April 2010
25 posts
Bear Claw – s/t one-sided 10” “picture disk”...
The recording is kinda hollow and flat, their mostly generic melodies don’t really leap out of the speakers, and their over-reliance on the melodica tests the patience of even the most fervent lovers of said instrument. Bear Claw’s one-sided, four-song EP just lays there (the flipside is adorned with a full-sized 10” sticker of the band members that is cuter than any of the music contained...
Eric Chenaux – “Warm Weather” b/w “La Vieux Favori...
At 33, “La Vieux Favori 4” sounded pretty good, a nice midrange drone that I could’ve dug, until I read that it was to be played at 45. The mids went high and I listened to multiple violins harmonizing with one another for four minutes, as if a string section forgot its sheet music and just continued tuning indefinitely; actually sounded pretty nice at times, but it’s really nothing that I’d...
Kogumaza – “Sevens” b/w “Mara” 7” (Low Point)
Kogumaza occupy an odd space between the dreaded “post-rock” and more psychedelic territories on this austerely presented single. “Sevens” takes a short riff, giving the impression of building up to something more generically “epic,” then just hammers it into oblivion, content to ride that snake until the trip abruptly ends. “Mara” follows a more expected path, starting moody and quiet, and...
The Living Kills – “You'll Miss Me Most” b/w...
The Living Kills (we must be running out of band names) debut 7” offers up two distinctly now-New York moody popsike songs, despite having a sleeve design and overall aesthetic that dates back to 1993. “You’ll Miss Me Most” is the more succinct and upbeat of the two, but still finds time for a swirling organ driven and reverbed guitar trip down the rabbit hole. The laconic male vocals put...
Newclear Waves/Opus Finis – split 7” (Mannequin)
I’m hardly an expert on the Cold Cave-induced coldwave explosion, but split records seem to imply some familiarity or camaraderie between artists which totally betrays my preconceived image of Rome’s Newclear Waves and Miami’s Opus Finis (veteran of both Wierd comps) as machine-worshipping loners. Both bands plays a similar sounding dark minimal synth, uh “pop.” The term Cold Wave...
Birds of Maya – Ready to Howl 2xLP (Richie)
Finally out with a long-awaited follow-up to their debut on Holy Mountain, which seems like it was released like 10 years ago at this point, Philly jam/burner rock trio Birds of Maya present one clumpy basement sesh over four sides of vinyl. The songs don’t line up with the beginnings and ends of each side, and there’s a bit of interstitial found recordings and experiments in between their...
Defektors – The Bottom of the City LP...
More Vancouver punk, and not a moment too soon (nobody else is collectively as a city doing it right). Defektors feature members of some of the other locals in this vein (Vapid, Sex Church, Modern Creatures), and finally deliver on the promise of comp tracks and their single. As with the case of Mod Creatures, start with the full-length. Songs from this record have appeared in earlier versions,...
Home – Seventeen LP (Brah/Jagjaguwar)
With seventeen album-length releases, Home is working the odds that you’ll find them before their music finds you. That’s not a diss, it’s the condition of the band’s mere existence. Borne out of high school friends playing together in Tampa (last year, their first eight albums – all released on cassette to a plastic jar in a local record store – were reissued as a digital brick by Brah, the...
Lizz King – All Songs Go To Heaven LP (Ehse) /...
Had to review these as a matched pair, as one album title answers the other, and both records are modern examples of female singer-songwriters who’ve stepped off of one well-worn path onto another. King is told to be some sort of key member in the Wham City movement in Baltimore, and for those of you whose eyes aren’t completely glazed over yet, this West Virginia transplant relies heavily on...
Mount Carmel – s/t LP (Siltbreeze)
Plenty of bands drink from the well of tribute, allowing their vision to plateau in service of authenticity or Good Time Charlie-ism, because it’s fun and familiar, and for some quite easy to achieve. Mount Carmel is that rare band that takes an existing concept – here, British-influenced blues-based rock circa 1966-69, the times that bore Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, Cream, the Steve...
Pamela Wyn Shannon/The Magickal Folk of the...
P.S.: it’s early spring. Pamela Wyn Shannon (of Wales, by way of Western Mass.), takes side A with “Woolgathering” and Ireland’s the Magickal Folk of the Faraway Tree are on the flip with “The Blackthorn Tree.” Settled in for an earthy experience, any whiff of embarrassing whimsy is quickly put to rest by the beautiful singing and fingerstyle guitar of Ms. Shannon, grounded in the British Isles...
Slang Chickens – s/t LP (Psychedelic Judaism)
The name Slang Chickens on the burlap sack this record comes in gives the feeling of an empty bar feeling at quarter to midnight on a Monday, and a band of dudes in plaid shirts are just starting to drag amps towards the stage, when more reasonable activities like sleep or clipping coupons under a bare lightbulb are so close yet so far away. But they’ll give it the old bar rock try, and in a...
Aly Spaltro/TJ Metcalfe – split 7” (Eternal Otter)
Eternal Otter rages on by matchlight. Sprightly, somewhat ragged folk ballad and solo guitar by Spaltro; a cracked male Billie Holiday impersonation and peculiar guitar ditty by Metcalfe. Both songs were written and originally performed as a group called Lady Lamb the Beekeeper. I think the split of names and purposes serves it well, as it’s tough to take a moniker like that seriously. There seems...
Cerberus Shoal – “Tailor of Graves” b/w “Hymn” 7”...
Said to be the final Cerberus Shoal recordings (dating to 2004), these gave me a chance to peek in on a band to whom I really hadn’t paid a lot of attention since around 1997 or so. A wide range of musicality has never been an issue with this long-running Maine band, one which gravitated from heart-on-sleeve screamo to riveting post-rock, then somewhere in the wild weeds of folk. They had the guts...
Blaque Boose – “Winter” b/w “Past Lives Owen” 7”...
Something about Portland, ME must engender groupings of records by small labels. In the footsteps of the L’animaux Tryst Field Recordings record club, which had plenty to offer in the way of folk and traditional music, comes a similar pass by the Eternal Otter label. This single, the Cerberus Shoal and the Aly Spaltro/TJ Metcalfe split single are part of something called the “Death, Rebirth &...
Tony Conrad/Genesis Breyer P-Orridge – Taking...
Arguably two of the 20th century’s finest musical and artistic thinkers and practitioners, Tony Conrad and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge have long been respected as pre-eminent voices for their contributions as mixed-media composers and theorists, playing at least a modest role in the shaping and steering of whole sonic movements. Given the spheres in which the pair has tended to operate for much of...
Harangue – s/t LP (Wilder-Pryor)
When was the last time you heard someone treat Paris 1919 as bible and not come across as a half-baked tent-city evangelist? Or openly contemplate ripping the synthesizers out of Taking Tiger Mountain’s mainframe and rewiring it with slightly rawer acoustics, only to have the monstrosity actually work? Given the grand, almost insurmountable conceptual and performance scope of albums like those,...
Mess Folk – Something I Remember 7” EP (Hozac)
There was a TON of Hozac input this review cycle. Not sure how so much of it ended up under this roof, because the exchange of money for records almost never gets Hozac releases through the door these days. One look and listen to Nobunny and fear shot straight up from the scrotum to the throat … it was that feeling again. Like being Rowdy Roddy in “They Live,” or being 15 on the morning after...
Lonnie Eugene Methe – “Hey Jack” Plus Six Other...
This could have been recorded directly into a computer or it could have been recorded directly into one of those $30 Tascam analog 2-tracks that fooled many-a-90’s hack into believing they were a bedroom Albini. Thin, but the songwriting is there on three or four out of the seven, and when it’s not there, at least it’s replaced by the aural implication that it COULD be there. A guy, a bedroom, a...
Prince Rama of Ayodhya/Kegs of Acid – split 7” EP...
Prince Rama of Ayodhya roll out a long guitar rave-up cock-tease, like Bardo Pond or Serena Maneesh, except for the “sucking” part. Kegs of Acid sound exactly like the type of band that would call themselves that; then think that a “Point Break” reference is clever. Hmmm … mysticism by way of lazy slumming … so we’re on the 415th or 416th recalling of that unfortunate rock trend? Which is it? At...
Sonny & the Sunsets – “Broom & Dustpan” b/w...
Years ago, when a relatively small but respectable number of people fell in love with the music of The Bats, Unrest, The Clean, The Verlaines, Vomit Launch, Tiger Trap, Field Mice, and so on … primary among the reasons for that love was that these artists knew how to write a moving, mood-altering hook. More often than not, these bands were experts at what I like to call “blue hooks” – not...
Sonny & the Sunsets – The Hypnotist 7” EP (Future...
This music makes me want to write stupid shit like, “I wish Glen Benton would drag this guy into an alleyway for a wordless ‘talking-to’.” Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation, Dinosaur Jr’s You’re Living All Over Me, Mercury Rev’s Yerself is Steam, MBV’s Loveless, the first or second Swirlies album, Godflesh, Seam, Treepeople, Sebadoh III, Slanted and Enchanted, Thinking Fellers Local 282, Fly...
Matt Wilga – There I Go 7” EP (Labor of Love)
Matt Wilga turns a corner from his HC past as drummer for Cancer Kids and Failures with this single, three songs in the fuzz-encrusted tradition of early JAMC or perhaps the first Sonic Boom solo record (you know, the one with the wheel on the front – a killer jam, for real). Jangly, overdriven acoustic guitar is modulated to within an inch of its life, as Wilga sings his heart out over the top....
Meanwhile...
Things I have been enjoying include:
The Replacements — Let It Be LP
a Saturday night at Late Bar, Chicago
Demon’s Souls for PS3
the television show “Justified” on the FX network
the movie Greenberg
Flo & Eddie — The Phlorescent Leech & Eddie LP
New York City in the most glorious springtime we’ve had in years
Second Hand — Death May Be...
Hi gang.
Regular biz will resume in a few days.
— DM
