June 2012
37 posts
Jennifer Castle – Castlemusic LP (Flemish Eye)
Although the first in her oeuvre to be released under her real name, Jennifer Castle’s Castlemusic is even more fractured and detached from self than what brought criticism to her previous albums. But the decision to nominally shift, while carrying the previous moniker of Castlemusic along for the ride as the album title, is one Castle admitted to not giving much forethought.
Nothing wrong with...
Catatonic Youth – “PISS SCENE” 7” EP (Perennial)
RECOMMENDED
How aggravating is it when you send someone a very comprehensive text message and their response is, “what?” JUST READ IT AGAIN. Wait, do I have to send it again? Compelled to re-send the original message is how Diltz Barrett of Catatonic Youth must feel, because I will be goddammed if the two A-siders found here, “I’ve Had It” and “Out of Control”, aren’t the same … a...
Cough Cool – Lately LP (Bathetic)
Two guys, presumably from the Philly area, do a full album of slightly lo-fi shoegazey earworms, and to everyone’s surprise, it works. There ain’t nothin’ here seasoned listeners haven’t heard elsewhere, and maybe better, but I don’t know – Cough Cool has a way about them, a way to keep interest buzzing even at the length of an endless album that bookended an endless day for me not too long ago....
Criminal Code – s/t 7” EP (self-released)
RECOMMENDED
The better-bet when it comes to the two types of bands left in Jay Reatard’s wake. No synth listed next to any of the first names on the back cover, but there’s a happy dark-wave, synth-friendly bleed-through on these three tracks and you know exactly what I’m trying to articulate here: phaser is the new reverb. Want me to use more hyphens? Enjoy complaining about my over-usage of...
The Croissants – s/t 7” EP (Sacramento)
This punk rock band should be called The Scones because this feels like a chore and they aren’t even French. Someone should tell them they don’t have to do this. Here is my review:
“This is some bratty pop punk. Short songs, quick execution and minimal lyrics. Four songs straight out of the RAMONES play book. All that is missing is the 1-2-3-4 count before each song.” -Maximum Rock N Roll
...
False Tropics – Sample Based Beats LP...
Came with a sad, hand-written one-sheet about sending out review copies so that cuz’s closet or basement could enjoy some added storage space, but a 250-count pressing can’t take up that much space, especially when said handwritten note was penned over a year ago. This is considered, probably due to other False Tropics albums and origin of the sole creative force, to be “underground hip-hop” and...
Final Club – Blank Entertainment LP (Adagio830)
RECOMMENDED
“Everything has been done” has been done. The hard kernel at the center of punk ideology has been mimicked ad infinitum itself, but it is easy to discern those using it as affectation, and those really feeling its effect. Above any redundancy of love, mimeographed joy or remembrance at odds with the day it is this – the nihilistic constraints that exist when you are just four guys...
Looks Like Miaou – s/t LP (Bon Voyage)
So is it still cute when French people get all into our cultural castoffs? Oh, shut the Ford tailgate … so who out there believes that I just spent over thirty minutes trying to think of a funny way of putting the fourth (and therefore…really shitty) Alan Vega solo album (I don’t even know if there is a fourth Alan Vega solo album…and don’t care) in the same league as Jay Leno would put Jerry...
Infinity People – In Love With the Light 2xLP (UFO...
Wow, this one must’ve hurt coming out, huh? Six labels? Don’t even know where to go with that low-hanging fruit of a joke. There isn’t anything short about In Love With the Light, except this review. Some known-within-city-limits types from Detroit got Warn Defever wrapped up in their motor-city version of a faux-Father Yod hippie dream-team and recorded four sides of Godspell/Rocky Horror...
Dan Melchior – Ghost in the Supermarket 12” EP...
Dan Melchior is one of our era’s great singer songwriters. He’s an inheritor of the compass-point self-aware style of writing, alongside such post punk era songwriters as Vic Godard, Dan Treacy, Ed Ball, and maybe even Lou Miami. He’s also made a whole pile of great records, nearly as many as all of the above put together. I haven’t heard his recent and highly praised LPs on Siltbreeze and S.S.,...
Dichroics – s/t LP (self-released)
RECOMMENDED
Now we’re talkin’! About what, I’m not sure, but that’s gotta be the beauty with this beauty. This will be the one VERY SPECIAL RECORD in this 10 – 20 title review-run; a record that the house should shelter forever. Not that rising value will ever tempt, as this band is too good and smart for these 500 copies to transcend $5 used-bin purgatory in the next decade or...
King Blood – Vengeance, Man 12” EP (Richie)
RECOMMENDED
The cool thing about doing a solo project as your main project? Hell’s other peoples, guy. Other people fuck up your pure visions and inhibit your ability to get ‘em out the way you want. The specific visions of Ryland Wharton have been well-established in earlier solo projects (Showers), and through the always-consistent output of the record and tape labels that he runs. That he’s...
Knock Knock – We Will Raise Your Child LP...
Like most folks in the same predicament, when my father woke up after suffering a major stroke in his sleep, he found himself unable to read the printed word. He actually walked into the kitchen holding the newspaper upside down and said, “I can’t read this.” Hey, admitting you have a problem is the first step, they say. My father wasn’t a writer, and didn’t have the best taste in pre-stroke...
Lower – Walk On Heads 7” EP (Escho)
As the core readership of Still Single gets younger and younger, I struggle with the kneejerk criticism that I was able to float seven years ago, like the kind of review that says “this is a blatant knock on [insert band name here] and what makes this so goddamned special anyway.” We are far enough away from the times in which I grew up – and further still from the years which I missed, and so...
Tar – “Feel This” b/w “Hell’s Bells” 7” (Chunklet)
RECOMMENDED
Tar bowed out around the time of my freshman year of college, and left behind a musical legacy that no one deemed worthy of preservation. Seventeen years away from their output, this all sounds strange, but everyone works in their own way, and history has written much of what Tar tried to accomplish out of the pantheon of rock music. For a good seven years or so – good ones, too...
Chumps – s/t LP (Forge)
Yeah, buddy. God, there used to be a TON of this shit everywhere. AmReppy, post-Jesus Lizard noise rock, four dudes (almost always dudes) guitar, bass, drums, vox, putting the pieces together in riffy, Bonham-esque shapes without being Bonham, a few cock rock moments sneaking in there. The opener “Shiuvist” is the most Surgery-sounding song anyone has waxed since that group’s tragic demise...
Metz – s/t LP (Ossining)
Fan club reissue of a private-press rarity from a mid-‘70s Houston, TX glam outfit. If any part of that phrase strikes your match, you’ll want to knock people over to get at this LP, which despite its flaws is very well-played and expertly captured in the studio. The group was the brainchild of one John Metzler, who disappeared from the Houston music scene sometime in the ‘80s. As to what else...
Plapla Pinky – s/t 12” EP (Sonore)
Conceptual electroboogie-step from some French folks, focusing on process and allowing it to dictate easier-to-fathom results. One really farty synth and one sequencer/drum computer build up both some startingly hot floor-fillers and some regrettable verbal diarrhea over tracks that don’t quite get there. It’s both exciting and frustrating, because you know they are about 10 feet in either...
Whatever Brains – s/t (2012) LP (Sorry State)
RECOMMENDED
Less than a year after their first album saw the (belated) light of day, Whatever Brains reclaim lost time while addressing the issues that blunted that earlier release. This new second self-titled – either they like Royal Trux, or are trying to write the first one out of existence … maybe both? – recaptures much of the energy found on this North Carolina combo’s earlier singles,...
Nate Young – Stay Asleep: Regression Vol. 2 LP...
Once Wolf Eyes stopped being a party band, and stopped dragging Danse Asshole around with them, I found it remarkably easy to tune out. I’m not a Rollins type trying to close out an entire discography or anything, and the last time I saw these dudes in all their jean-jacketed splendor, all I really remember was Grux and Rubber-O-Cement getting intense in spider costumes, and not whatever...
Daughn Gibson – All Hell LP (White Denim)
RECOMMENDED
I’m all for responsible recycling; seems like Daughn Gibson is as well. His record All Hell is a keeper built from spare parts, looking up out of the bottom of the bottle. The artist DG (don’t call him Josh) subverts every other joe out there who can merely write great country-cum-dark adult Americana songs by giving them the sample/cut/loop treatment from a collections’ worth of...
Amps For Christ – Circuits 2xLP (Turned Word/Water...
RECOMMENDED
Reissue of an unheralded classic, the most robust, song-based offering in the AfC catalogue. Originally released on CD by Vermiform and lost amidst the detritus of the late ‘90s, Circuits is a collection of mostly traditional folk songs given the full treatment of homemade “caveman” electronics and acoustic instrumentation, pitched into the red and blown out ever so slightly. The...
Broken Water – Seaside & Sedmikrásky 12”...
On the heels of their second album Tempest comes a new EP by Olympia’s steadfast ‘90s reinterpreters Broken Water. Two long songs here, drawn from the same session as Tempest, and Kickstarted for release by the band themselves (scratched-out Hardly Art matrix numbers may have been included for effect). “Seaside” features a cellist, and was performed at some length during the show I caught of...
Culture Kids – s/t LP (Make A Mess)
I do my level best to stay far, far away from anything that ever could be described as meat-and-potatoes hardcore. Indeed, I have no fucking idea what that would sound like, such is my avoidance, but I kind of imagine something kind of this, straight forward hardcore punk (straight outta San Francisco) of a classic cast, songs that could have been on “Flex Your Head” or “This is Boston…”...
Degreaser – Bottom Feeder LP (Negative Guest List)...
Either this thing is missing an insert or I am really impressed by the complete lack of info about this slab, including band members, song titles, etc. Is it more of a mystery or are you just expected to Google all that stuff now? Anyway, here is New York noise thud of a very Australian demeanor (frontman Tim Evans was in Sea Scouts and Birdblobs before coming to the States and continuing on...
Multicult – Spaces Tangled LP (Sleeping Giant...
RECOMMENDED
Sporty heavy-indie/noise rock action from a Baltimore trio arisen from the damp, urine-scented embers of the sludgy, sluggish band Ladypiss. This new band is a big step ahead, even if that step puts them tongue-in-groove with the sort of records that came out on Touch & Go in the ‘90s (or more like all the regional bands that were playing along those lines … the bass playng on...
Tom James Scott – Crystal LP (Carnivals)
Lush but insipid processed string rake/chord clusters ring out over field recordings of the sea at Walney Island serve as a prelude to a sidelong static drone, interwoven with scales and textures in an attempt to add depth (which, on some level, is achieved) but about as interesting as inspecting poultry. If you’ve ever been to a spa, you’ve heard something like this. 350 copies, clear vinyl....
Venomous Maximus – The Mission 12” EP (Cutthroat...
I still stand behind my belief that in current initiation, or in the near future, the next historically-important movement or mini-movement in underground music will come via heavy-music/heavy-metal. Well, Venomous Maximus illustrate the other side of that coin. Whatever it is that makes Red Fang or The Sword relevant and somewhat special; that occasionally ineffable thing becomes the opposite...
Tape review (Sacramento Records comp)
here you go.
Aufgehoben – Fragments Of The Marble Plan LP (Holy...
RECOMMENDED
Hyperbole is the rake, man. And I’m guilty of using it to show how clever I am, or whatever this music tells me to write about it. It’s pretty easy to say “this record is like getting thrown around in a shipping container, rolling down an endless hill, filled with big metal springs and sheets of glass, that occasionally has crippling blasts of electricity run through it” but really,...
Brötzmann/Edwards/Noble - … The Worse The Better...
In an apparent concession to the scarcity of umlauts in England, Peter Brötzmann has presented his name in Anglicized fashion (“Broetzmann”) on the cover of this LP, the inaugural release by a label associated with the London venue Café OTO. But that’s the only concession you’ll find on this set. Braving the British damp 401 days shy of his 70th birthday, PB comes out punching on this...
Raven Chacon – At The Point Where The Rivers...
Performed with a nylon string guitar, a resonated snare and a bone-whistle, the A-side of this Emperor-Wears-No-Clothes style of noise album sounds like two contact mics inside any running household appliance of one’s choosing, a couple of pedals, and an overloaded practice amp. And that’s it. No creepy or emoting feel from a minimal two or three tone-notes underneath the caterwaul, no feel at...
John Wesley Coleman & Morgan Coy – Nightmare on...
I know that people put out JWC records because they love the guy’s music (and probably the guy himself). I’ve had a tough time entering the space required to get me to where they are, but the first side of Nightmare on Silly Street is the closest I’ve come, a bare and personal statement by an artist who lets you look deep inside his head, despite the dangers of that the outside world can bring...
Coppice – The Pleasance & The Purchase 7” EP...
Search for images of the lads who comprise Coppice and you will find that they look remarkably like slightly better-scrubbed direct descendants of the squeezebox player on the cover of Killing Capitalism With Kindness. Spin the 45, though, and a different picture emerges. They mine their squeezebox (shruti box, actually) for wheeze, whistle, and most of all clatter, not notes. The results are...
Ferocious Fucking Teeth – s/t LP (Safety Meeting) ...
A debut that hints of future promise by a band who might be known as ‘FFT’ sooner than later because this band’s name will become tiresome to the members themselves, who don’t seem to reside on the thoughtful end of the brospectrum. Way more Young Widows than Melvins or Big Business (to counter those one-sheet references), and armed with a baritone guitar instead of a bass to ascent the...
Full Toilet – s/t 7” EP (Sub Pop)
As per usual, this 7” spun some as the record and packaging were examined here in our listening, writing and creating laboratory at home before the requisite amount of related online information was processed (for future fact-checking needs at the very least). It’s no surprise, perhaps, that my immediate guess about Full Toilet was that this might be a one-off courtesy of people from disparate...
Mike Shiflet – Merciless LP (Type)
RECOMMENDED
The word “merciless” is often used as a synonym for “cruel,” but Mike Shiflet has something more literal in mind. There’s no denying this music’s presence, and yet absence is its essence. It lacks mercy, or empathy, or any other owned emotion, just as your camera or tape recorder lack emotional states. There is no overt passion of any sort in Shiflet’s extreme close-ups of harsh...
