May 2012
31 posts
Wooden Kimono – Moving To Disneyland 7” EP...
RECOMMENDED
You’ve all heard about the one where you look into the void and the void looks back at you, right? How about the part when you see beyond the void and realize that it’s your bedroom wall, or your bag, or the sidewalk beneath you? Discovering this single was a lot like that, a lucid, longing jaunt fully within the context of reality, a hard stare into one’s own ideas of the human...
Favorite 2012 releases, halfway point
Merchandise, Children of Desire (Katorga Works)
Ashrae Fax, Static Crash (Hot Releases)
The Young, Dub Egg (Matador)
Slices, Still Cruising (Iron Lung)
Sickoids, s/t (Residue)
Daughn Gibson, All Hell (White Denim)
Wooden Kimono, Moving To Disneyland (Perennial)
Mount Carmel, Real Women (Siltbreeze)
Christian Mistress, Possession (Relapse)
Scraps, Secret Paradise (Disembraining Machine)
...
new release
my daughter P.J. Mosurock was born today, happy and healthy.
Peak Twins/Scott & Charlene’s Wedding – split LP...
Australian bands get a foothold in tiny American economies (this is the first of a proposed split release series between Bedroom Suck and Night-People), and I’m reminded of that episode of “The Simpsons” where Bart sneaks that toad down under and it destroys the ecosystem. I don’t think that’s actually going to happen, and almost every record that comes in from that far away seems to shine on...
Coffin Pricks – Group Home Haircut 7” EP...
RECOMMENDED
The most important thing here is that Chris Thomson is out fronting a punk band again. Normally this would be given to mean that anyone who’s ever liked any of the earlier bands he’s been in, particularly as a vocalist (Circus Lupus, Las Mordidas, the Monorchid, Skull Kontrol, Red Eyed Legends), would need to check out any new music he’s involved with – come on, you signed the pact,...
G.Green – “Funny Insurance” b/w “Sounds Famous” 7”...
Sacramento-based punk band, makin’ moves hither and yon. Their music is very poppy and melodic, but is played as strained and ragged as possible. Why sing in your regular voice when the high register sits there? Why not make it a little tough on yourself in order to force a more memorable, if not necessarily better, performance? The folks in G.Green take that chance and it works out in their...
Prurient – Wrapped In The Flame Of Illusion,...
Never really followed Prurient that much for reasons I’ve discussed here recently, in that it’s hard to drill down on one of these artists who has tons of releases, and loads of side projects, when you’ve got all the other records that are coming in to give some attention to. I’m meant to understand that D. Fernow’s work as Prurient took somewhat of a bend with his last one Bermuda Drain,...
Kelley Stoltz – “Caroline” b/w “Marcy” 7” (Les...
Kelley Stoltz has been moving closer to the median where classic songwriting talent wanders into the zone of No Commercial Viability. This isn’t a terrible thing; Mr. Stoltz is very green-minded and records his music with no carbon footprint, so it’s fair to say that his music really isn’t hurting anyone. Besides, it’s (mostly) fabulous bubblegum/doe-eyed early ‘70s proto-power pop, so no harm...
Stag – Get Used To It 7” EP (Disembraining...
Australian bands! So many, and most of them are pretty great. Here’s another one, Stag, a quartet of women who play like they are just figuring all of this out – which is welcome, as the magic they have to offer is directly in that lesson. They’re not as focused as, say, Terrible Truths on one particular direction, working through a tangled pile of primitive post-punk, insect-brain dance...
Unicorn Hard-On/Container – split LP (Hot...
Over the past year or so, there has been a paradigm shift in US basement level noise/improv scene, where many people involved in noise music, having spent the last decade or so rewiring effects pedals, wearing papier-mache costumes, abusing four track recorders, and making drones have turned all those electronics to a new purpose: making beat oriented dance music. I would guess that the reasons...
Whore Paint – Menarchy 7” EP (Anchor Brain)
Abrasive howl from a feminist noise rock trio out of Providence. Sock-hop drumming lays down the backbone for hellish vocals and dominant, effects-plagued guitar across three tracks (bass player not included). There’s a confrontation in every moment on this record, which is very aggressive in how it sublimates parts of no-wave, crust, and bits of melody, like a structuralist Babes in Toyland. No...
Merchandise review on Dusted
I went on and on and on about the new Merchandise album Children of Desire. You can read it here, but if you want the condensed version, here goes: I love this record, go get a copy as soon as you can.
Apache Dropout/3 Man Band – split 7” (Glory Hole)
Record Store Day release. 3 Man Band sent in a tape that was pretty raging, and was arguably the best first 90 seconds of any review tape ever presented in this direction, and even though it cooled down a bit afterwards, it remains a good, hard slap of hard rock, garage and psych moves being bound together in Knoxville, TN even as I write this. Their jam is called “Owsley (In Theory And...
Co La – Daydream Repeater LP (NNA Tapes)
RECOMMENDED
Smashing, nigh-essential piece of sample/collage dancewerk courtesy of Matthew Papich, formerly of Baltimore duo Ecstatic Sunshine. The name of that act could apply to the contents of Co La’s Daydream Repeater, allowing the exuberance of existing recordings – some familiar enough to where I wonder how this escaped the Sample Police – to be the medium unto which some deep, summery...
The Avengers – We Are The One 7” EP / “Paint It...
RECOMMENDED
Shouldn’t have to sell any of you on these. Like the “Avengers” movie that just came out, the truth of this band cannot be avoided. If you don’t have the originals, this is a good way to cover your ass until you can scrape up enough cash to get ‘em. Essential, quasi-feminist, totally tough/hard/oppositional punk rock from San Francisco ’77 and up. You shouldn’t be having to learn...
Destination Lonely – Kiss or Kicks LP (Les Disques...
Well-heeled, well-presented French garage rockers, peering into the abyss and sensing the abyss peering back. This stuff is pretty good, certainly along the energy level of the Hives of whatnot, with the kind of vocals that reach back to Radio Birdman or Fun Things kinda raw-throated action. Six songs here, and they certainly kick up the dustcloud to a proper thickness, even on songs like “I’m...
French Quarter – Desert Wasn’t Welcome LP...
Steven Steinbrink has made two quite excellent albums, and has proven himself one of the unsung lights of the latter-day home studio style musician, wringing a great deal of emotion and artifice from modest means. Desert Wasn’t Welcome sadly feels like a step back in ways. Recorded with a full band at Dub Narcotic, the sudden jump in production quality and need to arrange for a bigger band, sets...
Gold-Bears/Bracelettes – split 7” EP (Oddbox)
Shoegaze/twee split from a singles subscription series out of England (other participants include the Ketamines). Gold-Bears have two noisy pop songs, kind of like Superchunk but with a much bigger, more manicured guitar tone. These songs are decent, and “Bedroom” ends with the mastering engineer pushing the levels on the track so far up that it knocks the needle out of the groove. Bracelettes...
Heavy Times – Jacker LP (Hozac)
RECOMMENDED
I don’t remember Heavy Times being particularly heavy in any appreciable sense on their 7”, which sounded like McDonald’s wrappers blowing across a parking lot. Jacker could be the work of an entirely different band, one that can actually rock with some determination. This is poppy, melodic music with a hard exterior crust, toughened up with blown-out production choices which make...
Nadja & Galena – Konstruktion LP (Adagio 830)
When you go through a lot of records by a lot of bands as we do here, you tend to miss out on the ones that put out a zillion releases, even if you get sent a bunch of them to cover. Nadja is like that. Never really had a chance to get into their music, though they were a minor bright spot in the whole collect-‘em-all/flip-‘em-hard period of music when it seemed like labels were never going to...
Teledetente 666 – “Les Rats” b/w “Panna Sexe” 7”...
Some dry “Franch Toast” here from a Seb Normal-produced duo out of Strasbourg, right on the Rhine. This one is a real downer electro-punk sound with stock percussion options that, when used effectively, indicate a deeper frustration and the need for immediate release. Does that make sense? When you use a canned beat, it’s sometimes due to necessity, or more likely apathy, and I think that apathy...
TV Ghost – “Phantasm” b/w “Panic Area” 7” (Sweet...
Hit-and-miss band delivers a miss. It’s in their typically dark, scary demeanor, but this time the scares seem so piled on and so part of some dramatic presence TV Ghost seems to be trying to bring to their years-long career of playing through every side of Anglo-American dark rock with guitars from Teenage Jesus up on through to Bauhaus. It’s hard to believe that a band which has made some...
Vaura – Selenelion 2xLP (Wierd)
RECOMMENDED
It’s been hard to line up with a lot of what Wierd Records has released, despite almost all of it being appealing in some way, at least on paper. Vaura, a Brooklyn-based quartet featuring members of a lot of different outfits (from Kayo Dot to Gorguts … yeah) who are finding success in melding elements of stormy, moody shoegaze (like Catherine Wheel, perhaps) with Helmet-style...
California X – “Sucker” b/w “Mummy” 7” (The Sounds...
A grungy, classic style fuzz-pop trio should appeal to me. Such bands have before and probably will again. But something seems off here. I have to blame the way this band was originally presented to me, long before former Shoppers drummer Josh Smith took the throne in this western Massachusetts trio and sent in this single. Someone, months ago, decided to tell me all about this band California X...
Callers & Delicate Steve – “Further Out” b/w...
Um … if you guys in this band/dude at this label are actively trying to get me to quit writing by sending in records this spectacularly awful, you’ve come very close. I don’t know who the fuck Delicate Steve is but I hate him already, and wished I didn’t have to share Brooklyn with him or anyone else involved in this pile of puke. Both tracks build off of the sort of sample-based, repetitive...
Axel Dörner, Werner Dafeldecker, Sven-Åke...
Despite the credits, which augur your typical free-improv encounter, this is a group, and that group has a mission. The name of the album, per Google Translator, is In The Circle Object, and that’s what they call themselves when they get booked. If you’re acquainted with the work of any of these guys over the last 10-15 years, you have some idea what to expect. Dörner leaves both jazz and...
Joe Kusy – Popcorn Salamander 7” EP (Founding...
Solo outing from Far-Out Fangtooth guitarist Kusy, here showing off a wildly indulgent side of his musical personality and away from the dark, pressurized howl of his main band. This is a bunch of bedroom/kitchen sink pop, glued together with epoxy and pipe cleaners, and with the tarnish of lo-fi production to match. What he’s playing sounds unfinished but vital, with the drive and mentality of...
Mount Carmel – Real Women LP (Siltbreeze)
RECOMMENDED
Let us celebrate the return of thee one, thee only non-bullshit hard rock band in goddamn America with the praise that’s due them: if their last album was perfect, this one is a step past it, attaching itself straight onto the legacy of the music they practice. Real Women finds drummer Kevin Skubak and brothers Matt and Pat Reed fully engaged, in service to heavy blues-based rock...
Les Suce-Pendus/Judas Donneger – split 7” (Label...
Odd but alluring French split single between two acts out of Amiens, a mid-sized town north of Paris and set a bit back from the English Channel. Les Suce-Pendus combines durable, tight post-punk rhythm section with guitar scrapes and squalls, almost in defiance of the directive to play three simple chords, and buttressed with agonizing screams and spoken pronouncements. All of this makes for a...
Yi – Hostbody 7” EP (Reeducation)
RECOMMENDED
Cool l’il punker/indie rocker from Bay Area band Yi, who turned in a fine cassette EP sometime last year. “Total Shit System” rides off fast with the sort of energetic, driven jangle of recent groups like Oxford Collapse and Meneguar, bordering on pop-punk but playing it smart enough to avoid the rotten parts of that sound. “Hostbody” provides a different look, a band that wants to...
Various Artists – Bring Beer LP (12XU)
RECOMMENDED
You have to figure that a town like Austin has so many goddamn musicians in it that some of them are worth your time. But when you have over a certain number of people in a place like that making music that is on the side of good/memorable, those folks need a place to get together outside of a bar, and of course you can only invite people to your home so many times before it starts...
