December 2010
49 posts
Crushed Butler – “It’s My Life” b/w “My Son's...
This is more like it. Authorized cherry-picks of two excellent proto-metal stompers recorded in 1970. This is one of the few original hard-boogie bands touted as “proto-metal” or “heavy” who are really metallic and shockingly heavy for the time. The a-side plows along at such a velocity that it qualifies as proto-punk and erases every single minute the MC5 committed to record. Highly...
Family Trees – Dream Talkin 7” EP...
So another three or four friends get together, reach rudimentary competence on their respective instruments, and learn how to string a few melodies together that sound like doo-wop or late ‘60s non-orchestrated lounge-pop. Congratulations, you are now an official member of the Sad-Is-Bad movement. This EP has a track titled “Baby Come Back”; it’s a totally different (and less memorable) endeavor...
Gold-Bears – Tally 7” EP (Magic Marker)
Once again, the universe intervenes and halts my possible removal from this mortal coil via my own hand. Why would I do this? Well, one reason would be a succession of 7”s that sucks away my faith in the current state of whatever it is I do this for in the first place. Remove the animal reference from this band’s name, and this EP would be flawless, relative to what it is trying to accomplish....
Maus Haus – “Winter” b/w “Zig Zag” 7” (Rocinante)
Is this why Pram, Piano Magic, Broadcast and Stereolab records are still gathering coin? “Winter” is a male-sung amalgam of all four of those bands, and a good one at that. Wait for the powerful hook at the end and you’ll be awarded accordingly. “Zig Zag” is problematic. The indie-prog of such overbearing quirk-enthusiasts like Man Man and Islands is added to the dialed-down mix...
Meercaz – “Never Too Late To Learn” b/w...
The universe seems to know when I’ve heard enough shitty 7”s. The universe can sense when I’m reaching for a vial of cyanide or about to drive to Home Depot for some garden hose and duct tape. So it secretly rearranges the stack of records so that a record like this is next in queue. This falls into the ruined genre of today’s garage-rock, but feels like (this fact alone should garner mention …...
Off! – s/t 7” EP (Vice)
Off! is Keith Morris’ new band. Or rather, it’s a super-group with Keith Morris in the vocalist slot. Drummer Mario Rubalcaba is late of Hot Snakes (and currently plays in Earthless), bassist Steven McDonald is the Steven McDonald of Red Kross fame, and Dimitri Coats, he of The Burning Brides and perpetual behind-the-scenes hustling about. This 7” is one of four that make up an entire album, on...
Secret Message Machine – Orphanville LP...
Singer-songwriter Michael Barrett has made a record here that deserves a far wider audience than it’ll likely receive. He writes in a contemplative, poppy style that somewhat recalls Robyn Hitchcock and Robert Pollard in leveled-off spoonfuls. Orphanville is his third album, and while it’s far from a perfect record, it is balanced like you’d hope it might be, with the best songs (also some of...
Shane Lobotomy – “I Can’t Help Myself” b/w “The...
This is kind of similar to when a guy wears flip-flops outside of the house. I just want to run up and whisper “Others can see you” much in the same way I want to scream “Others can hear you!” at this guy, whose stupid performing moniker I refuse to acknowledge. Or how about: “You know people have heard Jay Reatard’s music before, right?” Tribute is one thing; plagiarism is another, and...
Testors – Two Sides of Death 7” (Windian)
Couple of live tracks from 1978 by Sonny Vincent and his crew of fuck-ups, who, at this juncture could be seen as an American answer to The Only Ones … sort of. The recordings here are so poor that the point comes into question…the lack of fidelity not only removes any dynamics whatsoever, it makes it nearly impossible to tell what the hell is happening. Both songs are good if not great...
The Union Electric – “Thylacine” b/w “Bugs” 7”...
When alt-country was popping off fifteen years ago, this is what I wished, and have always wished, it sounded like. Instead, it sounded like what it was: First wave indie-rockers getting old too quick and providing the ‘90s version of bland college rock in the form of blatant slumming. The crap seems to be making a tepid comeback in the form of 20-member tedium-fests disguised as review-style...
Adult Themes – “Four Fires” b/w “Young Bodies” 7”...
This side-project of thinking-person’s avant-hardcore combo Graphic Violence digs in like ankle-herpes. Nothing in that sentence exists. I like this band’s moniker because it IS a direct reference to something a particular age group remembers from the loose childhood and teen years punctuated by the weekly delivery or arrival of the cable TV guide. I never knew what “Adult Themes” meant. I know...
Crazy Spirit – s/t 7” EP (Toxic State)
This one is empirically the best single on top of the recent punk pile over here, and might win out the year. Young rawpunx from NYC trudge away across six songs of wild, septic HC and drawn-out underage boozehound stomp, with lyrical content leaning towards the gory, fleshy rot of death metal. Speeds up, slows down, but the fury never wavers. Some have argued that they are a hair’s breadth away...
Dead Meat – s/t 7” EP (Flingco)
This will be a positive review, perhaps even one of the more positive reviews I’ve written this year. I wish each one of these songs was over 15 minutes long … I need this in full album form and not a damn thing has to change (except, you know…). Compatible with this concept is the weird fact that each track fades out at the end in an almost abrupt manner, exposing each as a longer concern but...
Dimples – “Heaven Blotted Regions” b/w “I Can Feel...
Earlier this year I received a package that contained Dimples’ debut LP, Council Bluffs, along with the Silkworm-ish soul-tug Devices + Emblems LP by the fantastic Tre Orsi. The latter knocked me sideways for weeks, thus overshadowing Council Bluffs, a record that has been awarded exactly two full listens. There’s no denying I was hearing something of possible interest, but that didn’t keep it...
For Ex-Lovers Only – Coffin 7” EP (Magic Marker)
I really want to like No Age more than I do, but it’s their fault for following “Teen Creeps” with what appears to be a terminal water-tread a few quality-notches below that watershed moment. For Ex-Lovers Only isn’t going to fix my money woes, buy me a 1996 Toyota 4-Runner with low miles, or write me a can’t-lose book proposal, but they are going to fill that space in between “Teen Creeps” and...
Giant Princess – Zip Zop Wow LP (self-released)
I think we can all agree that bands with outsized hearts/lungs/senses of drama, like Modest Mouse and the Paper Chase and the Walkmen, all actually exist, no? And that each band has grown from one point to where they are now, right? Other than having fun with that sorta sloppy, drunken, agonizingly emotional/cathartic rock sound (and might I add, not dressed as well, or nearly as smart or funny...
Super Wild Horses – “Enigma (You Say Go)” b/w...
I am not hearing this. Is there an impresario in the house? Seriously, can I get a svengali over here, stat?! One seemingly inherent and terminal flaw with the topical infestation of history-allergic bands/artists like this one is the affinity for subtraction rather than addition. Yet with this ill-advised venture, it seems so much reduction took place that this 7” is but a handful of dinners...
Tooth Ache – “Skin” b/w “Lazarus” 7”...
So this just so happened to be the next 7” spinning after Super Wild Horsemen of the Culturapocalypse had me planning to climb the nearest water tower with a high-powered rifle. Tooth Ache (a/k/a Alexandria Hall) is the rare instance when the gears turn in the increasingly populist underground and out spits a modern day rarity. Hall plays sea-sick keyboards and sings like a tiny whale, two...
Whatever Brains – Rapper’s Delight II 7” EP (Sorry...
Third single from these Carolina caterwaulers, largely dialing back the panoramic ambitions of the last few records (and a CD-R, Trim Jeans, which really should have netted these kids some sort of deal or recognition) in favor of a jagged and dissonant approach with close roots to ‘90s sheet metal cutters like Trumans Water or Slug. “What Makes a Man Make What Makes a Man Start Fires” might...
XBXRX – O 7” EP (Polyvinyl)
The world would be a shittier place had XBXRX never booked that first tour in 1999, leaving Mobile, Alabama in someone’s mom’s van and blowing minds through the backs of heads all over the country. I was lucky enough to see one of the first shows on said tour, my town of Memphis resting one long state’s length from their home. I was joined by what couldn’t have been more than five other standing...
Black Math – Phantom Power LP (Permanent)
Listening to Black Math makes me think how hard the recession has hit Chicago, and how the collective belt-tightening of the average American city, in response to being fucked over by the market, really put the screws to much of the creative energy a place like the Second City once possessed. Much like the law students of the past few years, who are allegedly condemned from working at any...
Daily Life – Necessary and Pathetic LP (Load)
Load’s entry into the synth/wave market, Daily Life, has all the trappings of your average Load artist; namely, some manner of extremity, either lyrical or musical, that pushes things beyond an acceptable social limit. Hell, even Astoveboat, with their comically large drum and shortwave radio, turned talk of whaling into some sort of man-to-man erotic art. Daily Life takes a more literal...
DC Snipers – s/t LP (Daggerman)
I’ll be the first to admit that this review is late. You don’t need to remind me that this record came out a long time ago, and the band was long broken up even before that. But given all that time, isn’t the perspective worth the wait? Haven’t I said this before? Is anyone out there already doing heavy field-level analysis of the cultural products present in, like, 2008? Won’t it be...
The Love Triangle – Splendid Living 7” EP (Dire)
Five years into covering most of the records that get sent in over here (and acknowledging those that are given to my contributors), a garage/punk/spazz single such as this would have to be pretty exceptional to win me over. But the Love Triangle showed up when making this record, cranking three songs out in under five minutes that sound as if they were playing inside a burning building. Take...
The Soft Moon – s/t LP (Captured Tracks)
Our own Bob Claymore recently proffered an unreasonable level of disgust over one of the Soft Moon’s singles because the artist chose to whisper his lyrics. Was it that much of an issue? I decided to find out myself. The handiwork of one Luis Vasquez, a desert dweller with an alleged punk background and a serious case of bedroom gothitis, I’ve come to the conclusion that, yes, when appropriate,...
Blank Realm – Deja What? LP (Bedroom Suck)
These Australians made a bit of an impression with their first album, Heatless Ark, but that’s squandered here. Deja What? clearly demarcates the line between improvisation and simply making shit up, and any of the subtlety and drama built up on their past effort is severely diminished here – the surprises have been usurped by monotony, and it sounds as if they’re playing under fluorescent...
Brown Angel – s/t LP (Thunderhaus)
Seven horrifying eruptions of sexless, glacial metal punishment from Pittsburgh. Most of the older buildings in that city have a toilet in the basement – just a toilet, not a full bathroom – and the music of Brown Angel sounds as if it seeped out of one of those, coated the concrete floor in three feet of muck, ate your pet and climbed up your stairs; by the time you come home from work, your...
Circuit Des Yeux – Ode to Fidelity 7” EP (Destijl)
The title here cuts both ways, and for the most part leaves the lilting confusion of Haley Fohr’s project behind – someone’s in love with being in love, or wants to rethink her stance on recording. Perhaps both: “Barrel Down” and “Self Satisfaction” play like CDY’s most straightforward efforts to date, the former a long, dirgelike march towards nowhere, dyed black with operatic vocals and oozing...
Drink to Victory – Health 7” EP (Paperstain)
Denton, TX lugnuts munch their way through five greasy cuts of Amrep style noise rock with bellowed, belching vocals. Intriguing package here (black, foil-printed envelope with Bible-style vellum lyric sheet) but they might as well have left a bird shit inside this thing, which woulda been third-stringin’ in 1989, and now just sounds a bit inexcusable. There’s some exceptionally gross lyrics on...
Hank IV – III LP (Siltbreeze)
Things to like right away about the new Hank IV album: it’s not got the ugliest looking sleeve of the decade (last one might have beat out Sweet Sixteen by Royal Trux), and it doesn’t say “HIV” on the cover. Open it up, slap it on, and another thing happens – you start to hear this band of 40-something punk/DIY vets (Icky Boyfriends, etc.) hitting their stride, getting meaner and stronger, more...
Adrenalin O.D. – The Wacky Hi-Jinks of … Adrenalin...
Exact reissue of this ’84 New Jersey hardcore milestone. For as lighthearted and jokey as AOD could get (come on, a song about a bad deal on a car is about as suburban as you can get, only to be topped by someone calling the singer and getting his mom on the phone), the level of intensity here is pretty goddamn high … then again we’re dealing with, like, 2nd gen hardcore here, and the speed and...
Boomgates – “Bright Idea” b/w “Cameo” 7” (R.I.P....
Catchy lil sunshine popster from down under, and a sign of stretching out for vocalist Brendan Suppression, here manning both sides on a brief respite from such a hard life fronting Eddy Current Suppression Ring. Of the two, I’m more taken by “Cameo,” an occasionally perfect little song that sounds like something which might have fallen out of the Verlaines or 3Ds songbook way back when, with a...
Brainwashed Youth – The Trilogy 7” EP (Richie)
Three dicks, out and proud, not touching each other, makes up the only trilogy I can discern from this latest cheese fart out of Cleveland. Buncha dudes from a buncha bands (Inmates, Cider, H-100s, etc) get real loose with the punk and UK snotlocker affectations and try to hooligan around, making fun of commitment, Jamaicans, the Police … you name it … actually, don’t. Dudes playing guitar and...
AG Davis/Jamison Williams – “May 6. 1937” 7”...
These kids sent a nastygram to a colleague of mine the other day, eagerly awaiting my own after this one runs – though to be fair, like said colleague, I like this one too. Davis and Williams are from somewhere in Florida and abuse an alto sax, electronics and the human voice in avant-entertaining ways, either by simulating an alarm clock with reed skronk, or by yelling unintelligible epithets...
Deskonocidos – En La Oscuridad LP (Todo...
Spanish-language punk/goth downers from Austin, TX, rockin’ in fine cause with grit, fury and determination. En La Oscuridad has the screamin’ vocals you’d expect from the punk/HC community they inhabit, but also plenty of flange pedal and ominous chord phrasing, running for the mid-tempo brooding of barely-hidden Bob Smith fandom employed by stressed out, desperate-sounding bands in a lineage...
The Eat – “Communist Radio” b/w “Catholic Love” 7”...
I suppose after all this time, some people really do need a review of this one, a legend in the punk canon, the kind of record that makes the palms of men grow damp with fervor. It’s also part of Last Laugh’s exact reissue series, one of the nicest discoveries of vinyl present – pitch-perfect reproductions of records you might have to take out a second mortgage to own an original of, if you even...
Frontier(s) – “The Plains” b/w “Radiomine” 7” (No...
Take out the weighty U2 influence, and this could have been recorded at any juncture since 1993 or 1994, and clearly comes from minds that both grew through and contributed to the catchier, non-dumbass camps within the Revelation and Jade Tree camps. And the players (members of Elliott, Falling Forward, Mouthpiece and Stay Gold) have been around for a lifetime of emo, screamo, and sXe...
Makeout Videotape – “Thought I Was In Love” b/w...
First off: fuckfaces, when you offer a “6 song song digital download” that is (allegedly) included with your product, here’s a friendly tip: ACTUALLY INCLUDE THE FUCKING THING. If I had paid seven clams to these Canuck crooks and didn’t get the goddamn digital download code for their inferior product, I’d take off time from my day job (custodial), go to their house,...
Pigeons – Visions of the Valley 7” (Soft Abuse)
Would the ability to write golden pop hooks elevate one from the dangerous, suicidal clutches of living with “But I Love You Like a Brother!” syndrome (the less common Older Ponytailed Dude strain)? When I hear records like this one, I wonder if that madman in Best Coast (Bobb with two B’s) had a casting couch for the role of front-woman, and this gal didn’t make the cut because no one has pipes...
Robedoor – Pacific Drift 7” EP (Not Not Fun)
Did I just listen to the beginning of a song for three, maybe four, minutes, only to have it “end” with my needle lifting? Yes, and it’s also known as the title track. Side B has two disparate chunks of reverb & wah-pedal & pounded quasi-jazz-cave drums appreciation sessions, both surgically removed from that jam….wait….what night was that? Oh yeah, Zach hung the upside-down cross on the...
Seamonster – Two Birds 7” EP (Gold Robot/Martyrs...
One man, in this case Mr. Adrian Todd Webb, played everything the listener hears on all five tracks of this EP. Therefore, he had five chances to win the hook sweepstakes, and he does on the third track, but then the remaining two songs end up with the first two, with an effortless toss into that place where one would get hit by a car if we were talking reality rather than the popular idea of...
Sky Needle – Time Hammer 7” EP (self-released)
Aussie weirdos haunted by Silver Apples, Shadow Ring, Sun City Girls and human flatulence, the inappropriately-named Sky Needle is not heavy at all. Probably done with indigenous or homemade instruments, Time Hammer is three tracks that loosely share the glue of ramshackle rhythm. The song titles were cut out and glued to the generic white labels, but the cover appears to be a notably expensive...
The Soft Moon – “Breathe the Fire” b/w “Phantoms”...
You know that current trend of reverby vocals over a vaguely 80’s claptrap that has been all over the place lately because the world is a mean and horrible place? The Soft Moon isn’t like that; on the A side, instead of singing over the clanging, repetitious drone, whoever vocalizes for Soft Moon whispers. If America can invade Vietnam based on pretending we had a torpedo shot at a...
Circle Pit – Bruise Constellation LP (Siltbreeze)
Two kids (and three others) from 7000 miles away try their hand at understanding American underground rock, of the sleaze/heroin/hard luck white blooze variety. Circle Pit had a decent single a year or two back, and for their first full-length, they build up an interesting, if wholly unoriginal repertoire of sounds, an Australian pop/alt influence clearly creeping in among the sleaze. Jack...
Dikes of Holland – s/t LP (Sundae)
“Keep Austin Weird,” huh? Dikes of Holland might be doing exactly that, on a debut album that cuts a left-field party/garage rock influence across a number of possible outcomes, all of which are interesting and relevant to a time-machine-centric approach wherein we roll back the calendar to the mid-‘80s and start over. For the most part this is a pretty loud rocker from start to finish, full of...
Mrs. Magician – “There Is No God” b/w “I’m Gonna...
Haven’t gotten in anything this shitty in a while. Really lazy, reverb-afflicted pop from people who have likely seen records and bands before and decided to make their own. Simple, 5th grade rhyming structures (line up “die” with “cry” one more time, see what happens), sloppy musicianship, poor mixing (drums too far in the back) … they even fell for that whole punch-out 45 hole that United is...
Pissed Jeans – Your Life is Worth Pissed Jeans 7”...
Two new ones from the most divisive band on Sub Pop next to CocoRosie, or maybe that new signing with that dicknozzle from Man Man. There are people out there who just wanna pick poor Pissed Jeans apart – people who don’t know or care about anything but their own immediate gratification. Does watching a shirtless man writhing around against a mic stand like a stripper on a pole really upset that...
Ranil – Ranil’s Jungle Party LP (Mass Tropicas)
First release from a new American label dedicated to unearthing the legacy of Peruvian music, here showcasing the self-produced and altogether DIY sounds of guitarist Ranil. Light on the vocals and heavy on the electric twang, Ranil rips through a clean, sunny, well-mannered tone that balances somewhere in between surf guitar, African highlife and salsa (the rhythms, singing and lyrics put these...
