March 2010
32 posts
Amber Alerts – Antibodies 7” EP (Sweet Rot)
Non-programmable drum machine with speed variance providing a back-beat for a non-programmable talent that assigns a great deal of importance to the apparent life-choices made to insure each track moves with its own tempo. Jumpy. Shuffling. Plodding. Records like this are always a shame. Not that there’s a real effort made to push this chosen sound – demented childlike warble treatment given to...
Blue Sabbath Black Cheer & Nihilist Assault Group...
I get it. For some reason, an obsolete future is not a hard vision to form in relation to either of these outfits, or for that matter, anyone within their secret-handshake club. Now, a little harder to swallow is the idea that either is actually prepared or totally enthused about total and terminal obsolescence at some juncture on down the road. They may be happy, lifting a finger to entertain...
Fucked Up – “Couple Tracks” b/w “Heir Apparent” 7”...
Backlashes can be very infuriating, namely the type of backlash that has no dynamic aside from herd-mentality, “hate ‘em cuz I’m supposed to” bullshit. Fucked Up has weathered a lot of that over the past two-three years. They’ve followed natural creative restlessness into territories that your garden variety hardcore ham ‘n’ egger doesn’t understand, and when dipshits don’t understand something,...
Desperate Bicycles – Singles LP (Non-Profit)
Congratulations to whoever made this MP3-sourced, minimally-appointed bootleg of the Desperate Bicycles/Evening Outs singles: at some point in the future, provided you are still alive, Nicky Stephens will punch you in the face. It’s a bold move, less egalitarian than the CD-R/digital files that have been passed around since the early ‘00s, but don’t let it obscure the fact that Stephens’ fist is...
Funerot – And Then You Fucking Die, Man LP...
I handed this to my pal Ronnie the last time we DJed. Drunkenly, he took a look at the back cover, and asked me when this band existed. When he learned the answer was “right now,” his face kind of fell. Had he been duped? They certainly looked the part, as the monochromatic band photo on back shows four hesher looking guys, two longhairs, one beardo wearing a Dario Argento shirt, and a bassist,...
Lamps – “Niels Bohr Was an Excellent Ping Pong...
Since these song titles are longer than the bodies of some reviews altogether, this will be brief. Lamps play a log-splitting strain of noisy rock, informed by garagelike/Pussy Galore-style pounding that sounds at once lumbering and complete, against songs that are forced into very basic composition by the weight of the noise itself. It could also be that these guys aren’t really adept...
Pantha du Prince – The Splendour 12” EP (Rough...
The opening offering from Hendrik Weber’s latest Pantha du Prince album has me completely jacked to hear the rest. I was brought under this German’s spell on his last long player This Bliss, which was highly rated by the Panda Bear guy. That album was full of propulsive, ticking warmth and got a lot of spins when mood uplift was the desired goal. “The Splendour” starts off with these familiar...
Andrew Pekler – Entanglements in the Orthopedic...
With filename track titles like “Rough Cut Strings Reversed,” “Yafi Loop,” and “Short Circuit with Wind,” one is tempted to dismiss Pekler’s latest as a pedantic click-n-cut exercise, lost in time. To do so would be to miss out on an exquisitely modern snapshot of Berlin blip-concrète. The record is constructed from unused tidbits in Pekler’s archive (which, judging from the depth here, is an...
Voice of the Seven Thunders – “The Burning...
Rick Tomlinson is one hell of a folk guitarist, and since those early Voice of the Seven Woods records got a little lost in the wake of guys like Jack Rose and James Blackshaw, he turned his gaze to the electric, kicking in an Eastern influence with muscular studio-honed hustle. It was captivating, but for some reason it sort of felt like you might hear one of these songs in a spy movie; an...
Airfix Kits – “Playing Both Sides” b/w “Leaving”...
Two songs of wound-up, punky pop with a few unfinished edges from this Bay Area trio (ex-Giant Haystacks). Vocals here are the weak link, but their plaintive, hoarse use here, backed by their springloaded, slightly mod-ish delivery makes it seem like a modern update on Empire’s big, meaningful riffs for kids who’ve been bombed out of their minds on TV and the Internet since they’ve been born....
Broken Water – Whet LP (Night-People)
Built from the ruins of OlyWa outfit Sisters (sounds like the screaming guy is gone), Broken Water retains the services of psychopharmacological image consultants to an ideal of indie rock once owned by fashionplate Sonic Youth or chainsmoking Unwound, right down to the vocals. If you ever heard Sisters, you probably came in expecting this, a band from Olympia, picking up the torch of the burly,...
Brute Heart – Brass Beads LP (self-released)
Superb first outing from this Minneapolis trio, all ladies, playing within the confines of bass, viola both plucked and bowed, and drums, with what sounds like a little bit of organ in there now and again. Like White Magic and Grass Widow, the only modern groups in the punk/DIY circuit with whom Brute Heart has much in common, their music benefits from determination and practice, and the band...
Centipede E’est – “Metal Moon” b/w “Owl’s Nest” 7”...
Pittsburgh’s most musically expressive rock band goes back out on the road, with this single and a forthcoming vinyl album on the horizon. “Metal Moon” bounces along on a galumphing country beat and the sort of evil-tinged bar rock you might have expected. Personally I find these guys the most interesting when they abandon any semblance of rock/roll completely and go off on bizarre...
Deviation Social – Compilation Tracks 1982-1985...
As Deviation Social, a tape-based dark experimental project from the salad days of tape-based dark experimental musics, creator Arshile Injeyan was living his art – his story, partially told in the booklet for From Beginning to End, alludes to crime and drug abuse cutting his activities short. It’s reflected in his releases, which weren’t limited to music (excerpts from print matter and photo...
Andre Ethier – s/t 12” EP (Les Disques Steak)
More people need to hear Andre Ethier, former Deadly Snake frontliner and current purveyor of songcraft well above and beyond any solo artist I can think of right now. If you’ve looked at this place before, you already have an idea of what I think about this guy and his skills. This EP collects a pair of songs from both of his past two CD-only albums, On Blue Fog and Born of Blue Fog,...
Jerusalem and the Starbaskets – “Room 8” b/w...
Back after a knockout album and a half, the Missouri duo Jerusalem & the Starbaskets bash away at two more tweedy, reedy slices of American rock, shot through with the distortion and overmodulated recording styles of these days. It’d be somewhat curious to hear these songs without the burden of lo-fi, because they’ve already proven themselves to be strong songwriters and shouldn’t have to...
Junkers – s/t 7” EP (Genpop)
Trippy-dip longhairs splitting time between Philly and Baltimore. Junkers play fun, goofy paisley garage jangle, with little pretense – they avoid the uncircumcised tackiness of most of today’s gumflappers, instead going for the traditional, bluesy sort of band that might have played at Shout some Sunday night, the kind you might read about decades post-fact in Ugly Things. They have more in...
Kito-Mizukumi Rouber – Otonaki Touge De Hagureta...
Tom Lax said this was his favorite album of 2009, so I’m sure that those of you who, like, needed to know, found out already. Japanese free-rock arm flail that is preeeeeeetty impressive in that they’re completely disorganized sounding and then right on top of it all the same. I couldn’t begin to tell you what the fuck was going on until I put headphones on and played this one again. Without...
Rope – “Montagne” b/w “I Can’t Pretend to...
NYC rock in name and deed, driving and electrified, bright and just a little dirty, with a sound that could have come from any point from the opening of CBGB onward. “Montagne” rides a persistent, upbeat drum lockdown across the nighttime party horizon, chilly and racing past with cleanly sung vocals, electric violin scratch and solid guitar riffage (courtesy of Zachary Cale and Federale’s John...
Rot Shit – You’re Welcome 7” EP (Columbus...
Look, we like to play around here a little bit at Still Single, and occasionally our targets get kind of mad. Let this Rot Shit review stand: we don’t necessarily agree with the sentiments these three songs spill all over your floor, and an endorsement of their music removes itself from overall agreement for the band, their words and actions.. To wit: “2009, punk’s finally dead/Mike Sniper shot...
Shake Shake Bolino – “Don’t Lose Your Friends” b/w...
It’s kind of incredible how many Beach Dogs we got going these days, and you can usually spot them from far away: if the band has a picture of the beach or surf anywhere on their record, they’re completely down; out of the cabanas, as it were. France’s Shake Shake Bolino is no exception: a rickety recording, clean reverberated guitars, and a plodding stomp of a rhythm grace “Don’t Lose Your...
Slices – Cruising LP (Iron Lung)
Things to know about Slices: they’ve been around in one form or another for almost ten years, the product of the brothers Kasunic – suburban teenage refugees of Pittsburgh – as a noise ensemble that has reshaped itself into a terrifying bastard of a hardcore punk/noise rock hybrid. One of their singles has a drawing of a turtle on it; the other one is called Pavarotti Facefuck, the opera...
Beautiful Supermachines/The Distant Seconds –...
Hey! Great name on that label! Guess what? It’s yours forever! Ten years from now, when folks ask “what was the name of your label?” there will be no feeling like cringing so hard that a little trickle of urine escapes down your left leg. People! Think! Anyways … The Distant Seconds sound exactly like Wowee Zowee. Take this cold, hard, indisputable, fact and do as thou whilst. Gerard Cosloy is...
Didimao – s/t LP (Cococonk)
Didimao is a trio of Bay Area weirdos, and the seven songs gathered on this self-titled piece of plastic make up their debut. It’s a tough one to figure, too – equal parts spastic Skin Graft-ery (think Lake of Dracula, or so says the lady), rumbling Neubauten-esque clatter, a touch of the Ex’s filterings of Eastern European folk, and maybe a little of the more punched up side of Sun City Girls...
Girls – “Laura” b/w “Oh Boy” 7” (True Panther...
“Laura” is too wordy a la the Costello comparisons that this band gets in the pages of fucking Rabbit Fancy or Marine Fabricator Quarterly, thus it can’t go for the big hook like the couple of focus tracks that are sadly out of favor already. This still beats when they try to go shoegaze (clumsy and most likely a growing pain). “Oh Boy” is a gentle ballad with no beat and related cover art...
Doronco Gumo – Old Punks LP (Holy Mountain)
Here’s a solo effort by Gumo, bassist of the mysterious and heralded Les Rallizes Denudes, and it’s kind of a mixed bag, combining a handful of well-written songs that crib from the past 20 years of poppy/surfy Japanese punk, with a few slogs through traditional Japanese folk plod, set to electric instruments. Maybe it’s just me – can’t stand those chord progressions, they remind me of nursery...
Lemonade – Pure Moods 12” EP (True Panther Sounds)
I’ve got to hand it to Lemonade: Any band that has the audacity to name a record Pure Moods and proceed to utterly massacre calypsos on songs with names like “Banana Republic” and “Remain in Jah” deserves … something. I’d say a chance, but they use that up within a minute. The only comparably embarrassing sounds I can think of is that Latin beat infinite loop that every corny bar mitzvah DJ uses...
The Lovetaps – “Love ‘Em or Leave Em” b/w “Goodbye...
Austin, Texas band (well San Marcos to be precise) that plays thee garage rock with roll. “Love ‘Em or Leave ‘Em” wastes no time chugging ahead with a dependable, tried-and-true rock riff that bands have been leaning on since they first heard Exile On Main St. or the Velvets. No wheels are being reinvented here, as the band instead joyrides this old jalopy into the...
Medication – This Town LP (Horizontal Action)
Real analogue 4-track recordings by Mike Hyde. I literally forgot what it meant for someone to go at it in modern times without “4-track” = “pirated recording software” but was reminded how the world feels about analogue cassette multitracking by the $50 price tag on a perfectly good used Fostex staring all lonely-knobbed the other day from a pawnshop shelf. Then I played this LP and remembered...
Armando Piazza – Suàn LP (Missing Vinyl)
Legit, exact reissue of this private press torpedo from ’72, save for a couple of digital errors in the transfer. Piazza was an Italian singer-songwriter, and working with noted American musician Shawn Phillips, slide guitarist Tony Walmsley, and drummer Antonio Esposito, he created a curious waft of basement psych songcraft that would have made sense in any of the three to four years before its...
Terminal Twilight – Black and Blue 12” EP...
Cold Cave inadvertently created a cure for reviewer’s block by…existing. At this stage in the game, with the corpse of “electro-shock” still lukewarm (bands that were making music in 2001 and 2002 are still, uh, bands making music), if you’re going to come along and slap a faux-authentic genre tag (neither “Minimal Synth” nor “Cold Wave” were used all that much back in the early 80’s) on what...
Tropa Macaca – Sensação Do Princípio LP...
For their third LP (and first domestic release), Portuguese duo Tropa Macaca presents two side-long pulls from the same draught of murky, basement kosmiche that colored their earlier records on Ruby Red and Qbico. Really, it’s quite a nice sound, and one that’s fallen strangely by the wayside, especially now that folks like Yellow Swans have gone kaput and Double Leopards only appear on very...
