwhile opts for:

Why don’t you and me get together
And cut each other with razorblades
Trip down naked, huff some butane
Find a strip mall to invade

Sounds good to me! Whilst I’ll save both you and Kim Phuc the embarrassment of a full transcription, suffice to say, both songs get progressively more ridiculous(ly wonderful) from thereon in. In fact, all in all this single represents the greatest feat of laugh-out-loud, sleazy, nihilistic, batshit teenage sociopath-styled lyrical derangement I’ve encountered since I gave up listening to Cannibal Corpse. Respect, of a sort, is due.

I’m not sure what my favourite bit is. I’m torn between the line “you can take an average Friday night / and turn it into rights of pain!”[sic] on the A-side, and “Gonna fuck on Ronald Reagan’s grave / we’ll wipe our shit, piss and cum / with the American flag!” on the B. Shocking stuff huh readers? I trust you're appropriately 'freaked out' by these daring iconoclasts.

So, can Kim Phuc possibly measure up musically? Well… ‘Wormwood..’ gets off to a good start, sounding like The Scientists playing ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’, but overall both of the tracks are somewhat meandering and leave something to be desired, as the musicians attempt to form an uneasy truce between classic Stoogoid punk, brooding death-rock ambience and endless tension/release metal-core breakdowns, emerging in a deeply unsatisfactory position where the best elements of all those forms have gone AWOL rather than compete with the singer’s tuneless, self-harm obsessed death-freak ranting. He sounds quite serious about it all, bless him. Social services have been informed.

http://www.myspace.com/kimphuc
http://www.myspace.com/criminaliqrecords

Liechtenstein – Everything’s For Sale
(Drill Buildings CD-R)

I was kinda lukewarm on Liechtenstein when I saw them live last year. So, your sound and aesthetic leans heavily on Kleenex/LiLiPUT, I thought to myself. Well that’s just great. But if that’s ALL it does..? Needs more… SOMETHING… to really make an impression. Thankfully, that ‘something’ is provided in spades on this fantastic single, which I’ll admit has really blown me away. And what’s more, it doesn’t sound very much like Kleenex/LiLiPUT either. So that’s me told, with my lazy stereotyping of central European female post-punk trios.

What it does sound like in places though is all-time Flying Nun girl-pop heroes Look Blue, Go Purple, and that’s a BRILLIANT thing to sound like. A backbone of suppressed fury and serpentine suspicion, hidden and soothed behind layers of tidal guitar jangle, nursery rhyme melodies, cavewoman thump. Listening to a-side ‘Everything’s For Sale’, it finally makes sense that Liechtenstein are turning up on so many indie-pop bills too, as the song revs up like a more ascetic, militant Shop Assistants, ending with a few rounds of three-part ‘sha-la-la’s. But it’s b-side ‘The End of the World’ that really elicits the LB/GP comparison, a quiet, heartfelt, gritted teeth vocal holding ground beneath a reverbed swirl of ‘What Goes On’ strummage. And, as if to taunt me, 50 second bonus track ‘Low Sugar / Low Fat’ totally brings the LiLiPUT. “We look good when we’re undressed”, Liechtenstein chant over staccato bass and muted trumpet, an oblique/obvious protest as perfectly formed as any ‘Pink Flag’ nugget.

Scarcely six minutes of music here, but within it I think we can hear the whole essence of a great band, playing some defiantly UN-twee pop, with dignity, substance and self-belief.

http://www.myspace.com/liechtensteinia
http://www.fractiondiscs.se/

Labels: graffiti island, Jacuzzi Boys, Kim Phuc, Liechtenstein, Male Bonding, Old Blood, Rapid Youth, singles reviews, The Hot Melts

SINGLES!
March/April/May ’09, Part # 1:

Look at all the little things I've found to fill my shoeboxes with! In alphabetical order from A to E, part #2 coming soon-ish...


The Bats / Songs split EP
(The Spring Press)

Well, what a coincidence – there I was eulogising The Bats but a couple of posts back, and here’s a brand new 7” from them, split with Australian (I think?) band Songs.

True to their status as a working definition of consistency in pop music, The Bats side is sublime. “Castle Lights” is the slower of the two songs, with violin and an honest-to-god harp helping to intensify the stately ‘great plains’ ambience the band has grown into over the years.“Under The Branches” is a tad jauntier; yet another text-book jangle-pop killer that they could have recorded any time in the past twenty five years really – all constituent parts are present and correct, and a fine time is had by every instrument in this band’s steady hands. Now that they are out and about again, touring and such, I would commend anyone playing in one of the many bands who seem to be going for a ‘classic indie-pop’ kinda sound to listen, listen, listen to The Bats, and hopefully learn something.

Songs stab at the big-time meanwhile begins with a largely instrumental number showcasing a mixture of instinctive, motorik drumming, surfy, post-punk derived guitar & bass and spacey organ-drone that puts me strongly in mind of early Electrelane. Really nice actually, especially when the chanted, phone-number-as-mantra vocal comes in and the music builds up around it – good stuff. Their other song by contrast is a slightly drippy male-voiced reverby acoustic thing. It’s ok, but a tad forgettable. Overall, sounds like a band worth keeping an ear on.

http://www.myspace.com/thebatsnz
http://www.myspace.com/ssongsssongs
http://www.myspace.com/thespringpress

Betty & The Werewolves – David Cassidy
(Damaged Goods)

Ok, so clearly regular readers will already know that I love this single dearly. My main purpose in writing this is to remind you that it exists. Boy, is it ever a good one though! A sweet story of old fashioned pop star obsession, international plane flight, dreams fulfilled etc., staring an archetypal British girl and everybody’s mum’s favourite 70s crooner, all set to gleeful, breakneck-speed girly singalong punk rock. Great to hear a good bit of storytelling creeping into such fast and furious music too; “Los Angeles is a long way from Ryslip, they told me so!” Brilliant!

My friend told me that this song has a line about masturbation, but honest to god, I’ve listened to the lyrics very closely, and I still can’t hear it. It all sounds quite wonderfully innocent to me. Please tell me there’s not some sleazy sub-text running through the whole thing that I’m missing.

But, uh, anyway, I got a special Betty & The Werewolves pencil when I bought my copy of this single off them. Maybe you will too! It’s on sparkly pink vinyl as well. Great! I hope I’m selling it to you here. Something still has to be number # 1 in this era when nobody buys records anymore, so let’s make it Betty & The Werewolves!

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

The Bombettes – What’s Cooking Good Looking? EP
(Ny Vag / Wasted Sounds)

Look out guys, here come The Bombettes! Five more tough gurls straight outta Sweden, a land where I can well imagine school careers advisors counsel kids from a young age on the right choice of tight jeans and Fenders, gently pushing each teenager towards the one precisely designated aspect of Anglo-American rock n’ roll culture that suits him/her best, all in order that they might eventually make a one-off 7” which will inevitably find it’s way into the singles racks at All Ages Records in Camden where, about two years after the recording date, I will glance at the cover for a couple of seconds, think “wow, this looks great”, and proceed to swell the coffers of the Swedish recording industry to the tune of a five pounds, before taking it home and being slightly underwhelmed. At least, I think that’s how it works. I’m not so hot on the finer points of international commerce.

Anyway, true to form, the first time I played the Bombettes record, I was pretty underwhelmed. Unerwhelmed by its ruthless efficiency and it’s manifest lack of charm or ideas. Underwhelmed by its strict adherence to a sound akin to early Blondie after a spell at The Hives’ high-energy garage-pop bootcamp. Underwhelmed by its hectoring, over-enunciated faux-punk vocals and dumb-ass lyrics, and underwhelmed by the extent to which it’s very existence is so evidently surplus to the requirements of anyone who once heard a Sahara Hotnights record.

BUT, then I played it a second time, this time in company after a couple of beers, and things changed. It’s true genius became evident to all. This instant change of heart was clear right from the outset, as opening track ‘The Thief’ kicked in with The Bombettes singing “I stole a look from you / while dancing to The Who! / Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” about twenty times in a row. Wow, what a great song! You can probably guess what the accompanying music sounds like without any help from me, but by this stage I was actually starting to enjoy the way it bludgeons one into submission, a theme which is more overtly discussed on the curiously bracketed ‘I Wanna (Kick your Ass)’. Herein The Bombettes sing “I wanna kick your ass, because you’ve got a nice ass!” about twenty times in a row. “You came along / I wrote this song / now I sing it / all night long!” they add by way of clarification. There aren’t many other words. You’ll be singing it all night long too if you’re not careful.

After that, they turn their attention to the ‘Dating Scene’, observing: “I’m bored /
You’re not good enough / I’m bored / And your record collection is too small / I’m bored I’m bored I’m bored / I’m so fucking bored”.

See what I mean? Genius!

http://www.myspace.com/thebombettes
http://www.myspace.com/nyvagrecords

Cheeky Cheeky & The Nosebleeds – You Let Me Go(Twenty Years of Boredom)

Hmm, what have we here? A silly band name and a cover like a Hefner record that’s gone psychotic…. looks like it’s signed by some people too; the band, presumably. Any bets on what might be found within? Let’s have a listen, shall we!

The answer is: two two minute slabs of perfectly decent, trebley indie-punk; nervous verses and pounding, singalong choruses as the martial rhythm section pound on ahead of the choppy, Strokes-y downstroke guitar licks and groovy, surfy lead riffs; the singer howls distraught in high register with a slight cockney twang. Unhappy lyrics about girls. I quite like it!

Basically these guys sound like the winners in a secondary schools Pete & The Pirates impersonation contest, but c’mon, that’s nothing to be ashamed of! Either side of this could prove a right belter in thirty years time, when ‘00s indie becomes a long lost collector’s cult, and people start compiling it on teenage wasteland-focused ‘Back From The Grave’ type albums, revelling in the sound of these mad kids of yesteryear working out their girl troubles on guitars in a way that all this wimpy, smartarse 2030s music just can’t compete with, goddamnit.

Looks like they’ve renamed themselves “The Cheeks” since this single. I’m not sure if that’s an improvement name-wise, or even worse.

http://www.myspace.com/cheekynosebleeds

Comet Gain – Herbert Hunke / No Spotlite on Sometime
(Germs of Youth)

“Coming in, tuning in on Comet Gain as they sing their favourite song, Herbert Hunke” says a guy who I think must be world’s angriest millionaire Christopher Appelgren, last heard signing off CG’s immortal ‘Ballad of a Mixtape’, “..they ask him for bread, and he doesn’t know what bread is, but you do, you understand..”. Don’t we just. Thus begins a definitively shambolic live-in-studio wouldbe-Velvets jam of a rendition of David Feck’s tribute to beat poet/associate Hunke, the ‘real life criminal’ said to have inspired much of Kerouac and Ginsberg’s drug/outlaw shtick. The song lopes along pretty painfully, lacking the declamatory energy it’s had at recent gigs, but hey, fans of this band have long learned to accept that perfection is scarcely the point. ‘Hunke’ catches Feck at his most audacious/arrogant/vital/obsolescent/sloppy/boorish/ wonderful (delete as applicable), and your enjoyment will largely hinge on whether or not you’re able to stomach a good dose of ‘Sister Ray’ street jive play-acting, as an old-enough-to-know-better British bloke proudly declaims lines like “motherfucker, where is my bread / you’ll get it off my eyes when I’m dead”, and “my name is Herbert Hunke / poet bum, majestic junkie”. As you could probably have guessed, I can stomach it just fine.

Diehard indie-poppers wondering why they’re being subjected to this rubbish though need only flip the disc to be soothed by “No Spotlite on Sometimes”, latest in a long and beautiful line of defiant/despairing Gain-ballads, guitar jangle glowing & fizzing out like cigarettes thrown into the 3AM ocean in slo-mo; sobering sea breeze on your face. Another lament for chances blown, dying romance, fading stars, rendered with a force that can claw these things back from cliché, from fiction back into reality, the way that only this band can (even if that’s the opposite of what they managed to achieve on the A-side). “Some whisky, some old friends, some rock n’ roll disease”; “I loved you, I existed, underneath these eyes”. Heartbreaking. A welcome reminder of why we all need this band in our lives still, and why I’ll fight anyone who suggests otherwise.

This one's limited to about 300 or something I think, and seems to be available solely via Pure Groove. Beautiful sleeve, and insert full of reprocessed photographic pathos, random poetical scrawl and warped declarations etc, as per usual. An artefact worthy of anyone’s time/money.

http://www.myspace.com/thecometgain
http://www.myspace.com/germsofyouth

Cyanide Pills – Break It Up
(Damaged Goods)

A debut single’s worth of red leather & skinny jean clad punky power-pop direct from Leeds Rock City, courtesy of Damaged Goods.

I don’t have much to say about this one, except that it’s totally great!

If you like The Undertones, The Rezillos and The Adverts, you know what you’ll be getting here, and it feels good, like suddenly finding yourself pogoing in comfy slippers in some stale lager-stinking basement.

And if you don’t like The Undertones, the Rezillos and The Adverts, well… clearly I do not care to listen to your dumb-ass opinions! Scram fool, I’ve got jumpin’ and “whoa-oh-oh!”ing to do! TWO THUMBS UP for Cyanide Pills. Going to see these guys play would be a fun evening for sure – I hope I get a chance to do so at some point.

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

Electrocute – On The Beat
(Germs Of Youth)

On the same label as the Comet Gain single, with artwork by David Feck, so I thought I might as well pick it up at the same time. And so, well, uh, bloody hell! It seems this is some kind of superslick, sugar rush electroclash/big beat party song with saucy lyrics about hotpants that sounds like Bis being remixed via Beck’s Midnight Vultures! Not what I was expecting at all! Funnily enough, it features a special appearance by one Jerry Waronker, who I seem to recall was a sideman on the Beck albums…? What the hell is up with this thing? Away with you, Electrocute! Go dance into the record collection of somebody who likes The Go Team! Stop trying to make me be happy and exercise, it’s Sunday night and it’s not fucking going to work!

Against all the odds, b-side “Bad Legs” actually goes down a lot better. It’s, I dunno…. it’s shorter for one thing, and it’s punkier, with gutsier vocals and a better tune – not too bad at all really. Sounds a bit like Brassy, if you remember them. Ho hum.

http://www.myspace.com/electrocute
http://www.myspace.com/germsofyouth

Labels: Betty And The Werewolves, Cheeky Cheeky and the Nosebleeds, Comet Gain, Cyanide Pills, Electrocute, singles reviews, Songs, The Bats, The Bombettes

Bad News.

Just discovered, via XRRF, that Plan B is over:

Hi everyone,

Sadly, yes - we were preparing a nice statement to go on here for you all after telling all our contributors and contacts, but sadly the gossip machine has beat us to it. I'm sorry you've found out via hearsay.

We've come to the decision to close Plan B Magazine after the June issue after a lot of deliberation. The current economic climate, combined with the situation of the music industry - to which, whether we like it or not, the fortunes of a commercial monthly music mag are inextricably linked - has made it ever harder for us to continue producing the magazine the way we want to. To keep going, we'd need to make cuts in staff, content, size, frequency, print quality - and we're not prepared to do that. We're still above water, we're making some beautiful magazines, and we are quitting while we're ahead.

This forum has been a hugely important part of the magazine. At present, we'd like to keep it going as long as there's a will to do so, as the site will be continuing for a while. We are hoping to archive all our back issues as PDFs, and will be continuing to sell back issues for a limited period of time.

Subscribers will be refunded in due course - Richard and I will be in touch about that once the June issue has been sent out to you.

If you are a contributor and were not notified about this by email, our apologies. We tried to contact everyone today, but our mailing list messages do end up in junk mailboxes sometimes.

I'm you all have questions about this. If we can answer them, we will try to do so.

Thank you
x

*gutted*

I guess this marks the end of a near decade-long experiment in doing the unthinkable and publishing a regular, independent music magazine in which good writers write about good music that they actually like from a position based on DIY idealism, open-mindedness and inclusivity, and actually putting the damn thing on newsagents shelves at an affordable price.

Under the circumstances, I guess they did fucking well to last this long, so let's try not to get too maudlin and instead offer thanks all who contributed to keeping the magazine rolling, and keeping the quality so consistently high.

It's no secret that, ever since I randomly picked up the first issue of 'Careless Talk..' back in 2001 or 2002 (I forget the exact date), CTCL and Plan B have completely defined everything I've thought/done/aspired to as regards music writing and music culture. In addition to this, these magazines and their forums have helped introduce me to some good friends, and a wider network of solid souls, for which I am very grateful.

I haven't got the time I'd need to say much more than that at the moment unfortunately, but as Stew says in the link I'm gonna post below -- life changing stuff.

I guess in the past year or two, Plan B's collective tastes have parted ways fairly drastically from my own, but hell, that's probably just as well, who needs to read 100 pages every month about all the moaning, retrogressive three chord rock I listen to most of the time? For the record, I've still been buying every issue on the day of release and reading it cover to cover. Even recently, when there are some issues that haven't featured any bands I'm terribly interested in, there's still the work of so, so, so many fucking brilliant writers crammed in there to enjoy, not to mention photographers, and ILLUSTRATORS, for god's sake... I mean, where else am I gonna go to get a monthly fix of so many great people drawing neat pictures of things?

It breaks my heart that I'm going to be missing out on all this each month, and that anyone else who might be idly browsing the newsagent's shelves thinking "hey, that looks interesting" will be missing out on it too.

A sad day for print media, music writing and quality journalism in general, no doubt, but like I say, let's not get all grumpy. On the off chance that any Plan B staffers happen to stumble across this post - THANKS, in capitals, for the whole deal.

Some better words from...

Stew

E.T.

Labels: bad news, deathblog, Plan B

Bats!

I went to see The Bats at The Windmill last night, and they were bloody terrific.

Apparently it was the first show they’ve played in the UK for fifteen years. It’s funny; I guess there must be hundreds, nay thousands, of similarly middle-aged bands in Europe and America, all working a similar strain of low-key, Velvets-indebted guitar-pop, all with some Mojo reviewer on hand to call them ‘slow-burning’ or ‘smouldering’, all of them boring me to tears. What is it about New Zealand that allows these guys to take the same formula and make it so definitively beautiful, so fresh-faced and innocent you just wouldn’t believe they’ve been doing it for over two decades of record/tour/record etc.?

I guess The Bats are a hard sell, as a band. I can’t imagine ever playing a Bats CD for someone and expecting it to *blow their mind*. There’s nothing there on the surface that you haven’t heard a thousand times before, probably done with more noise and enthusiasm. But to us hopeless snobs, who (pity us) end up sampling indie guitar bands as if they were fine wines, delighting in the subtleties of different strumming patterns, guitar tones, minimal drum beats, understated melodies... well it doesn’t get much better than The Bats. Robert Scott introduced one song as being about “lying on your back on the grass in the winter and looking at stuff in the sky”, but he needn’t have said anything, cos that’s what the music actually sounded like. Masters at work, so to speak.

Here’s what they looked/sounded like quite a few years ago. The male members have less hair circa 2009, but aside from that they haven’t changed much:



I’ll mention that they’re playing at both the ICA and the Victoria, Mile End tonight, just on the off chance that anyone in London reads this before about 8pm this evening and exclaims “Of course! The Bats! That’s my kind of Friday night!” It’s an experience I’d heartily recommend.

I’d be tempted to finish by saying “and to think, some people listen to Crystal Stilts”, but such a gratuitous diss would seem out of keeping with this post’s positive, optimistic tone. Let’s aim higher.

And to think, some people listen to R.E.M. : P

Labels: New Zealand, The Bats, videos

Metal Funnies.

By and large, I am unable to watch youtube videos at the moment. I did though manage to transcend technological limitations for long enough to experience these two at the weekend.

As I'm sure we are all aware, Metal is a serious business. But is it not the essential disjuncture between Metal as it exists for it's noble practitioners and Metal as it relates to the wider world that frequently renders it such a joy? With such notions in mind, we lovingly present the following, without further comment:






(In fairness to the guy in the second video, he's just saying what I'm usually thinking.)

Labels: Black Sabbath, goofery, METAL, videos

You're All My Sisters.




The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – This Love is Fucking Right

I’ve been meaning to write a post reviewing the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart album for AGES. Seems like the kind of thing I should really have an opinion on, what with them being the real from-the-underground-into-the-stratosphere band of the moment, playing within a style & scene I broadly speaking enjoy. But in fact I’ve been meaning to get around writing about them for so long that the essence of what I initially wanted to say about them has changed several times over.

Seeing them play for the first time, I was kinda suspicious – what was with these young, impeccably turned out, slightly-too-perfectly-hewn Brooklyners, with their mighty, streamlined noise-pop sound, with their spare Fender Jaguars, their pedalboards for christ’s sake, ripping their aesthetic wholesale from the kind of faintly desperate, lovelorn racket trademarked by ugly, misfit British kids at the dawn of the ‘80s? What was with this guy’s weedy, reedy singing voice, being bullied by all the other instrument like he’s mimicking the kind of ‘bad’ voice that Dan Treacy and the guy from The Razorcuts used to sing in because those were the only voices they *had*, deliberately adopting it for the purposes of retrospective scene identification?

They were an enjoyable band on stage, no doubt; really loud, with all the right bits in the right places. But I found it odd how they seemed to have immediately assumed deity status amongst the indie-pop cognoscenti before their first album was even on the shelves, with practically every one of their available songs being DJed in turn to rapturous response on every conceivable occasion. The kind of natural GROUNDSWELL that major label pluggers probably do not even dare to dream of these days. And I mean, they’re pretty, and they do all the stuff that’s currently indie-trendy, and they don’t even sound weird, man! Squint your ears a bit in the right/wrong direction and they could even sound a bit like The Smashing Pumpkins, without that whining bald guy getting in the way. These guys could be BIG.

Needless to say, it was during one of my periodic retreats to the Welsh hills that the tables turned, when I downloaded a leak of The Pains album on a whim and stuck in my earphones to go for a nice long walk. BOY, is it an album. Outside the city, far from any music scene backbiting, my above reservations started to seem like the petty, snidey, insular bitching they undoubtedly are. Fuck ‘indie-pop’; what I was listening to as I barrelled down Welsh country lanes was rock n’ roll the way the Velvets rewired it forty years ago: the drummer plays simple stuff real enthusiastic, the organist holds down big, single chords and lets them ring, the bass doubles back on itself in sweet melodic patterns, and the guitars go FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF, covering everything like a happy rainstorm. The recording is huge, with everything amped up, filed down and maximised to digital-age, killer proportions, the chord changes are lovely, the songs are heartfelt and the lyrics are memorable and smart. What’s not to love?

My friend and I spoke briefly to the guy from The Pains at one of their gigs, and he seems like a really sweet, modest sort of fellow. I’m sure his band didn’t MEAN to make a Battle-Album. I think they’re just careful, ambitious, and very good at what they do. But nonetheless, they have made a Battle-Album. In one fell swoop, they manage to out-twee the neo-indiepoppers, to out-Superchunk the neo-indie rockers, and even to out-‘Gaze the neo-shoegazers on the longer tracks, with their motorik rhythmic drive and luxurious layered distortion. Within their designated sphere, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart are kings of the castle. If you’re into any of this kinda stuff, they are henceforth the band to beat.

Ok, so they’re good. We are PRO- them. That’s terrific, but so what? Lots of people are *good*, but I didn’t think this album really had it in it to properly move me or anything, with all my strange, unguessable musical moodswings. So, phase # 3 was instigated by “This Love Is Fucking Right”.

Jesus christ. I could carry on about this band and their place in the current scheme of things until I’m blue in the face, but this here? THIS is a fucking song.

This is their ‘September Gurls’. I’m not saying it’s that good (nothing is), but…

Like ‘September Gurls’, you’d be hard pressed to catch more than more than a few fragments of the lyrics on a first listen, and they perhaps don’t seem to add up to anything terribly coherent, but you’d be a fucking moron if you didn’t instantly grasp the totality of what this song’s, y’know, ABOUT. Hint: it’s not about incest. It’s all in the way half-heard phrases, ghosts of what was originally on the lyric sheet, combine with the power of the music to torpedo into whatever the hell place your emotional impulses come from, to make new shapes, like fireworks and stuff, to get the point across.

Also like ‘September Gurls’, this song has a perfectly positioned lead guitar overdub that just cleaves the sky in two, saying more in ten seconds than ten minutes of huffy-puffy folky storytelling could.

And like ‘September Gurls’, this song is a gateway drug, a key to the rest of the album, leading you to reassess the merits of ‘Young Adult Friction’, of ‘Come Saturday’ and ‘Stay Alive’ (and today I think the Vaselines-y 'Hey Paul' is by far my favourite), subsequently finding them all just as powerfully realised as the key-song, pieces of a puzzle that threatens to spell out Classic Album, whether you like it or not. Cos after a while, if you listen to it loud enough, the whole of this Pains album will smash your face and rip your heart at least half as thoroughly as the Big Star ones did. I recommend listening to it with the bass up a lot, the treble down a bit.

Most of all though, most importantly, and UNLIKE ‘September Gurls’, (which found it’s initial audience largely among lonely record geeks and ‘70s fanzine scribes), ‘This Love Is Fucking Right’ just makes me think of the dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of people who are going to have this song, and the other Pains songs, and whatever joyous, confusing, bittersweet, frightening, unreal memories they each surgically attach to them, sewn into their recollections of this summer, or last summer, last winter, tomorrow or right now, or at a retro night in 2030, stuck to them forever as they blast from sound systems yet unknown, making life like a movie in the midst of heat haze and sunsets and warmth and streets and fields, fuel to human feeling and hope and folly and momentary love frozen forever.

Man, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart are fucking RIGHT! And so am I, and so are you, and love is always right.

Labels: album reviews, song reviews, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, WOW BIG STAR COMPARISONS

Earth to Gordon Waller: WTF?


Peter and Gordon (right) stepping out, in happier times..?


Gordon Waller – Rosencrans Boulevard

A total curveball, this song unexpectedly leapt out at me from the end of side # 2 of the utterly excellent second volume of the Rubble compilation series (“Pop-Sike Pipe Dreams”), as I was hanging some pictures in my new room.

For whatever reason, I’ve never paid much attention to it on previous spins of the LP, trapped as it is sounding rather square amid a giddy wealth of fuzz guitar madness and dead-cert freakbeat gear, but... my god. What an extraordinary, inexplicable, misguided pop venture it is, carelessly splitting the difference between “audacious” and “utterly fucking insane”.

A few seconds intensive research reveals that Gordon Waller was one half of Beatles-affiliated lightweight pop duo Peter & Gordon, who disbanded in 1968. According to Wikipedia:

“Afterwards, Waller attempted a solo career with little success, releasing one record, ‘..and Gordon’. On this album Gordon used New York based group White Cloud featuring Teddy Wender on keyboards. He also appeared in a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat as Pharaoh, a performance that he reprised on the LP.”

None of which really does a lot to prepare one for ‘Rosencrans Boulevard’.

Point one is: were it not on a compilation CD of British stuff, I’d never have guessed this track had originated anywhere except from the cosmic pop wonderland of late ‘60s LA, and indeed I would be extremely surprised if it was recorded in the UK. The song opens with a swell of symphonic/mariarchi bombast worthy of a Jimmy Webb production, which is appropriate, as a swift search on AMG reveals that it is indeed a Jimmy Webb composition, although apparently not one he ever managed to turn into a hit. So, given the presence of his trademark sound, I’m assuming he arranged/produced this version of it too, although Waller's rendition doesn’t merit an entry on AMG, or in Wikipedia’s list of Webb songs.

This is a shame in a sense – I think I liked the song better back when I thought it was some absolutely bugfuck English imitation of a Jimmy Webb record, strung out as the whole thing is with an inexplicable vibe of slightly scrappy Tin Pan Alley lunacy, of some doomed pop svengali’s celestial ambitions going waaaaaay overboard, crashing like an upturned salad bowl in the midst of a record label buffet.

It’s not surprising it wasn’t a hit. The song’s various distinct sections stack up with no apparent rhyme nor reason, none of them offering much in the way of a pleasing melody, central theme or connecting framework, whilst the mood remains desperate, decadent and somewhat hysterical throughout. Even these days, you couldn’t work this one onto one of those kitsch-cool ‘60s crooner dinner party albums – it would just bum everybody the fuck out. The damn thing’s got no tune! A headscratcher for sure, ‘Rosencranz Boulevard’ seems less of an attempt to score a hit, more like some natural, unstoppable outpouring of… something.

After a few seconds of unmistakable Webbery by way of introduction, the song swiftly gives way to a kind of epic Americana travelogue reminiscent of Van Dyke Parks ‘Song Cycle’, until our protagonist finds himself drawn to Hollywood, grounded on the titular Boulevard, propelled by fate into the midst of a doomed relationship with some spectacular, yet no doubt fatally flawed and ultimately unworthy, female.

“You know I never loved her anyway, I just used her over and over”, confesses Waller in portentous, Walker-like tones, before a swift change of pace hits, stabbing strings plunging us into an arena of overwrought metaphysical hysteria worthy of ‘Scott 4’, as Gordon is wracked with guilt regarding his unsatisfactory conduct in this tempestuous liaison.

Naturally, the only thing to follow that with is a car chase, so here we go: “the girl was half crazy, the way she drove her little car”, “doing ninety in a thirty mile zone!” “And she blamed me when she got a ticket”, Gordon adds wistfully, the drama concluded.

So far, pretty fucking breathtaking actually, but it’s only then, in the song’s concluding act, that the genius/madness barricades are thoroughly breached, as Gordon recalls that “she was a stewardess, you know”, “shot down on a non-combatant mission!” For a second, I thought that might be some kind of sly Leonard Cohen-esque double entendre, but I think Jimmy & Gordon actually mean it literally, gratuitously raising the spectre of Vietnam whilst they’re about it.

Music swells to an apocalyptic crescendo, as we leave our hero, wracked with confusion, driving drunk down Rosencrans Boulevard, asking “why did I do it??”, before disappearing forever into a compressed panorama of America reduced to a chintzy recording studio funfair, never to be heard from again.

Total running time: 2 minutes 44. Take that, ‘Macarthur Park’!

Do you think perhaps if someone had just thought to approach Jimmy Webb or Gordon Waller or whoever else was at the controls here, to ask “do you want to talk about it?”, we wouldn’t have this song?

Hooray for emotional repression and it’s deranged artistic consequences.

Labels: 1960s, Gordon Waller, Jimmy Webb, pop, song reviews

Kicks in Space!



The Homosexuals – Neutron Girl

When I recently acquired (ok, downloaded) the ‘Astral Glamour’ 3CD anthology of stuff by post-punk obscurist faves The Homosexuals, I was kinda expecting to hear a lot of serious-minded, sharp-edged, politicised stomp n’ clatter and muscular power trio rock. And indeed, there is much of that to enjoy. But there is also, to my delight, a scattering of the bestest, craziest new wave era weird-pop gems I’ve ever heard, this song being a case in point.

To a certain extent, it sounds like a conscious parody of The Buzzcocks – hopefully a dignified homage rather than a vicious pisstake – with some of the inspired chaos of Swell Maps thrown in for luck. A fine combination. I’ve listened to this song on my way into work every day this week, and it’s never failed to put a spring in my step. I think the bit where the singer yelps “like robots falling over….. in their hungry quest for love!” is perhaps a moment that encapsulates everything I love about homemade pop music and geeky punk rock.

If Grant of The Guild of Scientific Troubadours happens to be reading, I recommend this one to him as a classic, if somewhat comical, example of what we might call the ‘science/love crossover/metaphor vocab song’ sub-genre.

“Kicks in space... Your singularity stopped my watch!”

I know I have about 8,000 favourite songs, but this is one of them.

Labels: post punk, song reviews, The Homosexuals