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Joseph's Picks Of The Week 2/24/12 - Laura Gibson and The Gaye Blades

2012-02-24T09:50:00.000-08:00

On La Grande, Portland, Oregon’s Laura Gibson expands upon the fragile alt-folk of her previous releases while retaining the qualities that make her such an appealing example of contemporary Americana.

My introduction to Gibson came in the live setting, where she opened for and accompanied a solo show by Decemberist Colin Meloy to fabulous effect. His tour CD Colin Meloy Sings Sam Cooke also happened to be enriched by Gibson’s strong backing vocals, their presence prompting me to seek out Six White Horses: Blues and Traditionals Vol. 1, an exceptional all covers EP featuring versions of a half-dozen tunes drawn from such acoustic legends as Elizabeth Cotten, Mance Lipscomb and Furry Lewis. While released by Hush, the Portland-based label that served as the early home of the Decemberists, Six White Horses still felt very much like a homemade document, the kind of recording passed around amongst friends/fans that slowly gains a small, devoted following. From there I tracked down 2006’s If You Come to Greet Me and 2009’s Beasts of Seasons, two full length records that showed Gibson’s talent extending beyond the realms of imaginative interpretation. Both records detailed an ability to sound out-of-time without seeming contrived and combined this with a talent to express vulnerability and loss without registering as maudlin.

Up to this point Gibson’s best attributes have been the unique depth of her voice and the tender strength of her tunes. As vintage as some of her moves can be, and there is a definitely an old (if not necessarily weird) vibe radiating from much of her stuff, this combination places Gibson squarely in the comparatively recent tradition of singer-songwriter. Folk-derived without being homespun or rustic, she’s been compared to names ranging from Karen Dalton, Joanna Newsom, Chan Marshall, Jolie Holland and Gillian Welch, all of which are appropriate to varying degrees. The distinctiveness of her vocals is similar to Newsom, though Gibson is less assertively unusual and more delicate. Also, the core of her music very often evokes the calm of the back porch instead of the rigors of the rock club, and this is certainly remindful of Welch.

La Grande seems immediately calculated to alter the attractive intimacy previously dominant in her work. With its rollicking drums and tense sonic atmosphere, the opening title cut evokes the soundtrack to a cactus-town noir, somewhere between the filmic vistas of later Tom Waits and the sturdy sound-world of Calexico, whose Joey Burns guests here. It’s the kind of song well-suited for getting a room full of appreciative fans right into the spirit of things, but Gibson abruptly and shrewdly changes tactics with “Milk Heavy, Pollen Eyed”, a pretty little down-tempo ditty with achy horns that’s similar to the early work of Nashville titans Lambchop.

In her loose vocal delivery Gibson is reminiscent at times of M. Ward (particularly on the young heart/old soul dichotomy of “Red Moon”), which is well-suited for the broadening of her sound. But she smartly takes this development into areas very specific to her personality. “Lion/Lamb” integrates a jazzy sensibility that rather than heading for the smoldering zone of the late-night bandstand is instead lightly kissed with the always refreshing aura of prime Astrud Gilberto. Additionally, “The Rushing Dark” manages to approximate a bit of uptown bluesy lamentation sourced from some ancient Columbia Records’ 78 without getting at all precious about it. Not for a second does it sound dinky or contrived. But “Crow Swallow” again redirects her energies into a more contemporary sphere, examining mildly Newsom-like territory with brass accents that recall Zack Condon. I also like the fluid shifts in tempo on the penultimate track “Time is Not”, and the bruised piano-mistress feel of “Feather Lungs”, with its well-applied chamber-pop strings, provides an exceptional closer for an album that’s over far too quickly.

But multiple listens reveal what’s perhaps the most eye opening aspect of La Grande, specifically Gibson’s emergence as a versatile instrumentalist. In addition to arranging duties, she plays a dozen instruments across the course of the album, effectively beginning her movement beyond the frequently constraining aspects of the singer-songwriter genre. This is a big step, for if Six White Horses revealed her as an fine interpreter ala Dalton, both full-length discs occasionally gave the impression that she was a bit beholden to outside contributors (mainly members of Norfolk & Western, but on Beast of Seasons also contemporary avant-violin great Eyvind Kang) to help lend her records an increased level of dimensionality. If that was ever indeed the case, it’s no more. On top of multi-instrumentalist duties La Grande makes clear that Gibson’s collaborators were chosen simply for their ability to realize her vision. And she can certainly pick ‘em. In addition to Joey Burns the record hosts Rachel Blumberg and Jenny Conlee of the Decemberists, the pair helping “The Fire” to come off like a land-locked incarnation of that august band playing for bean soup and cornbread at some Saturday night barn dance. Wish I’d been there.

La Grande makes clear that Gibson is gaining confidence and adeptness not just as a writer, singer and player, but as a musician savvy enough to successfully weave all three elements into a whole befitting repeated listens. To be fair she’s always been a fine guitarist, but nimble fingered string pullers aren’t hard to find. And her talent for self-accompaniment was also admirable, but the sort of closeness evoked so well by If You Come to Greet Me and Beasts of Seasons is hard to sustain over time. Even if that well-calibrated mood of melancholy and mortality could’ve been sustained without fatigue, it would likely have tempted the listener to ask “What else have you got?” Thankfully with Laura Gibson that’s a question one needn’t pose, for La Grande already provides the answer.

It’s nice to know that no matter how strong the possible (hell! probable) impulse toward contemporaneousness lurking inside the furrowed folds of the current rock scene, that we have bands like The Gaye Blades intermittently popping up to disrupt the tyranny of being up to date.

Featuring members of such esteemed junk rock heavyweights as Black Lips, Gentleman Jesse and his Men and The Carbonas, The Gaye Blades can perhaps register as a bit of a lark. Side bands have a tendency to do that, particularly when they lean toward a template of boisterous party-throttling instead of the urge to either break new ground or reinforce the prevailing streams of the time.

And that’s how it should be. The allure of the one-off record has generally been about shoving aside expectations and getting back to the basics of what I like to call Pure Throwing Down. And this applies equally to the rumbles from undeniably star-studded affairs as it does to the doing it for the sheer hell of it discographical asides issued by more underground figures. Actually, after giving it some consideration, it’s in the low-expectation/high performance zone of the side band that household names and comparatively unheralded toilers can join together in celebration of the goodness inherent in rock’s economy of scale. It’s where the sweet studio screwery of the Hopkins Cooder Wyman Jagger Watts Jamming with Edward or the bruising Stoogeoid mess-around of the Moore Shelley Fleming Hell Dim Stars material rubs shoulders with The Gaye Blades and their Norton label mates The Ding-Dongs (comprised of neo-garage heavy-hitter Mark Sultan and Canadian rockabilly manic Bloodshot Bill, dontcha know).

If operational shoulder rubbing between these four examples is extant (and I certainly think it is) then it’s also with the Blades and the Dongs that we can glimpse some deeply conspiratorial, in fact almost coital, communion. For in both groups (the Blades a kinetic if appealingly featherweight four-piece, the Dongs a stripped down and dirty duo) there is a determined predilection for plundering the essence of uncut ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll exaltedness. This is getting to be something of a trend (especially if any revived rock moves of a pre-Beatles vintage are equated with “the 1950s”) and I can’t say I’m the slightest bit displeased. I mean, who would’ve thought that doo-wop, Spector, ‘billy and horn-honking R&B would become a small but viable part of the current u-ground state of affairs, much less one with an actually hip cadre of fans? Not me, but I’m as pleased as a punch drunk Shriner that I can revel in this rich mulch instead of sitting on a stump contemplating the contempo relevance of dubstep. Zing!

And if that mention of hipness worries you (shiver me timbers!), please relax. The main attribute keeping this batch of backward-looking upstarts from falling into the pits of style over substance (thus far) is the endeavor of getting right down to brass tacks on cheap instruments in practice spaces over all and sundry. That and a sincere dedication to songs. This naturally helps heaps in not only not sounding like this month’s flavor, but also in not sounding like the other bands within their similar sonic temperament.

For instance, The Gaye Blades differ significantly from The Ding-Dongs in concept and execution. Where the latter actually manage to sound like a long-lost and loopy slab of throbbing rockabilly meat, the former come off like a bunch of smart teens who while out searching for musical inspiration ended up unsuspectingly waylaid by somebody’s ultra-cool uncle’s record collection, the kids opportunistically absorbing wholesale moves and then applying them to a handful of brilliantly basic songs in the admirable attempt to win their high school’s battle of the bands. Did they do it? Well, if not the damned thing was rigged.

As should be obvious, The Gaye Blades self-titled 10-song LP is very much cut from Ramones-like cloth, though in concept not in execution, being much sunnier in disposition, though by no means oppressively so. One more time: this is ‘50s inflected power-popish (read: not pop-punkish) R&R with harmonies and hooks by the bushel. But unlike the Ding-Dongs, it all sounds just as likely to have been made last week as in the days of 1976. And that’s a fine duality to consider.

It may seem like I’ve spent the majority of this review talking around The Gaye Blades instead of about them, and that’s not incorrect. Fact is, bands of this level of simplicity and directness are somewhat resistant to extended analysis. The concept is extremely basic; the songs get down onto disc and it either succeeds or fails or falls somewhere in between. But the context of the concept is always worth a few hundred words. And when the knob is turned way up so that for a few too brief moments everything feels alright in the world, the music shines like a diamond.

Joseph's Picks Of The Week 2/17/12 - Cloud Nothings and Of Montreal

2012-02-17T09:02:00.000-08:00

There are a whole lot of bands around these days that sound a whole lot like the ‘90s, and Cloud Nothings is one of the best.

It’s important to remember that for many youthful artists and bands currently on the scene, the music of indie’s explosion from twenty years ago can sorta serve as Their Own Private Classic Rock. The first big point in Cloud Nothings’ favor is that the recordings don’t register as a hodgepodge of influences strung together in the absence of/attempt to locate a tangible musical voice; instead they sound like the work of one strapping young band.

Did I say band? Indeed I did, and that’s another interesting feature in Cloud Nothings’ trajectory. Commencing with records that inhabited (mostly by necessity) the thick of the lo-fi noisy-pop zone, guitarist/songwriter Dylan Baldi’s project quickly and sensibly evolved into a full band dynamic as the good words spread about a fresh-faced and talented tunesmith from Cleveland, OH. There were some understandable growing pains as the transition was made; from my angle, 2010’s self-titled LP suffered from too many songs that felt like reheated ‘90s pop-punk. The problem was that Baldi’s hooky songs sounded great through the constrained window of lo-fi’s bedroom/basement form but suffered when applied to a bolder/heavier rock sensibility. Thankfully on the Cloud Nothings’ new long-player Attack on Memory the kinks have been knocked out and then some; it’s a record that serves as both a worthy document of development and as Baldi’s most diversely realized group of songs.

A lot of old heads will give too much of the credit for the LP’s success to producer Steve Albini, and in a sense this is understandable. Up to this point it wouldn’t have been inappropriate to describe Cloud Nothings as quirky or nerdy, in large part due to Baldi’s adenoidal singing style, but on Attack on Memory the music registers as naturally heavy, with the leader’s voice having quickly matured into a appealing rasp that feels truly complimentary to the music instead of just accentuating a sharp contrast, which was often the case the previous LP. And the first two tracks on Attack on Memory make clear just how willing Baldi is to shake up the program of his own success. Opener “No Future/No Past” hits upon a mid-tempo bass heavy exercise in delayed dynamic release that feels like something the Touch and Go or Dischord labels would’ve released around ’92 or so (for kindred examples think Tar or Jawbox), and “Wasted Days” summons up the same era’s indie-centric combination of abrasiveness, melody, volume and velocity without sounding beholden to any specific exponent of the style. That the song is stretched out to eight and a half engaging minutes sets it up as a particularly apropos set closer in its probable ability to transform contemporary club crowds into a messy mass of flailing frenzy; kinda like that Archers of Loaf show you saw back in ’93, except minus that one insistently crowd-surfing dork who managed to give you a stiff-arm right in the face (screw that guy).

But Baldi hasn’t forsaken his pop roots. Both side one’s closer “Fall In” and the flip’s opener “Stay Useless” add to the sum of his melodic progressions, and while the pop-punkishness is still present, on Attack on Memory it’s starting to channel the thornier, more appealing exponents of the genre’s ‘90s manifestation such as Pacific-Northwest wildcards Seaweed, for one example. That these more typical offerings are followed by the very cooking instrumental “Seperation” helps to differentiate Baldi’s Cloud Nothings from other past and current bands that operate(d) with one clear figure in the leadership role, a place where music lyrics and vocals always seem to march in lockstep. And unlike Girls’ Christopher Owens’ near-instrumental “Lawrence”, a tribute to songwriter Lawrence Hayward of excellent UK band Felt, Baldi’s “Seperation” simply registers as the bold desire to rock the hell out, easily succeeding without lessening the leader’s primacy on Cloud Nothings’ state of affairs one little bit.

It also proves that Baldi has done much more than just dip a toe into the ‘90s indie rock pond, making Attack on Memory a sincere extension of the far from exhausted template of an earlier era (e.g. Fugazi’s long list of instrumentals, here [possibly] influencing Cloud Nothings in a manner markedly different from the DC band’s effect on say Mogwai) and not a shallow offering of nostalgia (i.e. “Famous For 15 Minutes: Indie Rock Edition – The Presidents of the United States of America vs. Veruca Salt).

But maybe the most promising aspect of Attack on Memory is signified through album closer “Cut You”’s abrupt fadeout, which posits this group as very much a work in progress, with Baldi having thus far avoided the potential trap of a codified sound. Things are still very much up in the air for Cloud Nothings; while all the strengths and growth they flaunt on this LP are a commendable achievement in themselves, as the needle lifts Attack on Memory sounds even better by boding extremely well for the future.

Of Montreal’s Paralytic Stalks clocks in at just under an hour and it ultimately registers every minute of its running time. However, that shouldn’t be read as a bad thing.

Ten albums deep into a career that falls into two distinct halves (with a little bit of expected overlap) beginning with the Elephant 6 twee-pop era and followed by the more stylistically robust glam and R&B inflected portion to which Paralytic Stalks is the latest unfurling, leader Kevin Barnes hasn’t exactly been identified with the idea of restraint in creativity at any point across that span. And this certainly has its appeal; part of the fun in Of Montreal’s younger toy-town psyche incarnation was the boldness of execution. 1997’s debut Cherry Peel made it immediately clear the band’s (as a band they indeed were in those days) music was a love it or leave it alone proposition. With the shift essentially begun with 2004’s Satanic Panic in the Attic and solidified on the big indie splash of 2007’s Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, Barnes’ confessional, heart-on-sleeve album-as-therapeutic cleansing has probably turned off as many listeners as it has won over with its conceptual boldness, judicious stylistic pilfering and strident agenda of newness.

Indeed, any curious body looking to dip a metaphoric toe into the pond of murky mascara that is Of Montreal should begin with Hissing Fauna, which remains his most widely appreciated release. Since that time, Barnes has been messing with the program of Fauna’s success with wildly divergent results, and Paralytic Stalks is the latest attempt to test the boundaries of his sound world and challenge the perceptions of his listenership. As released on double-LP vinyl Stalks can be summed up as having a relatively accessible disc followed by one that’s significantly less so. And it can be tempting to predict that in a decade sides A and B of many copies will be showing a lot more of the ol’ snap, crackle and pop of frequent play than will sides C and D. This is pure conjecture of course, and in fact Paralytic Stalks already feels like the kind of release that begs for a re-reviewing in six months’ or a year’s time.

My personal early impression is that it takes a little too long to really get cooking, not fully igniting until the arrival of its third track “Dour Percentage”, which sounds like the product of a fictitious mid-‘70s collab between David Bowie and Todd Rundgren recorded in the house of Gamble and Huff. Alas, in another era it would’ve made a great single, and for that matter so would the song immediately following it, “We Will Commit Wolf Murder”, which combines the by now expected glammy atmosphere with Barnes’ appealingly Robin Hitchcock-like vocal inflection before the song redirects into a tidy techno showdown. And “Malefic Dowery”’s flowery music-hall pop actually feels somewhat in line with the post-Barrett pop-direction Hitchcock explored back in the second half of the ‘80s, though Barnes’ weirdness is more immediate, and the relative directness of the lyricism is not only different from Hitchcock’s but distinct from the looser imagery found on the rest of the album. From there the nearly nine minutes of “Ye, Renew the Plaintiff” is the gateway to the record’s more experimental second half, and it’s easily the most successful example of Barnes’ ambition on the whole set (it’s certainly the most rocking), it’s pivot point standing as one of the release’s high points.

Barnes has stated the influence of 20th century classical heavyweights like Penderecki, Ives and Ligeti on Stalks, and that’s enough for some snipey folks to bellow the “p” word (that would be pretension) in his direction. Not me. The record’s last three tracks all show a desire to unfurl into drifts of abstraction, and I’ll take Barnes word for it regarding the specifics of his inspiration. I don’t think he’s pretending, and I don’t think ambition (successful or not) is any kind of artistic crime. To the contrary, I welcome it, particularly in comparison to the disappointingly smoothed out and safe direction of 2010’s Of Montreal effort False Priest. I do however think that his flights of experimentation could’ve used some editing (or in the case of “Wintered Debts” a few of the more fragmentary song bits could’ve benefited from some expanding), for in the end the finished result lacks the depth required to sustain such a long chunk of the album’s running time.

Word on the street is Stalks’ “Exorcismic Breeding Knife” is getting likened to “Revolution No. 9”, and if so it’s the kind of wide open observation that can either be paid as a compliment or wielded as a putdown. I won’t deny it crossed my mind while listening, and that I dug the slight similarity. It’s also worth mentioning how that particular bit of Beatles weirdness was in large part just a crib upon John Cage’s Variations IV, so people eager to brand Kevin Barnes as pretentious should perhaps take that parallel into consideration. In no way am I equating Paralytic Stalks and The White Album in terms of quality, I’m just noting the similarity in tactics.

If the boldness of STALKS’ aims ultimately fall short, its second half is far from a failure, and in fact “Authentic Pyrrhic Remission”, the record’s closing and longest track at over thirteen minutes, actually is the most successful of the final three experiments, opening strongly and heading gradually for outbound territory before culminating with a sweet bit of melancholy piano balladry that shows off Barnes’ potential at stripped-down, straight-ahead songwriting. In the end the ambition of PARALYTIC STALKS registers as a sincere attempt at artistic growth rather than as folly, and in a contemporary music scene rife with acts well versed with playing it safe that’s a real breath of fresh air.

Joseph's Picks Of The Week 2/10/12 - Tortoise and Sunn O))) Meets Nurse with Wound

2012-02-10T09:46:00.000-08:00

As they inch ever closer to twenty years of existence it can be increasingly easy to forget just how unique Tortoise sounded upon first emerging onto the scene, and additionally that they weren’t instantly beloved at the time by the indie community at large. You see, the general state-of-affairs during this period had gotten so saturated in predictable band configurations featuring bucket loads of guitar distortion and vocalists emitting syllables pertaining to lyrical sentiments that the arrival of an all instrumental collective influenced by dub, progressive rock, jazz (the dreaded fusion in particular), electronic and experimental musics could easily inspire pocketfuls of naysayers to accompany the tide of appreciative listeners receptive to Tortoise’s fresh set of sonic possibilities. Upon the release of the band’s self-titled debut in 1994 the term post-rock had yet to gain any currency, and indeed Tortoise are one of the defining groups from within that thorny and debatable non-genre. I can distinctly recall a smattering of folks both in print and in person grumbling throughout the mid-‘90s that this band’s music was indulgent and non-punk in nature. Horrors!!! To tackle the second putdown first; yes, in the strict formal sense Tortoise has nothing to do with punk, but by ’94 this reality frankly lacked any of the minimal pertinence it ever held (please understand that deriding something as being insufficiently punkly has been a go-to gambit for sour sticks in the sediment since Stiv Bators first picked his nose in public). But if not punk in structural terms Tortoise was a helluva lot more invested in the spirit of the style than a bunch of tired, crusty bums maiming the life out of anything that was once great in the Buzzcocks’ bag of tricks. And regarding the subject of self-indulgence, well ditto; conservative crabs have been sourcing that term to decry attempts to advance beyond the established mainstream norms for the better part of the last century. But I’m not making any profound statements, for Tortoise rather quickly proved their detractors to be carping up the wrong tree. The evidence can be found in the grooves of their first two brilliant LPs, ‘96’s MILLIONS NOW LIVING WILL NEVER DIE and ’98’s TNT, a pair of discs that have subsequently come to define their creative high-watermark. That’s subsequently and also erroneously the case, since 2001’s STANDARDS, freshly reissued on vinyl by the band’s longtime label home Thrill Jockey, often gets belittled as somehow lesser than the obvious one-two combination wallop of MILLIONS/TNT. I suspect the reason for this boils down to familiarity. Once a big gust of unexpected newness, by the release of STANDARDS Tortoise had inspired a set of like-minded practitioners and instigated a handful of splinter projects (including Sea and Cake, Brokeback, and Isotope 217) while the ballyhoo of post-rock had crested and found itself the subject of critical conjecture as to what exactly the term entailed (the main complaint I’ve encountered is that unlike say post-bop or post-punk, the term post-rock is simply too broad and vague a term to be useful as a descriptor, an argument I understand but am ultimately indifferent about). Suffice to say that in contrast to just a few years previous, when STANDARDS first landed securely in the racks Tortoise was being held to a rather more stringent set of, uh, standards (groan). And this is quite alright, since it’s exactly the kind of healthy give and take that can occur between fans/critics and bands, producing a dialogue hopefully conducive to inspiring an even higher level of output. And while certainly underrated in their discography, the bands fourth LP isn’t exactly criminally misunderstood. Over the years their sound has been simultaneously open to variation and surprisingly consistent from track to track and record to record, so curious neophytes wouldn’t be erring a bit if they chose STANDARDS as their introduction into the realm’s of Tortoise’s vast sound-world. Opener “Seneca” surely doesn’t skimp on the by now trademark ability of the unit to travel a diverse landscape of sonic ideas, moving from Mahavishnu Orchestra-like guitar expansion to heady space-age techno-funk without hesitation and then blending seamlessly into “Eros” with its glitchy electronic veneer gradually turning icily and angularly rhythmic. From there the proceedings take a darkly retro-futuristic sci-fi turn with the first half of the NAKED LUNCH referencing “Benway” reminding me slightly of something Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark might’ve done in their early, less commercial beginnings before the tune segues into a kinda-sorta hybrid of smooth Krautrock motorik and the sound of a mythical fusion band from around ’72 co-lead by pianist/survivor Herbie Hancock (he of SEXTANT, a key antecedent for Tortoise’s sensibility) and estimable vibist Bobby Hutcherson. So this is the perfect time to mention one of my favorite elements in Tortoise’s arsenal, specifically the vibraphone. And speaking of pleasing vibes of an entirely different sort, “Firefly” easily slips into a tense mood of neo-noir soundtrackery, displaying a powerful grasp on the sensibility of film composer Ennio Morricone without falling prey to the more obvious stylistic swipes that the less subtle disciples of the Italian master often dish out; instead they wisely choose to carry forward his methods into a contemporary rock (or post-rock, if you will) framework. “Firefly” feels readymade to accompany some ominous character breaking into a vintage Lincoln Continental in an alley behind a dilapidated warehouse. What’s that car doing there and what’s he looking for? Something bad is going to happen, I just know it. "Firefly" makes me yearn to hear what these guys would do in collaboration with one of our more musically sensitive (and visually astute) current filmmakers. For example I think they’d be a great potential fit with Michael Mann. “Six Pack”, not a Black Flag cover (or [to my knowledge at least] a Kenny Rogers tribute) ends side one with a concise bit of their perpetually on-the-spot up-tempo fusioneering. And the five tracks on side two are up to the same level of quality, with “Eden 2”’s dirty funk rhythming, “Blackjack”’s impressively subtle dynamic and tonal shifts and “Speakeasy”’s solid and jazzy melodic progression standing out. But it’s “Monica” that ultimately steals the show, opening with a flurry of slow-jam talk-box guitar that could easily get any two amorously inclined individuals to commence with some of the ol’ lovey-dovey on a (hopefully) leather-upholstered sofa. Insert tiger sound here. True, “Monica” doesn’t luxuriate in this mode for all that long, but it surely lingers around the motif for a suitable enough length of time for you to get down to business, Casanova. So go to it, and don’t worry, for STANDARDS will be waiting on the turntable when you’re through. Go on and play side two again, frisky. I mean as R. so astutely sung, I don’t see nothing wrong with a little bump and grind.

Sunn O))), Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson’s nearly fifteen year excursion into the outer reaches of doom/drone metal has produced an impressive heap of quality work, indeed holding some the defining examples of the metal genre as admirable platform for pure sonic experimentation rather than as the well trodden zone for the pot-fueled banging of heads and pumping of horned fists. I mean, pump away if you like, for the urge isn’t a bit inappropriate as regards the sound of Sunn O))), but it should be quickly obvious to any alert listener discovering their work that its whole raison d’être goes much deeper than simply producing a physical reaction expressed as ritual. Not that Sunn O))) disdain ritual; to the contrary, they partake in ceremonial activities such as the wearing of Grimm Robes and the use of fog to enhance the atmosphere of their powerful live performances. It’s just that ritual is less an expression of bodily motion (e.g. the headbang, the pogo, the pit, the pony or whatever dance/reaction you care to name) and far more spiritual or symbolic for this particular band. And Sunn O))) can be correctly considered a band, though they are more aptly described as that core duo of O’Malley and Anderson engaging in a multi-tiered collaboration with a shifting cast of musicians that’s included everyone from well established rock cats like Julian Cope, Joe Preston and Justin Broadrick to avant-exp-noise heavies such as Merzbow, Oren Ambarchi and John Weise. This interest in placing the aesthetic of Sunn O))) directly in the path of players possessing considerable talent was already apparent by the group’s second album, 2000’s superb excursion into glacial cascades of distorto-feedback textures ØØ VOID. On that record O’Malley and Anderson were joined by Scott Reader (ex-Kyuss, ex-Obsessed) on bass, Peter Stahl (of harDCore legends Scream and the excellently named doom metallers Goatsnake) on vocals and Petra Haden (ex-That Dog, ex-Decemberists and too many other projects to list) on violin and vocals. Not that you’d recognize them from the music. ØØ VOID’s four formidable tracks, the sum totaling nearly an hour in running time, collectively felt like being dunked into a gigantic cauldron of metallic riffs made liquid with the consistency of molasses, the flavor of pure Tabasco and the aroma of engine exhaust, i.e. a truly great immersion. I just returned to the record after an absence of a few years and through a succession of back to back listens am pleased to find it simultaneously holding both an immediate familiarity and a level of abstraction that reveals new elements with each encounter. And while Sunn O))) could’ve been rightfully satisfied with ØØ VOID's level of quality and let it rest in the hierarchy of their discography as an impressive finished work, well they weren’t. For in 2008 the record was released by the Japanese label Daymare on CD with a bonus disc of ØØ VOID “remixes” courtesy of Nurse with Wound titled THE IRON SOUL OF NOTHING, a fascinating document that’s just been given an expanded and superior standalone 2LP vinyl issue from the imprint Ideologic Organ. For those not in the know, Nurse with Wound is essentially the byproduct of classic Brit obscurantist Steven Stapleton and whoever he chooses to work with, and since the dawn of the ‘80s the name has been synonymous with an intriguing and prolific outsider aura that’s been categorized as everything from drone to noise to industrial (in the early, pre-dance sense of the term). NWW featured a dark, experimental, extremely personal approach to music making that found the “band” rubbing shoulders with such disparate entities as Current 93, Coil, Organum, Whitehouse, Jim O’Rourke, Stereolab and Krautrock legends Faust. Suffice it to say that anybody wanting to bask in the full breadth of this globe’s legitimately underground progressions over the last thirty years needs to spend some real time getting acquainted with Nurse with Wound. Hell, just start with the debut, the still wondrously confounding CHANCE MEETING ON A DISSECTING TABLE OF A SEWING MACHINE AND AN UMBRELLA from ’79 (the record that included the now rightfully legendary insert dubbed the “NWW-list”, a collection of obscure influences upon Stapleton’s singular ethos that had legions of listeners salivating over its allusiveness for years until the internet finally allowed folks to actually hear much of what the fuss was about) and get gobsmacked but good. THE IRON SOUL OF NOTHING finds Stapleton reworking ØØ VOID so drastically that it becomes an entirely new sonic object that remains in consort with Sunn O)))’s considerable aims. "Dysnystaxis (...A Chance Meeting with Somnus)" builds into a captivatingly eerie piece of drone reminiscent of certain foreboding pathways of Modern Classical or more tangibly the dark ambient genre as offered by names like Lustmord. This direction is further explored on both parts of "Ra at Dawn (Rapture, At Last, Numbered by Her Light)" (comprising sides two and four of the set), but it’s "Ash on the Trees (The Sudden Ebb of a Diatribe)" that stands apart; where the other three sides present soundscapes of creeping instrumental tension, “Ash…” is at least somewhat about the familiarity and release of language, bringing Stahl’s vocals, previously buried under the rumble and roar of ØØ VOID, to the forefront and then combining them with a collage of sounds that includes a startling barrage of shattered glass. THE IRON SOUL OF NOTHING ultimately moves so far beyond the template of remixing that it’s far more appropriate to describe it as a reimagining or even better as a reinterpretation, so it makes perfect sense that the finished work has been given not only its own title but has finally been distinguished with its own release. To consider it a curious digression in the work of Sunn O))) or Nurse with Wound is a mistake, for it’s loaded with the uncompromising spirit of both parties.

Joseph's Picks Of The Week 2/3/12 - A Winged Victory for the Sullen and Bare Wires

2012-02-03T09:33:00.000-08:00

My main reason for pricking up the ears over the self-titled debut from A Winged Victory for the Sullen was specifically due to the participation of Adam Wiltzie, he who comprises one half of Austin, TX drone kingpins Stars of the Lid. I’ve been a fan of that duo for a long while now, with my appreciation spreading to previous Wiltzie “side-projects” like The Dead Texan and Windsor for the Derby. The other member of AWVftS is Dustin O’Halloran, and while I knew a little about Devics, the Los Angeles indie band where he works with vocalist Sara Lov, I was frankly clueless to the man’s solo output as pianist and film composer. Checking out O’Halloran’s first two plainly (you might even say Eno-esquely) titled records, 2004’s PIANO SOLOS and 2006’s PIANO SOLOS VOL. 2, I was pleasantly struck by the crisp, calm nature of his style, which fits snuggly into the genre of Classical, Modern. And yeah, that’s an awfully big corral of sometimes restless cats, so please let me elaborate; Dustin O’Halloran’s music possesses the same sort of quiet, relaxed intensity that’s absolutely perfect for rustic, backstreet antiquarian bookshops. Picture this, won’t you? While browsing the Fiction section’s pricey but pristine first edition hard-covers of Borges, Barth and Barthelme (aka the three Bs), the music’s unobtrusive assertiveness first catches the ear. Briefly the thought tangles on the tongue tip to ask from whence the music derives, but the college-aged counter clerk appears completely engrossed in a tattered copy of AGAINST INTERPRETATION and likely doesn’t want to be bothered. Shades of Arvo Pärt, Olivier Messiaen, and even Morton Feldman become briefly explicit, but the music swirling about the shelves of major volumes obviously doesn’t belong to the oeuvre of any of those heavyweight names. And yet it’s exactly that kind of sound, i.e. just right for taking the highly caffeinated, sleep-deprived edge off an extremely sunlit morning; it’s relaxing, yet possessive of a strong backbone. And that’s just O’Halloran’s first two records. I haven’t even heard all of his most recent, highly touted stuff (though 2010’s solo live VORLEBEN is after a half dozen listens proving to be a true killer), mainly because I’m sorta stuck on this A Winged Victory for the Sullen collab. Frankly, it’s proving a disc as strong as its name is wordy (which perhaps influenced my bookshop scenario up above, heh). My first impression upon sitting down with this record (and while not exclusively a “sit-down” [or “lie-down”] LP, I can’t imagine it appropriately connecting with non-stationary listeners without the aid of headphones) was that without hints I’d likely never guessed Wiltzie’s involvement. And yet the tangible difference in sound doesn’t register as disconnected from the general evolution of Stars of the Lid’s impressive dronescapes, mainly because SotL’s numerous flights of extendedness, while occasionally abrasive and agitated, were more often inclined toward spacious, relaxing and borderline ethereal motifs. Like the best of Stars of the Lid (and I should mention that Brian McBride is an equal part of that duo’s considerable success), A WINGED VICTORY FOR THE SULLEN’s seven pieces lend themselves quite easily to the possibility of soundtracking the bold non-linearity of experimental film. But where movies employing SotL would ideally be projected onto a large wall during a hip, smoky gathering in some saucy boho’s loft, AWVftS feels far more suited for exhibition in a smart museum’s program of new film or even in the hallowed halls of academe. Indeed, during that first listen my thoughts did occasionally turn to Eno’s MUSIC FOR FILMS, a comparison still worthy of mention with the big caveat that while AWVftS’s music is pointed in the approximate direction of the ambient zone it never really gets there. Instead, it generally examines an appealing three-way split between gestures of ambient motion, the unique depth of feeling that’s sometimes achieved by chamber classical, and a string section driven post-rock sensibility that’s loosely related to groups like Sigur Rós and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. And this is cool since A Winged Victory for the Sullen, the nature of their moniker aside, smartly avoids repeating the melancholic bombast of those two bands. Again, the post-classical aura of O’Halloran’s piano really sets the tone here; while “We Played Some Open Chords and Rejoiced, For the Earth Had Circled the Sun Yet Another Year” (did I say something about wordy?) opens with a slow wash of tough string ache, by the one minute mark the piano has begun establishing that AWVftS is disinterested in reaching for emotional extremes in favor of cultivating an atmosphere of gentle, if occasionally tense and even sometimes subtly ominous beauty. But please don’t infer that fans of Sigur Rós and Godspeed won’t find AWVftS right up their alley. Anybody into the more un-rock side of post-rock should certainly queue this record up for inspection. Same goes for those into the more un-rock side of vintage Krautrock (say Cluster or Popul Vuh) or even Fripp and Eno’s EVENING STAR. ‘Tis true that my younger self would’ve surely derided A WINGED VICTORY FOR THE SULLEN as so much New Age hoo-hah, but back in those days I was far more prone to making shortsighted and even inaccurate statements. Please don’t fall prey to the same mistake. Adam Wiltzie and Dustin O’Halloran have crafted a fine and thoughtful debut album smartly co-released by the imprints Kranky (US) and Erased Tapes (UK). In fact, I can claim with confidence that it’s one of the best new records to hit my ear canals in all of 2011.

Gonna go uptown so I can get myself straight

Gonna go see my mama see if I got myself a date

Time is runnin’ out I’m comin’ right down to the wire

Gotta go do something to get myself higher

Lou Reed- “I’m Gonna Move Right In”

The music of Bare Wires requires a certain nonchalant swagger. And with a few exceptions, most of them from New York in the ‘70s (see above), I tend to think this blend of attitudinal rocking is best exemplified by bands hailing from the American West Coast, particularly it’s southernmost state. Yeah, if you have a jones to itch some post-Stones, post-“Search and Destroy”, post-Dolls expressions of trashy white-boy cool replete with cheap shades, cigarettes perpetually smoldering and dangling, and maybe even a scarf or denim jacket to help sell the strut, then indeed California is the place you ought to be. Some will quibble with this idea, and that’s more than alright. It’s in no way a stone tablets kind of concept. But here are three examples in favor of my thesis; The Dogs’ KBD-classic “Slash Your Face”, a big helping of mid-period Red Kross, and Dream Syndicate’s atypically silver-tongued “John Coltrane Stereo Blues”. Bare Wires are from Oakland, though they originally formed in Memphis, and the reality of this coastal commute only adds to the allure of the band’s glammy, power-popish early punk goodness (The Dogs also left Detroit for Los Angeles). Now lots of folks dismiss this particular strain of rock as the regressive stuff of posing and dilettantish small-scale rockstar-ism, but I frankly disagree; smarts in rock music shouldn’t necessarily equate to intellectualism or in lieu of that to an explicit punk-derived non-arrogance. I’ll acknowledge that stepping into this harry playground without the needed songs or chops is a recipe for disaster. With the right sound, this sort of approach harkens all the way back to the true badassery promulgated by the original R&R impulse (Berry, Lewis, Little Richard, Presley), but without it the whole endeavor will quickly become besieged with a whole lotta emptiness that inevitably leads to the catcalls of preening and poserism. That’s why to this day so many bad memories linger over ‘80s glam-metal (and to be fair, lots of those bands had okay songs, it’s just that hackneyed delivery and overzealous production sank most of them like an, um, lead balloon). But Bare Wires thankfully hang out on the unabashedly punk side of the street; on their debut, 2009’s ARTIFICIAL COLOR, they did a great freshman job of alternating a hyperactive melodic tendency with the gusto of streetwalking cheetahs with hearts full of if not napalm then some unidentified but surely harmful fluid. Nothing exceeded the three minute mark, often barely eclipsing two, and its 12 songs formed an assured and concise statement of purpose. Their second full-length effort, 2010’s SEEKING LOVE did nothing to mess with the program, though it was quickly clear that bandleader Matthew Melton was hitting his stride as a songwriter; instead of the tunes vaguely alternating between the poles of power-pop and punk, he was becoming far more adept at integrating those elements into each track. Plus, the guitars were fuller and loaded with gnawing riffing, and the rhythm section continued to be unfalteringly on the spot. Well, last year found Melton and co knocking out a 10 song 10-inch titled CHEAP PERFUME (the best kind, natch) on the South Paw label and the results besmirch the Bare Wires name not a bit. In fact, I’m ready to crown ‘em as one of the best unheralded straight-up rock units currently on the scene. And PERFUME really helps underscore the casual shrewdness behind Melton’s mode of operation. Not only has he gotten even more able at blending the power pop and the punk chug, but it’s suddenly clearer than ever that maybe Melton’s slickest trick is how he successfully grapples with the brazen and addictive insubstantiality of glam-rock’s more doofus side (think Slade or Sweet, not Bowie or T. Rex) with the everlasting depth of goodness from names like Arthur Lee, Alex Chilton, Johnny Thunders and Richard Hell. Those four names hopefully make it plain that Bare Wires are tapping into a direct rock tradition; there is nothing twisted or tweaked or ironic about them, and that’s refreshing. I also really like how this band blatantly cribs/quotes from previous songs like it ain’t no big deal (and you know what? ‘tis not). On ARTIFICIAL COLOR it was a sly variation on Devo’s “Gut Feeling”, on SEEKING LOVE it was the grand unlikelihood of The Drifter’s perennial “Under the Boardwalk”, and on CHEAP PERFUME it’s a nab from ABBEY ROAD. Which song? Not telling. Some things you just have to find out for yourself. Anybody that’s ever been blissed-out by some paunchy shop clerk’s selection of The Records’ “Starry Eyes” while flipping through titles in a dank but delicious basement wax shack shouldn’t hesitate to check out Bare Wires. And any ears equally slain by the first batch of KILLED BY DEATH volumes and Numero Group’s YELLOW PILLS: PREFILL compilation should find this band a real peanut butter and chocolate combination. Even if you “just” dig pre-crap Replacements I’d say give them a shot. It’s rare for a band of this ilk to knock out three long players of such high quality; that CHEAP PERFUME is Bare Wires’ best one yet only increases the impressiveness of their achievement.

Joseph's Picks Of The Week 1/27/12 - Charles "Packy" Axton and MISSISSIPPI BLUES 1927-1941

2012-01-27T06:27:00.000-08:00

With a subject as wide as music, it should come as no great surprise that a ridiculous number of indispensible volumes are currently stuffing library shelves and cluttering up the coffee tables of connoisseurs all over this tirelessly spinning globe. But on top of that mountainous stack of worthy texts sits a few select titles that simply inhabit a class all by themselves; Robert Palmer’s DEEP BLUES, Nick Tosches’ UNSUNG HEROES OF ROCK ‘N’ ROLL, A. B. Spellman’s FOUR LIVES IN THE BEBOP BUSINESS, Peter Guralnick’s FEEL LIKE GOING HOME and SWEET SOUL MUSIC, Valerie Wilmer’s AS SERIOUS AS YOUR LIFE, Greil Marcus’ INVISIBLE REPUBLIC (aka THE OLD WEIRD AMERICA)and Clinton Heylin’s FROM THE VELVETS TO THE VOIDOIDS are amongst the books in this stratum all possessing the three essential ingredients, namely depth of knowledge, controlled passion for the subject and an abundance of prose skill, that ultimately combine to form a very rare and valuable thing. Another entry in this singular zone is IT CAME FROM MEMPHIS by Robert Gordon, a sort of celebratory alternate musical history of the city that covers everything from blues survivor Furry Lewis to lunatic DJ Dewey Phillips to southern hipster/musician extraordinaire Jim Dickinson to horribly underrated post-bop pianist Phineas Newborn to u-ground rock scene mainstays Alex Chilton and Tav Falco. Charles “Packy” Axton also gets essential documentation in the book, and in fact the pages of MEMPHIS served as my introduction to this true outsider legend. But it’s a cinch that millions have been touched by the guy’s sphere of influence even if the majority of those listeners haven’t a clue to the significance of his name. For starters, tenor saxophonist Axton’s mother Estelle and Uncle Jim Stewart founded Stax records, one of the cornerstones upon which the foundation of 20th Century music is based. And anybody that’s grooved to the delirious instrumental nutriment of “Last Night” by The Mar-Keys has heard the quality of his horn. A notoriously hard drinker (dead in ’74 from cirrhosis of the liver) with a difficult temperament to match, a big part of his posthumous reputation is how he relegated himself to the margins of a musical legacy, but an equally interesting aspect of his story is how he played a role in the demolition of the barrier of segregation through everyday associations across the color line and did so with nary a trace of saintliness or righteousness. People like Charles Axton are often retroactively assessed with the descriptor “colorblind”, but that sort of rubs me the wrong way. I can’t help but feel it proposes many integrationist individuals (both well known and marginal) as being somehow unable to really identify cultural and racial differences in their fellow man. In the case of Packy Axton however it’s pretty obvious that the dude was simply out searching for the life-affirming variety (also known as kicks) that is so often desired by young, open-minded, artistically inclined individuals; he wasn’t trying to change the world or make a statement, he was simply grabbing life by the horns. But Axton did actually end up making a statement (of sorts), and it’s just been issued by the fine folks at the Light in the Attic label as LATE LATE PARTY 1965-67. Its 17-songs add up to a huge sum that serves as essential augmentation for any right thinking individual’s collection of ringers form the vaults of Stax and Hi. Featuring tunes released under the names Martinis, L.H. & the Memphis Sounds, The Pac-Keys, Stacey Lane, and The Packers, with this last a rapidly assembled band whose “Hole in the Wall” was Axton’s second brief collusion with chart success, reaching #5 R&B (and #43 Pop) in 1965. As his second most popular song, “Hole in the Wall” sheds important light on Packy’s performative range; recorded in Los Angeles (where Axton had bailed after tiring of the difficulties with Uncle Jim) with Steve Cropper, Al Jackson and Booker T. hisself (all out touring with the Stax Revue), the song toes a suave line between the M.G.’s and the sort of non-crap pop-jazz proffered during this incredibly fertile period by guys like Ramsey “The In Crowd” Lewis. And I’m happy to report that “Hole in the Wall” sticks out not a bit qualitatively on LATE LATE PARTY, the album cohering into a very satisfying package. The Martinis and The Pac-Keys (featuring members of the superb Bar-Kays of “Soul Finger” fame) take up over half of the LPs tracks and to fine effect, with the former group leaning somewhat toward M.G.’s style riff as groove as eternal love and the latter hitting upon the horn based gorgeousness that later defined the post-Axton Mar-Key horns (who backed up Otis dontcha know). But there are all sorts of twists in store; “Hung Over”, a tight little frat-party intsro by The Martinis holds some of the goofus spirit of fellow Memphis weirdo Travis Wammack, L.H. and the Memphis Sounds shoot for a Motown-esque vocal group dynamic and score with ease, The left-field kazoo solo on The Pac-Keys’ “Hip Pocket” just oozes a post-4AM in the studio screw it let’s do it verve, and singer Stacy Lane rumbles like Edwin Starr on the locomotive “No Ending”. LATE LATE PARTY 1965-67 is simply a no-brainer acquisition for serious soul collectors but it’ll more than spike the juice of mere dabblers. In fact, it might just turn those dabblers into flat-out aficionados. What a nice possibility.

It’s fitting that the Mississippi blues, a form largely born from severity and often performed as a means of emotional survival in the harsh Jim Crow environment, should be one of this county’s most lasting cultural artifacts. And many folks automatically equate the blues of Mississippi with the region of the Delta, which is easy to do since the dominant innovators from the state (Charlie Patton, Son House, Skip James, Robert Johnson) all hailed from that region, but this associative jump doesn’t accurately encompass the sheer bounty of what transpired within those borders in the early portion of the 20th century. For a strong taste of the state’s diversity of style please investigate Yazoo Records’ 1967 compilation MISSISSIPPI BLUES 1927-1941, a truly mind-blowing document that’s just been given a fine repress on 180 gram vinyl. Yes, each of the abovementioned heavyweights is included here, with the mesmerizing and iconoclastic styles of the four being simultaneously buffered and accentuated by a sweet slew of lesser known but crucial names. The proceedings start strong and suitably uncharacteristically with “Gang of Brown Skin Women” by Harvey Hull and Long Cleve Reed (aka the Down Home Boys), playing a tune from ’27 that’s described in Bradley Sweet’s liner notes (through the source of Skip James) as spanning as far back as the early 1800s, though the song is boldly outfitted with a then up to date (if still decidedly rural) veneer replete with scat-singing gestures and a general good-time post Vaudeville atmosphere that feels more in line with the general M.O. of Memphis. The song is an obvious and delicious bit of lively fantasizing that would’ve fit right into the songster repertoire of Cannon’s Jug Stompers, the Memphis Jug Band, or even fellow homeboys the Mississippi Sheiks. In other words, great stuff for parties and barbeques. Fiddle-man Henry “Son” Sims’ is best known today for being a key accompanist for Charlie Patton (and later for pre-Chicago Muddy Waters), but on the buoyant if keening “Be True Be True Blues” it’s Patton backing up Sims to beautiful result. Over the years I’ve been unable to shake the song’s unschooled street-corner vibe from reminding me of unpolished pre-blues glory as peddled by such legends as Henry “Ragtime Texas” Thomas. You however might feel differently. It’s with “I’m Leavin’ Town” by William Harris that things start to take a turn for the familiar. With guitar assistance by Joe Robinson this masterful duet is at once among the greatest and most slept on of all prewar blues cuts, a loose, raw, shit-talking beast of a tune that’s justifies the price of MISSISSIPPI BLUES all by itself. That Harris is essentially a historical cipher has undoubtedly kept his legacy loitering out in the margins of blues history, and that’s a damn drag. He doesn’t have enough tracks to fill out a full release under his own name (only seven of his sides remain with us), and while his material is suitably tough it does lack the doom-laden starkness that’s turned those lingering four names into such mythic legends. One great reason for reissuing an LP with tracks that have subsequently been filtered onto hundreds of releases (at least) since this inaugural compiling way back in ’67 is how it gives Harris a fresh chance to be heard by as many people as possible through simple association with far more prominent artists like House and Johnson. That Harris is followed by two ass-flaying tracks by Skip James is just gravy. With his strained and stressed and at times harshly feminine vocal delivery weaving through the threatening aura of his playing style, James has long been one of the most fascinating and stylistically extreme artists in the vast sphere of the blues. Once the ear has adjusted to his unique delivery and emotional heft his work can become absolutely entrancing; it’s the epitome of Robert Palmer’s concept of “deep blues”, and it could easily be used as the dictionary antonym of “easy listening”. The music of Skip James requires attention and commitment, but it also offers a huge reward. Even in a genre that always seems to flirt with the monochromatic (which is frankly part of the music’s appeal), nothing else sounds like him. What a rare and wonderful thing. The three tracks included here by Delta behemoth Charlie Patton are characteristically varied, for he was a consummate performer slash entertainer and simply one of the most important names in all of American Music. The Delta blues basically starts with him. Just think of it this way; without him there would’ve been no Howlin’ Wolf, and without that raspy giant there’d be no Rolling Stones or Beefheart, and that’s just for starters. A truly scary thought. Patton’s “Hang it on the Wall” ( a redo of his earlier “Shake it and Break it”) is a pure throw-down of party-time tomfoolery that surely raised many a house into pure rocking frenzies all over the region, his “Mean Black Moan” features the high-pitched bow of “Son” Sims along with bucket loads of surface noise (just think of it as ambiance, okay?) and the man working through some typically intense love-ache, but it’s the perfect balance of mood and dynamics resonating throughout “Pea Vine Blues” that really cooks up the gusto in my crib. Though her discography is scant (a mere six sides) Geeshie Wiley nonetheless ranks as one of the greatest female singers/players in the entirety of the rural blues. Beyond her actual recordings little is known of her beyond rumor; she might’ve came from the city of Natchez, maybe she was involved with Papa Joe McCoy, perhaps she married Casey Bill Weldon, etc. What’s indisputable is the quality of her work. On “Eagles on a Half” Wiley combines crisp, percussive guitar with a relaxed vocal style that gains emotional resonance through her ease of delivery. To elaborate, she eschews the often piercing tones of many early urban blues singers, with this lack of urbanity ironically making her sound far more modern. If almost nothing is known of Wiley than Mattie Delaney is a complete blank. Obviously influenced by Charlie Patton, “Tallahatchie River Blues” shows her wielding a strong, smooth guitar hand and a voice that while more assertive than Wiley’s (as befitting her range) still integrates quite well with her instrumental ability. 12-string guitarist John Byrd comes from the songster tradition and unsurprisingly for that lifestyle he moved around the country quite a bit. The majority of his work was documented in Kentucky, and that’s where this album’s “Billy Goat Blues” was recorded. This marks him (along with William Harris who moved to Chicago in the 30s) as one of the first Mississippi blues transplants. That his style differs so stridently from the Delta mold is an appealing complication. Bobby Grant’s “Nappy Head Blues” from ’27 is so reminiscent of Son House that its existence as a supposed case of parallel development is somewhat confounding (House apparently had no idea who Grant was). As a brilliant bit of undiluted Delta science, it makes total sense to follow it in the playing order with House his own regal self, heard here circa 1941 with “Delta Blues”. The jump in time is illustrative. This is the only track on the record to feature harmonica (superbly rendered by Leroy Williams) and shows the big jump the Delta style had made before taking another grand leap into the city of Chicago in the tail end of the decade. At the point of “Delta Blues”’ recording Muddy Waters was still on Stovall’s Plantation, and to play these tracks by Grant and House immediately before Muddy’s “Walkin’ Blues” from 1950 (a standard first recorded by House) is to get hipped quick to one deep stream of country to city developments. But another marker of rural to urban transmogrification is represented through the figure of Robert Johnson. The dark mythic aura that persists in surrounding this most famous of Delta artists continues to somewhat obscure the fact that he was simply an amazing one-man synthesizer of the form. Initially a protégé of House, he was also undoubtedly influenced by the more citified guitar playing of Lonnie Johnson for just one example, and this blend of styles can be clearly heard on this LP’s closer “Dead Shrimp Blues”. If Johnson was vital in the alchemy of down home and uptown modes (keep in mind that John Hammond wanted him for his first “From Spirituals to Swing” concert in December of ’38 [where he would’ve shared the stage with amongst others The Count Basie Orchestra] but unfortunately he was already cold in the ground), he wisely knew better than to soften the dark swagger of the Delta; the “shrimp” of this tune refers not to tasty crustaceans but to what Bradley Sweet describes as harlots, a term of slang already archaic at the time of Johnson’s recording. That makes the line “woke up this morning/all my shrimps was dead and gone” rather menacing to say the least, and it’s a particularly apropos way to end the album. MISSISSIPPI BLUES 1927-1941 isn’t the last word on its subject (check out Yazoo’s MISSISSIPPI BLUES MASTERS 1927-1935 for a more extensive look and with almost no overlap), but for many ears (like mine) it essentially was the first word. It’s great to have it back in the racks.

Joseph's Picks Of The Week 1/20/12 - The OBN IIIs and Shannon and the Clams

2012-01-20T09:50:00.000-08:00

It’s a natural circumstance that naysayers and grouches of all stripes will soapbox the end of quality sounds, croaking to any ears that’ll listen over the perceived diminishing returns of the contemporary musical landscape. It’s not a bit hard to find these joyless souls, for they often hold up barstools and lean on coffee counters looking to impart their faulty wisdom in the hopes of mobilizing a sad-sack army, and they might even be that wagging tongue nobody wants to run into at the worksite water-cooler. Indeed, these sour sorts can also be friends and family; if this is the case an early intervention can steer the individual back onto the true path, but please understand that knowing the symptoms is a MUST. For instance, if they bark that jazz has lost its gusto, play them some Peter Evans or Darius Jones and fast. And if they complain that nobody spits off sparks like the old-time musicians of yore, introduce them to Frank Fairfield or Charlie Parr immediately. If the accusation is a more complex one, like the absence of truly unique and non-trad solo players-writers-voices, then just sit them down in a room with Bill Callahan or Joanna Newsom and watch the scales fall from their eyes. One of the most common bits of crotchety carping is a short bit of business; specifically the “punk is dead” screed. People have been saying this for nearly as long as the form has been around, but it’s obviously never been accurate. The complicating factor is that punk’s qualitative window of opportunity is so often very finite. People faultily assume that when a beloved band (or a bunch of them) hits the skids with inferior recordings it foretells the end of the genre as a whole. No, punk is largely the game of pissed-off, impolite kids banding together in defiance of the standards of old folks everywhere; it’s all explained with bold, succinct strokes in the title of The Dead Boys’ classic YOUNG LOUD AND SNOTTY. If you happen to discover someone fuming over punk’s obsolescence quickly play them anything by the OBN IIIs, particularly the band’s sizzling debut long player from last year THE ONE AND ONLY, released through prolific indie Tic Tac Totally. Said curmudgeon will either snap right back onto the trail of righteous thinking or you’ll know right away that sadly, you’re attempt at resuscitating a musical mind occurred too late, for this Austin TX band, led by and named for singer/screamer Orville Bateman Neeley III, pound down some of the finest, rippingest, unsubtlest Stooge-oid rumble and slam to have graced my long-violated ears since the heyday of the ‘80s Australian u-ground or even ‘85’s LAST TRAIN TO HAGERSTOWN by mighty Maryland maulers The Left. But the OBN IIIs are far from any sort of throwback, as THE ONE AND ONLY’s “When the Shit Fits” easily proves. It swaggers forth with the kind of mid-tempo muscle that was occasionally summoned by only a select handful of the most inspired post-Detroit bashers, but frankly none of those admirable bands possessed the attitudinal daring to open with what most people would choose as the closer. That’s what’s called chutzpah, and Mr. Neeley and co has it in buckets. Another swell reference point for the band’s sound is San Francisco’s first wave titans Crime. Like those monsters of “Hot Wire My Heart” fame, OBN III’s care not a bit about speed for the sake of it, instead choosing to simply buckle down and deliver dense slabs of riff crunch that add up to one huge wallop. Plus, these guys understand a few crucial factors about the peaks and valleys of rock dynamics as spread across two sides of a full length punk disc, a fact made clear by THE ONE AND ONLY’s dozen songs forming a scorching mass that suffers from neither sameiness nor unwise stabs at sonic or thematic variation. The OBN III’s basically do one thing and do it extremely well, and all importantly they recognize this not as a fault but as their core strength, at least at this stage in the game. It’s certainly possible they could slowly integrate disparate elements into the whole, for this is after all just their first LP. And based on this slab of righteous throb, any motions toward stylistic branching will be far more likely to arise as natural integrations and not ill-advised stabs at tonal variety. But the OBN IIIs’ songs flaunt such a high standard of unhyphenated punk quality that I’d like to see how long they can stay on this direct course; two or three more albums of this pure (but not purist) expression of heaving junk and golden snot would signify a true rarity in the punk continuum. As a truly heavy band (meaning they possess a bruising rhythm section that understands its role and works it to the hilt) they could prove up to the task. Perhaps the best track on THE ONE AND ONLY is “Get off Your Knees”, a gorgeously ragged bout of post-Heartbreakers throat rip and string burn, but the Eddy Current-like “Communicated to Death” isn’t far behind, nor is the moody Iggy-isms of “New Dark Age”. But the more I listen to this record the more I’m tempted to declare that the OBN III’s are the stuff of truly classic punk imbued with the vitality of the here and now, which means this gets my highest recommendation.

For many the concept of pop music is synonymous with hit singles, constant radio play and some aspect of celebrity. And this is certainly the dominant public role of pop, as a marketplace driven thing that weaves into the culture and enters the consciousness of individuals in ways far beyond the realm of personal choice: blasted over the public address systems in sports arenas or used on television as bumpers to commercial breaks as those same sporting events are transmitted to millions; used in trailers to movies where the actual song will never actually appear; and playing over the radio in the drug store while standing in line to buy cold medicine. This can be summed up as the transmission of pop songs as a sort of musical manifestation of a language virus as proposed by writer William S. Burroughs. It’s a concept that can actually be somewhat interesting from a distance but is assuredly less so after being broadsided by the (sorta intrinsic) banality of Katy Perry for the sixth time in one calendar day. To put a fine point on it, this isn’t the realm of musical discourse that appeals to me; I’m far more interested in subterranean pop, a concept first exposed to me through the early fanzine rumblings of a Pacific Northwest concern that eventually became known as the record label Sub Pop. Up to that point, as a young rockist lad I’d superficially identified the concept of pop as simply the enemy. And it was a long time before I truly shook off the bias against pop as form; for years I denigrated Motown slickness as inferior to the earthiness of Stax for just one example. Actually listening to a grip of Motown stuff outside the typical golden oldies radio rotation helped hip me to the reality of pop as an actual highly adaptable style and not just a signifier of chart success. Buddy Holly, Beatles, Beach Boys and Bowie helped out as well. Since the dawn of the 1980s there has been a fairly well documented pop underground birthed from the comely loins of post-punk as inseminated by the liberating ethos of DIY, and while this global scene has ebbed and flowed in both prolificacy and critical favor over the years, it’s always been a true alternative to the increasingly vapid and coldly corporate flavors of the pop mainstream. Right now subterranean pop, if not experiencing a boom, does seem to be in a fairly fertile, healthy period, and one example would be Oakland CA’s Shannon and the Clams. Fronted by Shannon Shaw, a name/voice some will recognize from participation in excellent fellow Oaktown residents Hunx and His Punx, the Clams are a boldly backward-looking proposition. They could even be described as retro, a term I normally employ as a negative. But the pop playground is quite receptive to the concept of tackling older, outmoded sensibilities and revitalizing them as new while never denying (and often celebrating) the appropriation; Adele, Neko Case and US. Girls are three wildly divergent examples of this practice (both in terms of style and popularity) that just happen to share the same gender as Ms. Shaw. So if Shannon and the Clams are retro they are shrewdly so, and the cut of their jib encompasses a limited base that still provides a plurality of possibilities, specifically pre-Beatles American pop and rock. On the Clams’ debut I WANNA GO HOME this meant a big dish of trashy rockabilly, some unabashedly punk moves lifted from no earlier than the Carter Administration and the sort of urban greaser vibes that still give Lou Reed a tentpole in his Speedos to this very day. No need for Viagra with that guy. Just ask Laurie. But on SLEEP TALK, last year’s exceptional sophomore effort, the Clams retain those elements and add Spector-esque girl group gestures and lightly applied doo wop nods to the equation. And it’s a good, spicy stew, opening with “Baby Don’t Do it”’s “My Boyfriend’s Back”-style handclaps and glorious echo-laden production, the whole thing lovingly screaming BACK TO MONO. Now lots of folks will hear this record’s production and consider it affected. That’s simply a miscalculation inspired by hearing too much contempo radio pabulum. Just because Shannon and the Clams choose to eschew the gloss of tech in the delivery of their songs doesn’t mean their work is mannered or inscrutable in a present-day context. Frankly, SLEEP TALK is drenched with analog warmth that serves as an antidote to the sterility that often exudes from the digital realm. The real growing quality on this LP has thus far been its applications of not just doo wop but also the flashes of throwaway teenage trash from an era when rock ‘n’ roll held no real cultural capital. Specifically, I’m thinking of “The Cult Song”, with its growling “unga-bunga”-style vocal hi-jinks. And there are plenty of prickly pop confections on display throughout SLEEP TALK, but I also like how they’ve enhanced the ‘70s punk angle. On I WANNA GO HOME these motions sorta registered as indebted to The Rezillos (which is cool), but on this record's “King of the Sea” they inch toward the heaving worthiness of The Bags or even fellow Bay area residents The Avengers, the song forming a nice punkoid combo punch with the Mary Monday-esque “Toxic Revenge”. To sum up, I don’t have a problem with Best Coast working with Jon Brion; in fact I’m curious to hear what they come up with. But the idea of their artistic union just doesn’t stoke my coals like the unrefined charms of Shannon and the Clams, and I’d love to see Shaw and crew head out on a nice nationwide tour with Mark Sultan preaching the gospel of doo wop & girl group’s eternal disposability.

Joseph's Picks Of The Week 1/13/12 - The Louvin Brothers and Townes Van Zandt

2012-01-13T09:17:00.000-08:00

Obviously the cover of Ira and Charlie Louvin’s 1959 country gospel classic holds a bold kitsch value that threatens to eclipse the considerable quality of the album’s contents. For some, the sight of the white-suited Louvin’s standing in front of an ultra-cheap set of burning rocks (actually well hidden tires) and a wooden devil possibly inspired by a can of Underwood ham spread is a source of endless mirth, and I won’t deny that my first encounter with the LP inspired a long gawk and a hearty giggle at what I chalked up as the accidental wrongheadedness of the sleeve. But these days (and for a long while previous) my interest in The Louvin Brothers has been not as the punch line of a joke at their expense but instead as one of the finest acts country music ever produced. Between 1955-’61 the pair landed ten top twenty hits on the country chart, performing secular material necessitated by their membership in the Grand Ole Opry. But they never turned their back on the gospel music that instigated their career, and it’s the duo’s dedication to their church-inspired close-harmony style that has provided them with such continued relevance and historical import, for The Louvin’s provide the lasting link between eternally worthy old-time brother groups like The Blue Sky Boys and The Delmore Brothers and the style’s subsequent manifestation into the rock ‘n’ roll era through the tales of teen tribulations harmonized by Phil and Don Everly. While TRAGIC SONGS OF LIFE is The Louvin’s best album of secular material, SATAN IS REAL is by a nose their finest religious work (edging out THE FAMILY WHO PRAYS), and an inspection of all of their Capitol material is essential to understanding exactly what transpired in country music between the death of Hank Williams and the emergence of George Jones, Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. While it would be ill-advised hyperbole to call SATAN IS REAL a concept album, it can be accurately described as a thematic one. This theme could be diminished by the dubious as rather basic, but it is there and it is strongly felt; the opening title track is cast as a sermon by Ira that makes no bones about his belief in the existence of Satan and the evil wrought by his power. Ira Louvin states his religious conviction so strongly that it becomes a take it or leave it proposition. Countless thousands have snickered at SATAN IS REAL’s cover photo, but upon hearing its first cut it becomes boldly clear that The Louvin Brothers’ religious belief is no laughing matter. From there the record provides a sequential pathway through a variety of modes; first celebrations of Christian faith (“There’s a Higher Power”, “The Christian Life”, “The River of Jordan”), followed by the innate fallibility of humankind and the power of salvation (“The Kneeling Drunkard’s Plea”, “Are You Afraid To Die”, “He Can Be Found”) and concluded with the inevitability of death and the crossroads of the afterlife (“Dying from Home, and Lost”, “The Drunkard’s Doom”, “Satan’s Jeweled Crown”, “The Angel’s Rejoiced Last Night”, “I’m Ready to Go Home”). A dozen tracks in just a little over thirty minutes that methodically relate The Louvin’s intentions and with an all important musical vibrancy. “There’s a Higher Power” has a trace of country-swing in its britches and features some tough guitar licks, “The River of Jordan” can honestly be said to border on rocking, and “He Can Be Found” essays the Louvin's influence on The Everly Brothers in a nutshell. But the finesse and verve of Charlie and Ira’s close-harmony is on display throughout, and SATAN IS REAL is a fine listen for non-believers and the devout alike. The album sits at a crossroads of old-time tradition and subsequent developments in country music; “The Kneeling Drunkard’s Plea”, a Carter Family cover, looks to the past while “The Christian Life” points to the future through its inclusion on The Byrds’ crucial SWEETHEARTS OF THE RODEO. Ira Louvin was by all reports an ornery cuss whose difficult disposition eventually broke up the duo in the early ‘60s. He died in a car crash in ’65, but Charlie was a modest commercial success for the next decade and had a nice 21st century resurgence with a pair of fine albums for the unimpeachable Tompkins Square label. I consider myself lucky to have seen him play a strong, relaxed set at the Bonnaroo Festival a few years back, for he died in January of last year. The Louvin Brothers’ music lives on however, and SATAN IS REAL is one of their finest works.

Townes Van Zandt was one of the true bittersweet troubadours of American Music. The woeful obscurity that afflicted him during a life too short and rife with trouble (dead of a heart attack shy of his 53rd birthday in 1997 after many years of drug and alcohol addiction) is hard to reconcile with the nude beauty of his music; The Velvet Underground’s now legendary lack of popularity while extant was basically tied to their being so defiantly ahead of their time, Big Star’s elusive sales figures were directly related to how they harkened back and revitalized the tidy appeal of ‘60s pop-rock in an era that greatly preferred excess, and Don Van Vliet was a kingpin of cult mainly because he was such a blatant weird-meat, but Townes Van Zandt was just a powerful singer and brilliant songwriter whose early recordings should’ve been, if not huge, than certainly substantially bigger than they actually were at the time of their release. From ’68-’72 Van Zandt recorded six albums that slowly solidified his reputation as a true rough diamond in the oft-problematic category of singer-songwriter, and it can be speculated that the guy’s natural blend of folk and country was perhaps a little bit urbane for the C&W hardliners of the time and maybe too tough for a folk-set that was preparing to turn the corner into the mellow hell of James Taylor etc. But at worst this should’ve somewhat limited Van Zandt’s appeal, not kneecapped it outright; it’s far easier to surmise that lack of promotion from the small Poppy label led to his misfortune as a musician’s musician. As time marched forward and more people learned about him, the records’ general lack of availability became a problem. Even after Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard’s smash hit cover of “Poncho and Lefty” greatly increased his profile, the LPs were still pretty scarce in the racks, at least in my neck of the woods. By the point of indie imprint Tomato’s reissuing of certain Poppy titles in ’89, it seemed he was destined to be cursed with eternal cult status, joining names like Tim Hardin, Fred Neil, Guy Clark and Mickey Newbury in a club of exemplary writers given unfair commercial shakes as performers of their own material. Van Zandt’s first two records, ‘68’s FOR THE SAKE OF THE SONG and the following year’s OUR MOTHER THE MOUNTAIN are fine examples of a songwriting talent of uncommon maturity brandishing an artistry compromised to differing extents by Jack Clement’s often ill-advised production ideas. While both albums ultimately reveal traits and angles that make them essential to understanding the formative creativity of their maker, the first true masterpiece in Van Zandt’s discography is his self-titled third LP, also released in ’69 and recorded in Nashville at the storied studio of Owen Bradley, a figure simultaneously renowned and derided as an architect of the Countrypolitan sound. But like the Beau Brummels’ proto-country-rock classic BRADLEY’S BARN, TOWNES VAN ZANDT wisely lacks any of the strings, choirs and syrupy chart gloss that made Bradley’s name. The LP does feature four re-recordings of songs from his debut, with each a startling improvement upon its original, particularly opener “For the Sake of the Song”; where the first version of the tune simply can’t escape Clement’s intention to mold it into something similar to a hard luck Harry Nilsson hanging out in a dusty border town and waxing poetic over a gorgeous if perplexing conchita, the second try cozies up to near perfection by stripping away any straining attempts at marketability, instead smartly relying upon the spare authority of voice and guitar. When the accompaniment does assert itself it possesses a subtle, timeless quality that aids the song by never overwhelming it. This is a hard act to follow, but thankfully Van Zandt has broad range inspired by a diversity of influence, with two of his biggest inspirations being Hank Williams and Lightnin’ Hopkins. His occasional welcome detours into blues or gospel material would really flourish on later albums, but TOWNES VAN ZANDT leaves nothing to be desired in terms of sonic breadth. “Columbine” completely nails an aura of pretty mid-tempo finger-picking without falling prey to the inconsequential lightness that’s been plaguing folkies since they started spinning introspective. In this he’s proved a key influence on alt-country practitioners and freak-folk denizens alike, showing how to take a turn into the beatific without floating off into the distance like so much dandelion fluff. But he can also hit an extended note of existential despair with grace that seems effortless (“Waiting Around to Die”) and when he does add bluesy touches (the slide guitar on “Lungs”, the gnawing harmonica on “Waiting...”) it resonates with sincere appreciation of the style and not a quick study in genre grafting. There are of course songs that under different circumstances could’ve translated into commercial hits; the gorgeous fragility of “None But the Rain” (replete with non-crap flute), the expert country stroll through a no-nonsense ode to a wounded heart that is “Don’t Take It Too Bad” and the shrewdly implicit Dylanisms of “Fair Thee Well, Miss Carousel” for three instances. But when regarding the discography of the man it’s best not to dwell for very long over what might’ve been. That line of thinking positions this vital artist as a failure or at least something close to it, and one listen to TOWNES VAN ZANDT (or any of his prime material for that matter) will easily prove the fallacy of that notion. By extension, I don’t think it’s really appropriate to compare him to chart successes like Outlaw Country cornerstones Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. Instead, it’s seems best to place his oeuvre within the context of albums from other underappreciated and stylistically similar writer-players of the period like Newbury’s “American Trilogy” (comprised of the titles LOOKS LIKE RAIN, ‘FRISCO MABEL JOY and HEAVEN HELP THE CHILD), Clark’s OLD NO. 1 and TEXAS COOKIN’, the Flatlanders’ MORE A LEGEND THAN A BAND, Jerry Jeff Walker’s ¡VIVA TERLINGUA! and Terry Allen’s LUBBOCK (ON EVERYTHING). What, you haven’t heard those records? Well then, best get cracking. But please don’t forget Townes Van Zandt, friend. His collected output is a jewel in the wealth of this country’s disparate song form, and to miss it is to do your ears a great disservice.

In the Bin.

2012-01-10T12:39:00.000-08:00

Ryan Adams-Gold

Ryan Adams-Ashes & Fire

Bare Wires-Cheap Perfume

Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band-Safe As Milk

Deerhoof-Reveille

Deerhoof & David Bazan-DeerBazan 7"

Louvin Brothers-Satan is Real

OBN III's-The One and Only

OCS-Songs About Death and Dying Vol 3

RETOX-Ugly Animals

The Chris Robinson Brotherhood-s/t

Shannon and the Clams-Sleep Talk

Sunn O))) Meets Nurse With Wound-The Iron Soul of Nothing

Townes Van Zandt-s/t

Joseph's Picks Of The Week 1/6/12 - Guided By Voices and Sun Ra

2012-01-05T13:57:00.000-08:00

By this point, indie-rock reunions have sprung into an unsurprising, even expected occurrence. It’s becoming as dependable as the changing of the seasons that every few months a defunct, well-loved, much-missed band will be getting back together, possibly for a tour on the strength of a classic album to be played in sequence. Folks these days either choose to dig this phenomenon, dismiss the practice, or take it on a case by case basis (that’s my position), but time was that the very idea of indie reunions sharply divided the small segment of the populace who cared about the bands in question, half salivating like Pavlovian canines at the prospect of being able to glimpse a group that broke up six days after they discovered them, the other half incensed at the unadulterated nerve of a revered band daring to soil their legacy by getting back together obviously for the bucks and recognition. This latter attitude was/is more prevalent in folks that haven’t yet been stricken with the harsh reality that grownups under late capitalism have to make a living somehow; either get the band back together or take that job as an assistant manager at Home Depot. Maybe majoring in Russian Lit wasn’t such a smart idea. Personally, I find reunion activity far less bothersome than stumbling onto a (once) meaningfully resonant song being used to sell buckets of fried chicken, but maybe that’s just my hang up. I’d actually site two indie reunions as the impeccable yardsticks upon which all others must be judged: Mission of Burma (one of the greatest of all rock bands finally getting something resembling their due) and Dinosaur Jr. (in two words; emotional healing). It was also huge that both units recorded new material that registered as more than worthy of their storied reputations. This is the tack now being attempted by the “classic” lineup of Guided by Voices, and it’s a smart maneuver. This incarnation of the band featured vocalist/songwriter extraordinaire Robert Pollard, guitarists Tobin Sprout and Mitch Mitchell, drummer Kevin Fennell and bassist Greg Demos, and in the mid-‘90s they proved an absolute machine of disheveled song form spread over an impressive spate of now revered LPs; ambitious, sloppy and angelic while obviously hung-over and reeking of cigarettes. Crowned by the press as ambassadors of low-fi, like their other American counterparts Pavement and Sebadoh they didn’t really fit (or quickly outgrew) that descriptor. Instead GBV in their Scat/early Matador run felt like an improbably solid set of classic rock played through an AM radio and then run through a Cuisinart, the whole mess then stitched together with day-glow yarn by a clove-smoking corduroy-clad freckle-faced seamstress. The results were familiar yet fractured. And classic-era Guided by Voices was very much about records, so any rejoining of forces that didn’t include new material would’ve been anti-climactic at best. Their new album LET’S GO EAT THE FACTORY has just been released, but please don’t sleep on the DOUGHNUT FOR A SNOWMAN 7-inch that hit racks last month (last year!!!) amid all the holiday hoopla. The A-side title track is a brilliant piece of ‘60s psyche-tinged and Anglo-inspired pop foofery, led in by cheap lilting flutes before settling into a snapshot of Move-inspired guitar glisten. Quality foof is always at a premium, and while the 1:44 of “Doughnut…” is a bit (or a lot) of a tease, this specific incarnation of GBV was always a teaser of the highest order; part of the rascally appeal of the band was how they would frustrate expectations across the board, not just in song lengths but in the half-dozen or so pop/rock modes of the songwriting and delivery. It’s nice to know this bunch is able to tap back into an operational groove quite similar to their mid-‘90s modus operandi. Regardless, the rainbow-sugar ache of “Doughnut…” is right up my alley, so I’m not carping one teensy bit. But the flipside really conjures the GBV or yore with four tracks spread across its wax. “So High”’s forty seconds is the excerpted flute bit from the A-side in its entirety, and that’s a fine gesture. But the manner in which all of the brief passages blend into a tattered and inspired collage of fragmentary song spirits really proves that these gents are totally on top of just what made them such a valuable collective. Nothing hits the 90 second mark, and “Fish on My Leg” even includes the lyric “clown prince of the menthol trailer”, which GBV diehards obviously know was the title of a 1994 EP released on Domino. That the tune feels like it could’ve been recorded as far back as ‘87’s SANDBOX (and yes that’s definitely pre-“classic” era) gooses my gizzard but good. B-side closer “One Two Three Four” is an outstanding bit of Tobin Sprout’s widely underrated song craft (check out his ’96 solo-joint CARNIVAL BOY if you don’t believe me), sounding like a piece of ephemera from '80s-era R.E.M. if the Athens boys had somehow been more influenced by The Lemon Pipers and less smitten with the Byrds/Velvets. It’s twee but still stately, and it’s a fantastic closer to a bite sized morsel of GBV’s reignited essence. Asking for another BEE THOUSAND is ludicrous, and it’s too early to really gauge LET’S GO EAT THE FACTORY’s level of quality (initially it feels great but somewhat lesser in roughly equal returns), but if they manage to stick together they might just prove capable of knocking out another masterpiece. Here’s hoping.

The music and art of Herman Poole “Sonny” Blount aka Sun Ra is one of the truly unique gifts of the 20th century. Often categorized as belonging to the avant-garde/free/experimental wing of jazz music’s complex architecture mainly due to the mammoth discography of his indefatigable and often downright remarkable (not to mention improbable) big-band the Arkestra, the man was simply unable to be roped in by the structural rigidity of any one genre. And of all the musicians that defined the original avant-jazz impulse, he was essentially the last (save for perhaps Albert Ayler) to be widely accepted and canonized as a master of advanced improvisational strategies, though this doesn’t mean he’s close to getting his stately mug immortalized on a postage stamp; a dozen years into a fresh millennium and nearly two decades since his death Sun Ra can still be a polarizing figure. And it’s not just dastardly moldy conservative figs that are planting sticks firmly in the ossified mud of convention. Some drastically serious fringe sound connoisseurs persist in decrying Ra’s inherent theatricality and mystical eccentricity as being inferior to the far more direct recording/performance approach of (for one example) fellow avant-garde pianist Cecil Taylor. Of course this po-faced attitude misses the point of the music’s multi-faceted pleasures by a couple thousand miles, but if the uncomprehending or disapproving didn’t hinder Sun Ra while he was alive then it shouldn’t get under the skin of his fans in the present; the fathoms deep imagination and personality of such an uncompromisingly brilliant figure will likely set off the killjoy buzzers in those ruffled by his charms for decades to come. In 1992 Evidence Records commenced a beautifully done reissue program that combined a vital batch of previously quite rare Arkestra releases onto twofer CDs, a project that culminated in ’96 with the appearance of the double-disc compilation THE SINGLES, an endeavor of heavy, loving toil that made it abundantly clear just how splendidly eclectic Sun Ra was from the very start. Upon absorbing THE SINGLES first disc, one aspect that many youthful partisans of the Arkestra needed to wrap their lobes around was just how deeply Ra embraced ‘50s vocal group dynamics. It’s important to understand that lots of folks during this period were introduced to him through punk rock, or more specifically from the mass exodus into other sonic realms after punk started getting boring or at least overly predictable. It was common knowledge at this point how Sun Ra had evolved out of the pre-bebop tradition, working early with singers like Wynonie Harris, Lil Green and most notably as pianist /arranger for the big-band of Fletcher Henderson. An absolutely crucial figure in the history of “hot” jazz, Henderson’s fine body of work also serves as a direct influence and stylistic anchor for the subsequent decades of Ra as groundbreaker. That the Sun man’s “out” was intrinsically tied to the “in” of Henderson (or Don Redman or Sir Duke his own distinguished self) was no surprise, but a tangible and non-fleeting link to doo-wop was a bit of a head-scratcher at the time, and ultimately in the best way possible. Back in ‘09 Miriam Linna and Billy Miller, the fine husband and wife team that fuels Norton Records’ unending excavations into the worlds of exemplary crud decided to wax up a stupendous group of LPs collecting the fruits of Sun Ra’s “doo-wop-era”, much of it previously unreleased, and anybody that’s a sucker for the undying charge of uncut American brilliance should stock up on all three. INTERPLANETARY MELODIES is a particularly strong entry point, presenting a wealth of distinct material from within a form not particularly noted for its vistas of diversity. The record combines recordings actually issued on extremely limited 45s via Ra’s legendary and vastly significant artist-run label Saturn with unreleased songs captured through a crude but effective ‘50s-era home tape machine, and the mix of relative polish and warm raw sparks is a beauty to behear. The Cosmic Rays display an elevated panache on the opening five tracks, particularly on the two issued takes, and if given the extra promotional muscle from an established label (like Chess, to pick an imprint based in Chicago, Sun Ra’s operational base at the time) they could’ve easily developed into chart material. In contrast to the Rays’ modest but rather obvious pop inclination, The Crystals’ “Honey in the Bee Box” initially feels like a zonked if rather limited lark. Clearly a rehearsal tape, featuring bits of laughter and even audible discussion, it’s only after listening a few times that the participants sly transformation of the tune from an inspired goof to an instant bit of oddball pop brilliance becomes plain. Courtesy of the Nu Sounds comes “Spaceship Lullaby”, a striking piece of Ra arcana that pushes the by now firmly established vocal group sensibility into the realms of pure sci-fi spectacle that eventually came to define the many permutations of the Arkestra; lyrically the song directly references both “Interplanetary Music” from WE TRAVEL THE SPACEWAYS and “Rocket Number Nine Take Off From the Planet Venus” from INTERSTELLAR LOW WAYS, and its slightly over two minute running time justifies the price of INTERPLANETARY MELODIES all by its lonesome. In addition, “Africa” (also by the Nu Sounds) is a crafty piece of exotica influenced grooving that should inspire an appreciative doffing of the lid from any Chico Hamilton fan. But the whole damn show might just be stolen by the two cuts featuring Juanita Rogers. “Teenager’s Letter of Promises”, credited to Rogers and Lynn Hollings with Mr. V’s Five Joys was already available on THE SINGLES, but any appearance from its booming, echo-voiced narrator and tales of adolescent love-battles is a welcome one. However it’s an a cappella rendition from Ms Rogers titled "Love Letters Full Of Promises" that’s enough to make even the most hardened heart lean against a chilly lamppost and shed a tear of commiseration. It’s certainly true that Sun Ra doesn’t play a note on this track, but the manner in which the guy’s spirit infuses the whole of INTERPLANETARY MELODIES, even those moments where he’s in a more limited or advisory role, more than makes up for the lack of abstract firepower that infuses so many of the Arkestra’s masterworks. This record, along with its two equally essential counterparts, spotlights an enormously successful period of growth from one of modern music’s true giants. It’s an indispensible piece of the intricate jigsaw that is the lifework of Le Sony'r Ra, a panorama that’ll easily transcend a couple hundred lifetimes spread throughout the incalcuable reach of galaxies infinite and unknown.

New in the bin

2012-01-03T09:39:00.000-08:00

Charles Packy Axton-Late Late Party 1965-67

Key Chain

Dead Moon-In the Graveyard

The Ding-Dongs

Gaye Blades-s/t

Eddie Lee Jones-Yonder Go That Old Black Dog

Little Ed and the Soundmasters -3x7" Box

Charlie Parr and the Black Twig Pickers-Glory in the Meeting House

Ty Segall- Goodbye Bread

Sun Ra-Interplanetary Melodies

Tyvek-Fast Metabolism

Joseph's Picks Of The Week 12/30/11 - The Beach Boys and Wolves In The Throne Room

2011-12-29T21:16:00.000-08:00

Over its decades-long tenure as perhaps pop music’s defining “lost” record, The Beach Boys’ SMILE was one of the few recordings that could unite serious sound junkies with the more casual fans (with taste) in a state of resigned melancholy over what should’ve been. And during that same time period, the fact that the legendary follow-up to PET SOUNDS made it to the brink of and then notoriously did not see release has been adopted by all kinds of finger-waggers as an advisory tale to assorted cautions of all sorts; the hazards of too much drug use, the folly of indulging artistic inclinations at the expense of commerciality, or the dangers of hanging out with Van Dyke Parks. 2003 brought the world BRIAN WILSON PRESENTS SMILE, a collaboration with The Wondermints that helped to firmly establish what ardent Beach Boys' fans had already long believed; that SMILE was indeed a top-to-bottom masterpiece and not just a couple of hit singles bookending an unfocused mess of pretention, that Wilson was the one guy uniquely capable of seamlessly integrating classic Tin Pan Alley pop aesthetics with the possibilities of legit psychedelia and true-blue studio artistry, and that Mike Love was and continues to be a foul square. But as appealing and successful as WILSON PRESENTS indeed was, it in no way filled the gap left by the original SMILE’s lack of actualization. And that was really no surprise. While issued with goodwill partially as a recovery project and more so as a corrective to its auteur’s legacy, WILSON PRESENTS was still quite a few yardsticks short of a substitute. This opinion seems to have been shared by others including Wilson himself, for 2011 has seen the appearance of THE SMILE SESSIONS, a mammoth undertaking inhabiting a variety of shapes (compact disc, 12” and 7” vinyl) and sizes (digi-downloads, 2LP, 2CD or box set) that’s easily the year’s best reissue. To be clear, this amazing bundle of beauty is certainly not what SMILE would’ve been like had it actually hit racks and blown all sorts of heads in ’67, but it’s surely the closest to what Wilson had in his own mind during that period, sourced from the genuine studio recordings made in preparation for the album’s release. And as such it’s a total revelation, making scads of bootlegs obsolete and causing deep (but not grave) damage to SMILEY SMILE’s already chequered reputation, for as much as I eventually became comfortable with (if not accepting of) that LP’s restless scraps of greatness, I always regarded it with a certain critical distance if not outright detachment (and certainly I’m not alone in this) because it couldn’t avoid being a reminder of what the music world had been denied, namely the essence of Brian Wilson’s brilliance at its absolute apex, a document that would’ve meant a whole lot of different things to a vast diversity of listeners. And part of what’s so fantastic about THE SMILE SESSIONS is that in its format-diverse structure it can well serve listeners holding varying degrees of emotional (to say nothing of monetary) investment; the downloads or 2CD should easily satisfy the more casually erudite listener, the five discs of studio outtakes and demos will doubtlessly please legions of music obsessives, and the vinyl pressings are right up the swank alley of a certain stripe of hep connoisseur. Freeing up this masterpiece from the burden of a pricey (if thoroughly essential) box set hopefully means that the music will reach more people than just those already convinced of its quality and importance. And while I’m still dabbling through the CDs that definitively and happily essay the studio toil of SMILE not as a tumultuous exercise in scattershot grandiosity but as the painstakingly rigorous activity necessary to creating a work of this stature, I hesitate not a bit in claiming that the 2LP set manages to strike the perfect blend of user-friendliness with the expansive yet spectacularly succinct nature of the core recording in all its mono glory, broken up over three sides of vinyl (with a fourth of stereo mixes provided as a truly dandy bonus). What becomes obvious upon spending time with SMILE as a basic record and not as a holy grail surrounded by fascinating ephemera is how it so confidently combines conceptual hugeness with a near brutal directness inherent to pop-craft; breathtakingly experimental, yes (opener “Our Prayer” into “Gee” into “Heroes and Villains” managed to drop my jaw on first listen even though I essentially knew what to expect from WILSON PRESENTS); side-long jams, ill-conceived drum solos or patience testing stabs at borrowed authenticity, no. If Brian Wilson’s ability and vision were ultimately too much for some people (including himself) to bear, he was exceptionally tidy in how he executed his ideas, for nothing on SMILE exceeds the five minute mark. “Vega-Tables” and “Surf’s Up” are of course well known from the SMILEY SMILE and SURF’S UP LPs and “Heroes and Villains” and “Good Vibrations” are both well-ensconced as cornerstones of high pop-style. But to hear them as simply parts of what Wilson conceived of SMILE to be is to not only experience the true rarity of non-hyperbolic artistic genius but to be boldly confronted with the possibilities of what might’ve transpired had SMILE actually been released at the time of its conception, not only pertaining to Wilson’s and The Beach Boys’ subsequent career(s) but to the pop music landscape as a whole. Because those naysayers mentioned above can occasionally be counted on to use the hullaballoo surrounding SMILE to dictate that pop music is best when unhindered by ambition, proposing that the banal strains of radio fodder typified by Britney Spears and Justin Bieber and their many rank imitators is somehow more legitimately “pop” than the desire to expand the parameters and create something new as exemplified by SMILE. Upon hearing this music with fresh ears in the present, it becomes obvious that calling Wilson an eccentric and SMILE a failure are severe miscalculations, for sheer invention in this case shouldn’t be mistaken for eccentricity and problems of commerce compounded by self-doubt should never be confused with a lack of artistic success; sometimes it just takes a while for an achievement to be established. Bluntly, the best pop record released in 2011 was recorded in 1967. Contemporary hitmakers shouldn’t feel insulted; instead, they should lend an open ear and then just step up their game.

While I’m assuredly a fan of assorted bands appropriately described as being metallic in orientation, I also can’t deny that when it comes to things metal, I’m best categorized as a dabbler. And this is funny, since the first two bands clutched to my metaphoric breast and regarded with solemn seriousness as setting the standard to which all other attempts at music should thenceforth be judged were Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. This attitude lasted approximately six months until after devouring the contents of LILLIAN ROXON’S ROCK ENCYCLOPEDIA through the auspices of my middle school’s hall of books (viva the era when the shelves of a public school library could adequately serve the needs of a young bookworm and budding autodidact) I realized how the harshness of my Zep/Sab sensibility also translated to something like short-sightedness. By freshman year of high school I was devouring the uncut electric blues that unknowingly aided and abetted the early hard-rock impulse and quickly begat heavy metal, and was also ogling the work of The Stooges, Velvets and Beefheart as a primer in getting smacked around by the seductive indelicacy of punk. But as is often my wont, I digress. Some may consider my admittance as a metal dabbler to preclude the ability to speak/write on the form, but that’s nonsense. The secret to writing from the perspective of a dabbler is to avoid adopting an authoritative tone (because there is almost nothing more insufferable than a phony expert) and to not slip into a condescending state of mind regarding those that do wield an expert knowledge of the genre in question (because in the end metalhead = jazzbo = garage-manic = blues-freak = classical-longhair). Now when I say dabbler I don’t mean to imply that my appreciation of the style is somehow less zealous in comparison to my feelings over other genres; when heavy metal fires on all cylinders I love it wholeheartedly, and a list of my favorites would include records by Blue Oyster Cult, Deep Purple, St. Vitus, The Obsessed, Melvins, Samhain, Gore, Prong, Earth and Sunn O))). If you glean from this partial list that I’m more “doom” and less “glam” then you’re right on the money, sport. To me, the bold theatricality expressed through Bowie, Bolan, and early Roxy (all of them owing much to that lovely original glam-queen Little Richard) was far more suited to hybridization with punk (making the New York Dolls ground zero in this scheme of thinking). Metal is best when it’s stone-faced as it indulges in cheap, unsubtle, sometimes even cartoony imagery; another of its strong suits is how it acknowledges the relationship between performer and listener while still fostering a direct relationship with the audience as equals (sorta punk, come to think of it). I also like how many contemporary metal acts possess a severe attention to sonic detail that’s tangibly jazz-like, which is no surprise since Bill Frisell has worked with Earth on THE BEES MADE HONEY IN THE LION’S SKULL and Julian Priester, Eyvind Kang and Cuong Vu all contributed to Sunn O)))’s MONOLITHS AND DIMENSIONS. A current name that can easily be added to the above group of worthies is Olympia, Washington’s Wolves In The Throne Room, a band led by brothers Aaron and Nathan Weaver that specializes in an unabashedly conceptual brand of rural, environmentally conscious black metal. They’ve just released CELESTIAL LINEAGE, the final installment in a trilogy that began in 2007 with TWO HUNTERS (BLACK CASCADE is the middle entry, issued in ‘09). One aspect of WITTR that I found immediately appealing was their attention to the band dynamic. In some of my (admittedly hit-and-run) black-metal listening I’ve been struck that much of the music doesn’t feel like bands that thrive on the intensity of interaction but rather projects intended to amplify the extremity of the whole endeavor. Chalk it up to the ease of modern home recording that an anti-social teenage Burzum fanatic need not find band members to make his/her masterpiece; no, they can just do it all themselves (needless to say DIY doesn’t mean what it used to). And these sort of projects are cool, but I must admit that it’s not really what I’d accurately describe as my bag; when I want extremity I listen to Prurient, Wolf Eyes, Borbetomagus or Japanese noise monsters like Masonna or The Incapacitants. When I want to hear human beings working it out like a group in a metal context, Wolves In The Throne Room will do very nicely. Not only do they offer the spark of collectivity, but they also display a fine handle on mood, texture and instrumental prowess. Much has been made of the brothers Weaver’s rep as rurally based and heavily ecologically invested individuals, a reality that’s reflected in their recordings. TWO HUNTERS for example is thematically concerned with the lore of the cave-bear cults. And the Weavers are the kind of guys who’ll release their demo CDR all wrapped up in fur with moss included with the lyric sheet to boot. I can dig this. As modern ideologically driven farmers, these two have a lot on their minds, and like many of the great old-time farmer/players of yore, their relationship to musical expression (and to the instruments they play) seems inextricably linked to emotional survival; I get the feeling that under different circumstances WITTR would be making music of this intensity (if not this scale) at home purely for their shared benefit. It seems obvious from their non-traditional stance (a desire to play unusual, non-commercial venues [i.e. not bars], a distaste for moshing and flash photography at shows, an allegiance to older recording equipment and studio techniques) that the Weaver’s approach to music making is, as Valerie Wilmer once put it in a jazz context “as serious as your life”. Also, I’d be remiss in not mentioning that frequent WIITR contributor Jessika Kenney (she of Sunn O)))’s MONOLITHS AND DIMENSIONS) is in fine form on CELESTIAL LINEAGE. Her vocals help to bring a real sense of tonal diversity to the music, but ultimately the credit must go to Aaron and Nathan Weaver. Much of the record is meditative in delivery, at times even approaching ambient, and the band possess strategies of non-clichéd tension and release that really feel primed for the long haul. It’s been said that Popul Vuh are an influence, and after spinning LINEAGE for the fifth time in a row I’m convinced that’s more than lip service. Somebody play these guys for Werner Herzog, fast. Southern Lord has a very discerning ear for things metallic, and Wolves In The Throne Room is no exception. They’ve just put a trilogy in the pocket, and I'll be keeping tabs on where they head next.

Joseph's Picks Of The Week 12/23/11 - Eddy Current Suppression Ring and Reptile House

2011-12-23T10:36:00.000-08:00

Eddy Current Suppression Ring hail from Melbourne Australia, and they specialize in a lively mixture of finely honed NUGGETS action, thankfully non-trite Stooges motion, some well-considered post-’77 punk heaviness/knowledge and just the right undercurrent of workmanlike art (but not arty) smarts to help render the proceedings as a strong non-generic statement in a quite tricky mode; that is, being small in concept/scale while often truly huge in delivery. In a sense, ECSR is a prime example of a bunch of guys collectively defining the true meaning of the term amateur. Or to put it another way, they endeavor not for money or fame but for the sheer love of the process and result. This isn’t to imply that Eddy Current is striving in a sea of indifference. In fact the band won the 2008 Australian Music Prize for their second record PRIMARY COLOURS, an achievement that paid them $30,000. That’s a swell award to be sure, but it’s frankly also the kind of accolade that can really screw up a band’s emotional dynamic. But not to worry, for ECSR recorded their subsequent album RUSH TO RELAX in their practice space, with reasoning that was really quite simple; if a no-nonsense approach to album making is what earned them the prize, then why change course? Spit and polish isn’t going to do ECSR any favors, for they are a band that thrives on a non-cultivated unkempt quality and a little sand in the gears. If Eddy Current Suppression Ring has thus far escaped your radar, their new 2LP SO MANY THINGS is a fine place to make an introduction, for it compiles a bunch of singles and stray tracks into a nice, expansive package (twice as many tunes as any of their three full-lengths) that illustrates the parameters and appeal of their attack. For starters, these guys have a nice handle on what once was called aggro, the noisy, impolite clatter and din that the Aussies were excellent at shoveling onto boats and shipping to the import bins in hole-in-the-wall indie record shops all across the globe via labels like Au-Go-Go, Aberrant and Greasy Pop. Eddy Current are more punky and less densely noisy than many of the bands that sorta came to define Australia’s underground rock landscape circa the second half of the ‘80s (feedtime, King Snake Roost, Venom P. Stinger, Lubricated Goat etc.), but this fact makes them quite a natural fit for their American label Goner. PRIMARY COLOURS will likely remain my favorite ECSR release, but that’s only because it’s the first record I heard by the band. SO MANY THINGS is a big heap of goodness that’ll gas anybody turned onto the true vine of the punk impulse. If I were allowed to single out only one track from the 22 for specific praise, it would probably be “Demon’s Demands”, as finely wrought a mass of prime-era Iggy-derived throat rip and soul damage as I’ve heard in a long while, and all without the often distasteful aura of dilettantish pomposity and posing; again, ECSR don’t want to be the coolest cats on the block, they just want to rock the hell out the place, which really goes to the true nature of coolness (and longevity), anyway. I also like how “Noise in My Head” gleans so boldly from the “Psychotic Reaction”-playbook. And I was once very sold on the idea of Eddy Current as an overtly garage-descended bunch, but SO MANY THINGS’ three cover tunes help to solidify them as a group steadfast in their post-’77 lineage. A smoking version of The Pagans’ study in snot-rocket classicism “Boy, Can I Dance Good” shows they not only know their history but understand how to not screw it up, and a swell take on their excellent and typically underheard countrymen The Chosen Few’s “T.A.L.O.I.G.A.” (from that band’s very killer THE JOKE’S ON US 7” from ’79) flaunts a legit interest in Aussie punk achievements of yore. The loose if appropriately sincere stab at The Go-Go’s “We Got the Beat” may not be as tip-top as Poison Idea’s version, but the jury’s still actively deliberating on that point. Eddy Current’s take is certainly very individual, tapping into a sleepy reverence that might even inspire a sly wink from the eye of Belinda herself. SO MANY THINGS backs off a bit from the undercurrents of post-punk the made PRIMARY COLOURS such an unexpected joy, and I could use more keyboards, but in the end Eddy Current Suppression Ring make abundantly clear that they are one of the most reliable non-doofus punk propositions to hail from anywhere on this doomed planet. Theirs is a ruckus of distinction, and anybody that’s ever been well-goosed by the punk sensibility should check them out.

All serious record collectors, at least those that are actually music fans and not just investors cultivating a nest egg for retirement, are sure to utter the following phrase at least once in their life, and for very good reason: There are just too many records. This opinion generally stems from frustration at being unable to lay hands and lend ears to every nook and cranny in the labyrinthine architecture of modern music. For folks inclined to an obscurantist perspective, the difficulty of severe rarity can only add to the misery. Thankfully, one fine circumstance of the free-flowing internet is that people can actually hear the contents of $250-1,000 LPs (or $50-75 reissues) before gambling and plunking down the cash. While I’m a true-blue lover of obscurities, I’m also a relative cheapskate that’s never spent more than $50 for a record. The reason I’m mulling all this over is that I once spied a $25 bagged copy of the I STUMBLE AS THE CROW FLIES 7” by Reptile House, and was quite tempted. In retrospect I’m glad my cooler head prevailed, since Dischord has once again stepped up to the plate and affordably reissued this important piece of post-hardcore transitioning, a move that’s sure to please record collectors, u-ground historians and punks of all stripes. Baltimore’s Reptile House is noteworthy to many simply for the bands that benefited from their existence; drummer London May went on to pound the skins on horror-punk cornerstone NOVEMBER COMING FIRE by Glenn Danzig’s post-Misfits group Samhain while vocalist Daniel Higgs and guitarist Asa Osborne later formed the brilliant study in poetic post-HC cyclical repetition known as Lungfish. But unlike a lot of hardcore also-rans (names redacted to spare the thin-skinned), Reptile House are worth the time and energy of acquaintance and familiarity. For I STUMBLE is an exemplary primer in the splendidly blabbermouth strains of imagery-laden post-HC, a style inspired far more deeply by lit-class textbooks than the regimented behaviors that were beginning to afflict the era’s punk scene. The ‘80’s u-ground frequently cultivated regional scenes that often held defining characteristics, sonic and otherwise; LA had the Paisley Underground, Chicago and later Minneapolis became strongholds of noise-rock, Seattle grew stringy-haired, occasionally overweight dudes dressed like lumberjacks and Washington DC came to represent a type of introspective soul-gushing that was once called emo-core (before that prefix was hijacked and applied to an unrelated and non-geographically centric genre). DC bands in the style included Dag Nasty, Rites of Spring, Embrace, One Last Wish, Rain and Shutter to Think. In the strictest sense, Reptile House is not a DC band, hailing from the Charm City after all, but like their contemporaries Moss Icon and The Hated (both from Annapolis Maryland) they get lumped into this scene by general proximity and convenience. What’s quickly apparent by listening to I STUMBLE is that Reptile House was one of the messiest and most rewarding examples in this whole style. Joe Goldsborough’s guitar (Osborne would join later) blends melody, distortion and velocity to exceptional effect; bassist Leigh Panlilio holds down the bottom with elasticity all while eschewing the sameiness that often plagued punk rhythm sections in hardcore’s wake; May is a lithe monster on the kit; and Higgs (here known as Daniel V. Strasser) is spilling out a gush of thoughts and images like the embryo of the visionary he was to shortly become (and remain). Higgs’ vocals here actually remind me a bit of Henry Rollins if he was more inclined toward singing and less invested in throat peeling shouting. All four songs here are strong on their own merits, but they add up to a really impressive sum. It’s the truly forward-thinking records like this one that stand the test of time while more formulaic exercises in ritualism fall by the wayside, even though as a split release between Dischord and the band’s own Druid Hill label (named after the site of the Baltimore Zoo), this disc often gets overlooked in discussions of Dischordian activities. Well, it shouldn’t. It’s taken me months to give it a deserving write it up, but here are my words, better late than sitting on the hard-drive unpublished, and I’m hoping that more than just Lungfish or Samhain fans take note. I STUMBLE AS THE CROW FLIES is a dandy bit of post-HC action. While nobody can hear every record ever pressed, this one is easily obtainable. It’s nice to see it selling for considerably less than $25.