Joseph's Picks Of The Week 5/18/12 - Cornershop and OFF!

With Urban Turban, Cornershop continue with their welcome and unexpectedly prolific return to the record racks. Collecting the fruitful results of a batch of collaborative singles, this album should easily satisfy old fans, while its playfulness, intelligence and range will help recruit new ones.

From a distance, Cornershop’s career trajectory doesn’t seem all that unusual, being one of many early-‘90s indie bands to jump onto a larger stage (in this case through the Luaka Bop label) and deliver a hit song that basically defines their existence for most casual listeners. After a hiatus and a label switch they released a follow up before disappearing again, only to pop back into public consciousness with renewed purpose via their own label Ample Play.

But up close it’s rather impressive just how smoothly Cornershop picked back up right where they left off, and after some consideration the reason seems to stem from the very nature of Tjinder Singh and Ben Ayers sound. Unlike many acts that had brief affairs with the ‘90’s pop charts, there is really nothing in the group’s music that defines them as a product of that decade. Indeed, in my estimation if “Brimful of Asha” had been released last week instead of a decade and a half back, it would register as freshly up-to-date with nary a trace of the throwback.

This is mainly because Beatles’ derived pop sense and Velvet’s descended strum are two timeless ingredients in a recipe of unlikely chart success, but that’s hardly the only reason Cornershop avoid any sense of the anachronistic. For When I Was Born For the 7th Time, the very fine LP from which “Brimful of Asha” hails, still happily resounds as a creative success that resists any categorical assimilation into a default “’90s” sensibility.

Instead, the album struck a righteous blow for multiculturalism by integrating the group’s Indian roots with funk, indie-pop, hip-hop, a streak of accessible experimentation and even a bit of femme voiced country ache that was slyly reminiscent of later-period Mekons. Throw in Dan the Automator, Allen Ginsberg and a concluding Beatles cover as reclamation (“Norwegian Wood”, natch) and the results add up to a worthy and again still quite contemporary sum.

It’s perhaps for these same reasons that Cornershop’s return, while noted and welcome, has garnered little if any retro-minded fanfare. This is just as well, since 2009’s Judy Sucks a Lemon for Breakfast found them recommencing without any unneeded “comeback” bluster by releasing an LP that if obviously the product of Cornershop still felt unique from anything that preceded it in their discography.

Judy Sucks a Lemon for Breakfast is a very good record, detectably and appealingly glammy for much of its duration, but Cornershop and the Double ‘O’ Groove Of is where they really turned up the qualitative heat, producing what just might be their finest overall achievement to date. Much of the reason comes down to the exquisite union with Punjabi singer Bubbley Kaur; Singh and Ayers are foremost grand agents of collaboration, and Cornershop at this point is less accurately described as a band (though that’s by no means an incorrect nomenclature) and more so as a continually evolving project that succeeds through focus and an uncanny sense of what works in their infectious hybridization of genre.

Urban Turban continues the practice of collab, though it immediately carries it into a heretofore unexamined area for the group. “What Did the Hippie Have in His Bag?” finds them deviating from their established practice of working with either well known musicians (Noel Gallagher, anyone?) or cultivating relationships with less bandied about names (Paula Frazer of Tarnation, Kaur) in the service of forging a successful sonic framework. It instead features the contribution of schoolchildren from Castle Hill Primary in Lancashire, and the sweet give and take between Singh and the kids helps “…Hippie…” feel a bit like a cross between “Brimful of Asha” and The Langley Schools Music Project. Except it’s more laid back than “…Asha” and far less structured than Langley in its celebration of the life-affirming and non-cynical purity of youth. And of hippies with bags, for that matter.

From there Urban Turban details Cornershop’s interaction with a variety of vocalists, all of them previously unheard by these ears, and the quality of the whole set is uniformly high. By this point Singh and Ayers are extremely adept at understanding not only the nature of their cross-pollination but also in locating the right outside contributors with which to realize their ideas.

While perhaps not immediately apparent in their sound, Cornershop are the inverse of what often results from the occasional pop tendency toward the “exotic”. Simply put, this is due to their being steeped in the traditions they employ: it’s one reason why When I Was Born For the 7th Time still holds up so well, particularly in contrast to the bogus “chill-out” music of Enigma, a project that feels even more trite now than when first released.

And Urban Turban’s best moments present a further deepening of Singh’s and Ayers’ pop ingenuity. If they’ve always successfully avoided the shallowness of pastiche, they also seem to have found a way to increase the frequency of their output without putting any strain on the level of quality.

Again, this record is collected from singles released through the wittily dubbed Singhles Club, and it lacks the natural flow of conception of Double ‘O’ Groove, mainly because it details work with a variety of vocalists conceived at different times. However, it’s hard to consider this a flaw, with the sequencing of Cornershop’s diverse method across the LP presenting an attractive set of possibilities for potential further development.

For instance, I’d love to hear the results of a full album with SoKo, the French singer featured on one of Urban Turban’s standout tracks “Something Makes You Feel Like”. In comparison to Bubbley Kaur, who burst out of the box with an able-voiced oomph that stood (at the very least) on equal footing with the sounds that surrounded her (and all without falling victim to any diva moves), SoKo comes on with a very attractive conversational hesitancy in her vocals, almost as if the music is coaxing the words out of her, and it’s this aura that could very possibly be expanded into a refreshing longer work.

And Cornershop continue to dodge the bullet of becoming too slick or formulaic. “Milkin’ It”, featuring the unusual MC skills of In Light of Aquarius, is basically an unvarnished excuse to name check a succession of classic masters of microphone technique (Spoonie Gee! Schoolly D!) and as such provides a fine counterpoint to the smoother techno-funk of “Non-Stop Radio” or the uncut dance-club cuisine of “Solid Gold”.

One somewhat bumming side-effect of Urban Turban’s design is the lack of Tjinder Singh’s vocals. His is simply one of the warmest and most immediately recognizable voices in the current pop field, and to only hear him on “What Did the Hippie Have in His Bag?” (and the song’s late album reprise) is undeniably a bit of a letdown, but ultimately it’s a disappointment of omission and not an error of any grave import. As the record’s value adds up, it becomes rather easy to accept not getting enough of Singh’s singing.

If Urban Turban’s origins as standalone singles lacks the vigorous aural unity of Cornershop and the Double ‘O’ Groove Of and When I was Born For the 7th Time, it still shines as another exceptional collection of tunes from a consistently rewarding group of pop scientists. And it’s an album certain to only improve with increased familiarity.



The first full-length LP from hardcore punk survival unit OFF! delivers more of the brief, scorching sound initiated on their four highly-regarded EPs. It’s a dandy listen, and it places Keith Morris and cohorts at an interesting place. Just where will they go from here?  

When it first came to my attention that Keith Morris was going to be fronting a new band, my immediate impression was a mixture of sincere happiness for the guy and a complete disinterest in actually hearing the music. We’ll get to the happy part a few paragraphs down, but the apathetic aspect has been hashed out by quite a few others already; it has to do with both the age of Morris and his band members and the actual contemporary relevance of the whole hardcore punk shebang.

Methinks that hardcore is a perfectly fine genre to tackle in the here and now, but it is a form best served up by a band of fresh-faced upstarts like Trash Talk rather than promulgated by a bunch of certified oldsters. Unlike blues, jazz and country & western, punk rock and hardcore in particular doesn’t ripen with age; it’s very much a young person’s game. Of course, plenty of old punks are still making high quality music. It’s just that very few are still working from within the confines of the style that originally spawned them.

And it’s not just the factor of youth. There is almost always a very finite window of opportunity from which to produce truly topflight junk before the situation just starts to break down. The number of bands that produced more than one great punk LP is infinitesimal compared to the sheer wealth of fleeting names that could only manage to squeak out one exceptional seven-inch or a single classic song before the wheels fell off the endeavor.

When someone tells me about a bunch of punk vets whose sound is “just like the old days”, my reaction is consistently that of utter dubiousness, understanding the general tendency of folks to misapprehend good intentions for actual sonic success and to elevate form over content in a desire to reconnect with past glories.

In the case of OFF! I was hearing it from people I thought would know better, and this did rouse my curiosity a bit.  Still, I continued to avoid the band for a long while after learning of their existence, mainly due to my familiarity with the slowly diminishing quality of Morris’ past work; by the release of Wonderful in 1985 the Circle Jerks’ were essentially over and done with.

The four essential LPs of the Los Angeles HC-punk experience are in order of release (GI) by The Germs (released ‘79), Group Sex by Circle Jerks (released ’80), the self-titled debut from the Adolescents (released early 1981) and Damaged by Black Flag (released late 1981). Sure, there are some other high quality long-players in the Los Angeles hardcore canon along with scores of seven-inches, comps and individual songs that help to really flesh out the city’s post-Dangerhouse Records scene, but these four albums easily encapsulate the growth of the straight-ahead HC-punk sound before the genre quickly started stagnating and became plagued with also-rans, violence and noxious posers. In brief, these four LPs set the standard.

Indeed I was extremely happy to know Morris had a band and was kicking up some fervor and that his personal circumstances were looking up, for an acquaintance that had moved to the west coast had filled me in on just how awful he felt after ordering a pizza and finding one of his favorite musicians ringing his doorbell to deliver it. Simply put, hearing that news stung me, too. And on top of that the guy was diagnosed with diabetes back in 2000.

Now, past glories are no guarantee against the hard realities of life, but this was an unshakable drag of a situation, for Morris is one of true greats of Cali hardcore punk not only through his direct involvement with the Circle Jerks but also by serving as Black Flag’s first vocalist, appearing on the genre redefining and still blistering Nervous Breakdown seven-inch.

Instead of enthusing at length on the quality of Group Sex, I’ll just reference the words of the Angry Samoans’ Metal Mike Saunders when he called it a classic of “folk appropriation”; Morris and company grabbed from whatever was necessary and came up with a ragged and concise masterpiece. And it was the LP equivalent to a bolt of lightning, i.e. the kind of record that’s essentially impossible to follow up. But try they did, naturally and admirably, with two very interesting if problematic LPs, Wild in the Streets and Golden Shower of Hits. Then the situation started going to the dogs circa Wonderful. It was really quite predictable.

Well, against my better judgment I eventually caught up with the First Four EPs. And against the odds its contents were rather major. How’d that happen? For starters, Morris and ex-Burning Brides’ guitarist Dimitri Coats bailed on a reportedly subpar Circle Jerks’ incarnation and recruited drummer Mario Rubalcaba (Rocket from the Crypt/Hot Snakes) and Steven Shane McDonald (Red Kross) to serve as the rhythm section. This shaped them up as a sort of punk rock supergroup, meaning they were flirting with disaster of massive proportions. But in avoiding the worst of all outcomes they actually achieved an extremely impressive result.

For comparison purposes OFF! mostly resemble the primal throttle of early Black Flag (that’s pre-Rollins, don’tcha know), an obvious similarity reflected in the humor of the band’s name. The First Four EPs delivered a wallop that was very similar to the aural punch thrown by one of the first three sides of the Flag’s Everything Went Black or the entirety of The First Four Years. Like these examples, OFF!’s whole essence was “short”: short-tempered, short in song-length, short in overall running time. It was a resounding and unqualified success. The only question was how long would this good creative fortune last?

This follow-up, packaged as an LP, is slightly shorter in running time than the First Four EPs, and as such holds some surface resemblance to the maniacal brevity of Group Sex. The music however retains its love affair with the mauling, grim density and velocity of early Flag, with a few slight and unfussy nods toward growth. For one example, Coats’ guitar has become more dynamic, though it’s as different from Greg Ginn string-bending work as it is similar.

Unfettered hardcore is essentially a music of exhaustion; how long can I deal with this six-band show; how long can I play drums this way without losing the feeling in my arms; how long can this amazing band avoid descending into suckdom? Minor Threat, the pick of many (including myself) as the greatest hardcore band ever, only released three 7-inch records and one 12-inch EP (plus two compilation tracks) in their entire existence; the band’s whole discography fits onto one compact disc with time to spare.

If post-hardcore was a widespread phenomenon, it had a hard time catching on in Cali and in particular Los Angeles, likely because that’s where much of HC’s sound, concept and image was formulated, and it’s also where many bands had something resembling commercial success (and the requisite “fame” that came attached). Kids in DC, Chicago, Boston, Texas, Detroit and other points on the North American map were initially reacting to cues from England and yes indeed Los Angeles and later to each other; popularity was largely elusive outside of their own peer group and notoriety was essentially posthumous. When HC started running out of gas it was easy for bands in the Midwest or DC to integrate elements of post-punk, noise or metal into the equation with differing levels of success.

In Los Angeles, three SST bands were the exception to the hardcore redundancy; Black Flag’s big grapple with a metal/hard-rock sound (what Joe Carducci dubbed “New Redneck”), Minutemen’s power-trio brilliance, and the far less heralded punk-psyche-art of Saccharine Trust. In comparison to these bold moves, OFF! is still taking baby steps.

But it’s early yet. This self-titled affair is their first LP after all. But it essentially puts them on a precipice; are big things going to happen, or is this the beginning of the seemingly inevitable downward spiral? It bears mentioning that Morris has never successfully navigated a move away from the punk norm. It would be a total gas if at this late date he accomplished just that.

Joseph's Picks Of The Week 5/11/12- The Brian Jonestown Massacre and Lee Hazlewood

Led as always by Anton Newcombe, The Brian Jonestown Massacre has returned with its twelfth studio album, Aufheben. While not a complete washout, in the end it does little to displace the notion that the man’s best artistic days are far behind him.

Back in the ‘80s is when I first heard The Chesterfield Kings, a garage band with a definite ‘60s bent. Taking the genre’s limitations in mind, they were rather good. They also had a pronounced love of The Rolling Stones. One interesting thing about the Kings; while they certainly had a strong fan base and were bolder in conception than most other ‘80s garage acts, they were still somewhat hindered by the nagging viewpoint of many who considered their music to be decidedly retrograde.

Spacemen 3 and Flaming Lips were just two examples of late-‘80s bands with a detectable ‘60s focus that managed to dodge the retro tag, with both bands at different stages of their existence considered to be groundbreakers. The Kings on the other hand were dogged with the retro stigma, often by those who liked them even. If they made a very good record, it was ultimately very good from within the confines of a limited context, a bit like setting a home-run mark for a single-A farm club; it’s an admirable achievement, sure, but it still pales next to the more grandly scaled activity of the big boys.

I think of The Chesterfield Kings and The Brian Jonestown Massacre together for a couple of reasons. First is their rather obvious shared love of the Stones. The other concerns the differences in reception these bands received for doing something roughly comparable. Yes, BJM first made their mark with a spin on the sound of shoegaze, but they quickly shifted into the role of a retro-inclined band that wore their Stonesian inspiration proudly and defiantly.

The difference between The Chesterfield Kings and The Brian Jonestown Massacre is generally one of scale magnified by differing musical landscapes. By the second half of the ‘90s many listeners were feeling fatigued by an endless procession of “new”, “next” and “latest” things, so the time was ripe for a few bands that were far more about attitude and an unconflicted approach to influence holding no pretense to originality.

Now, anybody truly moved to make music so indebted to the image of The Rolling Stones is bound to exhibit a certain swagger in execution, the kind of in your face attitudinal motion that causes lots of listeners to pile on the disdain. This is to say that if many people unabashedly loved BJM, just as many loved to hate them. Keeping in mind that the history of art isn’t to be confused with the history of nice people, I never really had any problem with the band in terms of image (while acknowledging that said image eventually steamrolled into something comparable to a train wreck), but I also can’t deny having a rather shoulder-shrugging reaction to them overall.

My ambivalence was probably due to their status as a band du jour while other far more interesting acts (from the garage sphere in particular) were getting slighted or ignored completely. By contrast, I was very much in The Chesterfield Kings’ camp back in the day simply because they had the cards of esteem so strongly stacked against them; in the end, they were a band I couldn’t help rooting for. To be frank, The Brian Jonestown Massacre needed none of my goodwill.

And again, plenty of folks wore their fandom of BJM as a badge of cool and just as many used their dislike of the band as a way to define what rock music shouldn’t be; there wasn’t much in the way of middle ground. Well, except that the middle ground is pretty much where I put them. It’s now a given that the name Brian Jonestown Massacre is essentially synonymous with founder Anton Newcombe, and it hasn’t been really accurate in quite a long time to call them a band. But in their early incarnation a band is very much what they were, holding a solid lineup and releasing some solid music upon which their reputation is based.

If I’m foreshadowing the direction of this review by saying that I don’t think The Brian Jonestown Massacre ever made a great record, I’ll add that in the ‘90s anyway, they also displayed a fair amount of promise. But as time marched forward and the situation shaped up more and more as a Newcombe-led project with a frequently revolving door, the whole endeavor became a case of highly dysfunctional diminishing returns, and I started paying less attention.

If I haven’t been fond of any of the BJM records to see release in the 21st Century, I’ve come to at least respect Newcombe as a survivor and an artist of deeper dedication than I suspected he had in him. Yes, the heyday of the Massacre is long gone and it’s highly doubtful it’s ever coming back, and yet here Newcome is with another record. If Aufheben does little to change my perception of his recent output, it does feel like the man’s best release in quite some time. With this said, the bad and indifferent moments far outweigh the good, and it’s become even more likely that Newcombe’s most productive days are vanishing in the rearview mirror.

It’s important to not fall into generalizations when describing the problems with any record; I was initially tempted to say that Aufheben is hindered by too many songs in need of inspiration, but that’s not a particularly productive avenue. That the record is lacking in creative spark is perhaps the better way of putting it. After a strong opener (“Panic and Babylon”) and a not bad follow up (“Viholliseni Maalla”), Aufheben begins to bog down with flat tunes (“Gaz Hilarant”, “I Want to Hold Your Other Hand”) and miscalculations (the unfortunate flute on “Illuminomi” and “Face Down on the Moon”, the dance-inclined repetitiveness of closer “Blue Order/New Monday”). “The Clouds Are Lies” and “Stairway to the Best Party” raise the quality back up, but the five and a half minutes of “Seven Kings of Wonderful” goes on for far too long, as does the length of “Waking Up to Hand Grenades”.

If Newcombe had managed to release Aufheben’s four strong songs as an EP, it would’ve caused me to seriously rethink my assessment of his recent output. But these tracks are included on a record that’s sunk by faults seemingly ingrained in its creator’s musical personality. The biggest problem appears to be the sacrifice of dynamics and intensity and a dependence upon repetition that far too frequently results in dead ends.

If The Brian Jonestown Massacre makes an interesting contrast with The Chesterfield Kings, maybe the most revealing comparison, at least in terms of this record, is with Jack White. The White Stripes were a similar sort of band to BJM in how they could divide listeners into pro and anti camps, especially as their popularity grew, in part due to White’s personality but also because their sound was so blatantly in thrall of the music that shaped it.

Listening to White’s Blunderbuss reveals it to also be an LP with quite a few flews, but it’s still a valuable statement with much to offer creatively. What it’s got is, in a word, verve. It’s important to never count any artist out, and Aufheben holds enough quality to reinforce that maxim. But as Newcombe continually staggers to his feet and gets saved by the bell on record after record, it’s starting to feel like he’s taken a few blows too many.

If Lee Hazlewood lingers in the contemporary cultural memory, it’s easily due to his work with Nancy Sinatra. On The LHI Years: Nudes, Singles and Backsides (1968-1971), the Light in the Attic label collects a bunch of his post-Nancy collaborations and a welcome helping of his solo shots, and the results are highly recommended not just for Hazlewood’s fans but for anyone with an inclination for well-crafted oddball pop.

Though his music never wavered from its thoroughly commercial designs, Lee Hazelwood was still a truly strange duck. And the undeniable datedness of his work can really add to the overall weirdness factor, though that’s in no way a bad thing; if often possessing production values and orchestrations that are accurately assessed as “middle of the road” (not the same as “mainstream”), his songs almost always avoid falling into simple kitsch.

But Hazlewood was more than just a bizarro/sophisto cowboy that blended Vegas-inclined pop with a country-inflected folksiness both on his own and in a collaboration with Sinatra that still comes off like a Swingin’ ‘60’s reaction to Dolly and Porter. Indeed, while loads of folks are familiar with the string of late-‘50s hits that he produced and co-wrote with Duane Eddy, it’s also true that most of those listeners aren’t cognizant of Hazlewood’s actual involvement with those songs, a short flowering of creativity that stands amongst the finest instrumental rock music ever recorded.

He was also the impresario of Lee Hazlewood Industries, a fleeting subsidiary label of ABC Records. Naturally, a fair portion of LHI’s relatively slim discography is dedicated to its namesake; both his solo album Forty and The Cowboy and the Lady, credited to the duo of Hazlewood and actress Ann-Margret were released in 1969, and Cowboy in Sweden came out the following year. Back around 1999 or so, Steve Shelley’s Smells Like Records began admirably reissuing some of Hazlewood’s harder to find stuff on compact disc. This program included both the Ann-Margret collab and Cowboy in Sweden, but plenty of worthy bits and pieces slipped through the cracks.

As its title makes plain, this 2LP corrals a bunch of those bits and pieces with the supposed intention of further volumes to come, and the sustained level of quality across these four sides of vinyl really makes one hope that Light in the Attic comes through on their objective to excavate the LHI archives.  It opens with “Califia (Stone Rider)”, a duet with girlfriend Suzi Jane Hokom that mines familiar territory to impressive success; that combination of unabashed lushness and faux-earthy twang, the echo on Hazlewood’s booming, edgy baritone and the way he smartly blended his voice with the softer, more welcoming elements of a female counterpart.

Things hardly look down from there, with the music making clear that Hazlewood had no problem playing to his strengths. To elaborate, seven of the record’s seventeen tracks are duets with female counterparts, all obviously inspired by the fruitfulness of his artistic union with Nancy Sin, and while none of them charted in the US/UK that’s not for lack of value. Another track with Hokom, three with Ann-Margret and two with Swedish singer Nina Lizell find him cultivating the contrast between tough and sweet with much success.

This blend of the masculine and feminine has become a big factor in Hazlewood’s work, even when he’s behind the chair. His was the pen responsible for “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’”, after all. In fact, his status as a collaborator has sorta come to dominate his legacy; while his ‘60’s solo albums sold well enough to keep him in demand, it’s also true that Hazlewood never had a hit single under his name alone, and some people view the guy’s solo output as substantially lesser to his work with Nancy and the gals.

To put it mildly, this is a gross miscalculation. Just for starters, I’ve never been able to decide between pre-LHI solo slabs Lee Hazlewoodism – It’s Cause and Cure (for MGM) or Love and Other Crimes (for Reprise) as a personal favorite. Both are world class collections of strong song from a truly unique voice, and The LHI Years includes more of the same top flight material. “The Bed” squarely hits the middle ground between honky-tonk and high gloss that found him in the producer’s chair for Singer of Sad Songs, one of Waylon Jennings’ finest pre-Outlaw LPs.

But when the music called for it he could also show admirable restraint, as the spare, hung-over “If It’s Monday Morning” and the driving “Bye Babe” both display. “No Train to Stockholm” feels like a legit slice of flower power-era pop, and it matches up well with the Jesus as proto-hippie storytelling of “Trouble Maker”. These tracks can serve as a satisfactory corrective, for Hazlewood is sometimes erroneously tagged as a wannabe hipster, or categorized by more polite denigrators as a kooky and aged interloper upon the grassy knolls and bubbling fjords of the late-‘60s youth movement’s supposed exalted purity.

This is another way of saying that some crabby sticklers persist in viewing “Some Velvet Morning” as “fake” psychedelia, but the people holding this odious opinion probably don’t like Eric Burdon’s “Sky Pilot” either. What a bunch of killjoys. In reality, Lee Hazlewood is one of American music’s true eccentrics, and as the cover of The LHI Years plainly shows, he was part playboy and part sage prankster, halfway between the establishment and the margins with nary a trace of conflict between the two.

Of the duet tracks, those with Ann-Margret stand up strongest, particularly the gleefully over the top festival of corn vs. schmaltz that is “Sleep in the Grass”, though the fairly laid-back country-folk-pop of “Victims of the Night” is also quite appealing. “Nobody Like You” with Hokom is one idea stretched a little beyond its limit, though it’s not unpleasant for all that. And both tracks with Lizell acquit themselves with purpose, though “Hey Cowboy” really tackles the era’s Bacharach-esque MOR tendencies with vigor.      

At this point the LHI label is still mostly remembered for Hazlewood’s releases, though the company also issued Safe at Home, the only LP from Gram Parsons’ first group The International Submarine Band. But the imprint also put out some highly regarded and quite hard to find work from artists like The Kitchen Cinq, Arthur and the Aggregation, Honey Ltd., The Surprise Package and Sanford Clark, whose 1956 hit “The Fool” happened to be written by Hazlewood.

It’s unclear how much if any of this material will surface in Light in the Attic’s LHI reissue plans, but here’s hoping at least some of it makes it onto disc, for it’ll only serve to deepen the already rich legacy of an absolutely one of a kind artist. The LHI Years: Nudes, Singles and Backsides (1968-1971) is a trove of Hazlewood’s brilliant work. Not every song is perfect, but every song is essential. It’s a beautifully done package from one of our best reissue labels.



Joseph's Picks Of The Week 5/4/12- Death Grips and Ty Segall/White Fence

With The Money Store, Sacramento CA trio Death Grips cross-pollinates hip-hop with the tactics of noise and drenches it all in a seething, apocalyptic outlook. Certainly not for everyone, it is however a surprisingly successful document, displaying high standards of variation throughout its onslaught of vitriolic ferocity.

To begin with The Money Store, there’s the major label aspect. This is frankly the most unlikely release to get corporate backing in quite a long time, but it’s important to remember that this sort of thing happens in cycles, and the way some people are reacting, you’d think Epic signed Borbetomagus or Masonna to a contract. The Money Store is indeed a crazy and uncompromising release, but it’s not completely off the map; as abstract and scorching as the record gets it retains a close enough relationship to previous models (mostly through the employment of rhythm) that its integration into the Sony Music Entertainment empire doesn’t so much inspire head scratching but instead feels like the latest example of a company feeling secure enough in its bottom line to attempt stepping out as the coolest bunch of executives on the block.

If that’s cynical, so be it. Epic may very well believe very strongly in what Death Grips offer on this quite impressive if undeniably divisive record, but that remains to be seen. Just because the musical landscape is different now than in any time since people realized a nice profit could be made by mass producing records doesn’t mean that the behavior of big money is somehow in need of reappraisal. The ‘90s major label feeding frenzy of indie and u-ground acts also resulted in some hard to rationalize signings, e.g. Boredoms’ Pop Tatari. The main difference here is the lack of an overflowing floodgate of sudden (and temporarily) hot properties ready for the pickings; digital avenues have greatly leveled the playing field against big label tomfoolery and anybody with internet access and speakers can discover new bands and test drive the records they want to buy (this directly led to an indie band winning a Grammy for Album of the Year). Yes Death Grips stick out like bloody appendages on the Epic Records roster, but in the end that’s not really anything new under the sun.

But far more importantly, if not quite as extreme as some have claimed, The Money Store is a riveting and somewhat groundbreaking listen. In combining the aesthetics of hip-hop, electronics, and noise into a bleak, at times unsettling landscape of shattered imagery, they feel like a new (if by no means wholly original) development. Comparisons have been made to Odd Future, but the edginess (or of you prefer, offensiveness) of that group registers differently from Death Grips. Odd Future often feels like just the latest extension of hip-hop’s transgressive possibilities. The Money Store comes off like a mixture of u-ground hip-hop, the far-out electronica of Kid606 and a despairing worldview that’s somewhat comparable to early industrialists like Throbbing Gristle.

And the specifics of Death Grips’ discomfiting vision are by design not easy to discern. The vocals of Stefan Burnett (aka MC Ride) are mixed throughout the album in a manner that resists any kind of narrative hold. Words, phrases and occasionally whole lines do jump out, but struggling to decipher the fabric of what’s being said is ultimately against the grain of The Money Store’s goals. Death Grips don’t want to tell an unpleasant but easily grasped story but instead desire to craft the equivalent to the often inexplicable imagery of a fevered nightmare.

This unholy trio of Burnett, producer Andy Morin and drummer Zack Hill (a name some may recognize from Hella and numerous other projects) released the Exmilitary mixtape last year. Flipping the script somewhat, their debut is less caustic than their major label coming out party. A big reason is The Money Store’s lack of samples. Exmilitary featured clips and loops lifted from sources as disparate as Black Flag, Pet Shop Boys, The Castaways’ “Liar Liar”, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Pink Floyd and that unrelenting motor-mouth of lingering societal discomfort Charles Manson, and the use of these collected reference points fashioned their initial effort as being much closer to the norms (if you will) of experimental hip-hop, though it was an immediately darker experience that didn’t necessarily fall in line with the genre’s expressions of intellectual complexity.

But a large segment of the planet’s population will derisively sum up The Money Store as “noise”. And it’s also true that aficionados of various noise sub-genres will possibly be quite taken with the contents of this LP. But Death Grips’ cacophonous blitzkrieg wields its effectiveness through precision, relying far more on force and velocity than on the elements of abstraction that lead many observers to erroneously label noise music as so much screwing around. However, it’s highly unlikely that people will volley the insult “my five-year old can do that” in this particular album’s direction.

And that reliance on power and momentum is in execution if not in sound very reminiscent of vintage hardcore punk’s primal fury, with Exmilitary’s Black Flag sample holding much more significance than being just a crafty loop. And the cover art only amplifies this connection, looking like a cross between prime Raymond Pettibon and a page ripped out of some S&M troll’s leather-bound sketchbook.

But The Money Store isn’t just one big bum’s rush of methodical if calculatedly submerged aggression. “I’ve Seen Footage”, “Hustle Bones” and the closing track “Hackers” introduce periods of relative respite from the maelstrom. In fact, the appropriating and reconfiguring of the beat from Salt-n-Pepa’s “Push It” makes “I’ve Seen Footage” feel like this record’s “single”. While a perfectly fine song taken in isolation, I’m a bit conflicted over its presence here, as hearing it in sequence highly normalizes The Money Store; while reportedly left to their own devices, Death Grips still managed to come up with a record that the suits at Epic could identify with strategically; amidst the hammer blows of third-degree negativity, this album holds in its nihilistic mid-section something resembling a party jam.

Conversely, tracks like “Lost Boys” “Blackjack” “System Blower” and “Punk Weight” turn up the abrasive heat, and it’s in these excursions that Death Grips come closest to realizing the potential of hip-hop for Merzbow-loving Wolf Eyes fans. This means that The Money Store’s hip-hop legitimacy is roughly comparable to Last Exit’s relationship to jazz or Jandek’s general proximity to folk or rock. This record is certainly “there” in hip-hop terms, but its status as an idiosyncratic hybrid with likely garner some purist hostility.

Ultimately, “I’ve Seen Footage” might bode well for Death Grips’ future. Bands specializing in music of this extremity often have short qualitative life spans, either flaming out before they start to suck or unfortunately besmirching the vitality of their initial work with inferior product. I’ll still be surprised if these three are still together and cranking out top-notch material in two years’ time, but there is a chance that Death Grips will exceed expectations and wind down later rather than sooner.

With another album scheduled for the fall, it’s going to be interesting to hear Death Grips’ progress. Whether they’re destined for brevity or built to last, The Money Store is a major statement. It might be far from pretty, but it’s surely effective in its caustic vision.

As its trippy cover image indicates, the collaborative effort of Ty Segall and White Fence’s Tim Presley conjures up a natty batch of tough-minded psychedelia. While not a life-altering affair, Hair confidently succeeds in its ambitions and stands as far more than just a one-off curiosity.

While Ty Segall is still most accurately identified as a garage-rock guy, it’s also true that he’s been showing some significant growth spurts of late. His record of last year Goodbye Bread made great strides in both the level of his songwriting and the scope of his presentation, all while remaining true to Segall’s organic, non-flash aesthetic. And while he was never really a stone-faced garage purist, his development remains worthy of commendation; ‘tis true that no one will ever fill the gap left by the far too soon departure of Jay Reatard, but Segall probably comes closest through the prolific and unfussy nature of his progressions.

Tim Presley is the man behind White Fence, a quietly impressive bedroom psyche solo project that also happens to flaunt a high level of productivity; four albums, a live cassette and a 7-inch in a two year period, all released while remaining a member of the bands Darker My Love and The Strange Boys. If his approach in White Fence looks backward to such fine antecedents as Syd Barrett, Love, The Move, Donovan and the anemic glory of toy-town psyche, hearing just a small portion of his solo output makes it plain that he’s very much an artist of the moment. Presley’s not deliberately up-to-date, but his work still feels contemporary in its overall thrust.

With all this said, I frankly couldn’t help but feel a tad bit nervous after being tipped off to the imminent release of a joint venture between Segall and Presley. Collaborations between established artists have a tendency to either be a bit underwhelming (Broken Bells, for instance) or highly disappointing (not to flog a gift horse in the mouth, but how’s Lulu treating you lately?), and in this case I was unsure of how two musicians who’d so successfully forged a creative identity out of going it alone would reconcile with the give and take inherent to the exercise of artistic partnership, though the basis of my concern resided more with Segall than with Presley. It’s true that Ty has also spent time in full-fledged bands (five of them in fact; The Epsilons, The Traditional Fools, Sic Alps, Party Fowl and Perverts), but he’s also been effectively solo since 2008, and that’s where his reputation is rightly based.

But I was also intrigued. The pairing of Segall and Presley was somewhat surprising since their styles aren’t a natural fit, but at the same time they were far from theoretically irreconcilable. In fact, I quite like it when the garage-born mindset nuzzles up against a psyche state of mind, finding it a case of two great sounds that sound great together. But I kept having this nagging suspicion that the duo would just jump into the studio with a combined head full of shared steam (or some other substance or two) and proceed to throw down a batch of songs that felt glorious as it happened but would unfortunately linger after the fact as something far less than earth-shattering. It’s the recurring sensation of All-Star Jam-itis Super-Sessioning its way into the depths of the record collection, taking up space and looking very necessary as it’s being passed over once again for some other less-grandiose selection, rarely if ever getting pulled out for a spin.

After ample time spent with Hair, I’m happy to report that my fears were misplaced. While not a masterpiece, this tidy if expansive eight-song collection leaves a lasting positive impression mainly because it doesn’t attempt to present an overt equality between the participants. Presley sings the majority of Hair’s songs and the album’s overall thrust is much closer to White Fence than to Segall’s extant work. This shouldn’t be read as Segall not asserting himself; to the contrary, he picks his spots exceptionally well, and his presence is certainly felt throughout the album. It just becomes apparent that he’s disinterested in matching Presley song for song in some spurious desire for creative democracy. Instead of the schizophrenia that might’ve resulted from that situation, Hair really breathes, its tunes calling out for repeated spins, the product of the two’s shared desire to simply make the best album possible.

Opener “Time” sets the scene exceptionally well. It begins with some faux-psyche garage action, then shifts into a strummy, mildly George Harrison-like mid-section and tacks on a distorted coda that feels a little bit like the young Times New Viking shooting for the sweet thunder of prime Crazy Horse. Quite a trip! The next track “I Am Not a Game” feels a bit like a combo of Thee Oh Sees, White Fence’s sunshine-psyche vibe and the sort of rhythmic drive that’s been Segall’s specialty over the last few years, and it all concludes with an ace rave-up.

I can’t help but hear Robert Schneider in Presley’s vocals, and this only abets “Easy Ryder” in sounding like something the Elephant 6 ringleader might’ve come up with had he been more inclined toward the grittier side of the ‘60s psychedelic experience; it shares a similar melodic approach, but is ultimately punchier and more stripped-down in delivery, more Nuggets and less Pet Sounds. The first part of “The Black Glove/Rag” alters this mode slightly, sounding a bit like Schneider shooting for the folkier side of Donovan. But the track’s second half gravitates away from this sensibility toward a fine survey of gradually mounting guitar scrawl, drum pound and vocal swagger.

Side two commences with the brief, echo-laden stomp of “Crybaby”, sounding like The Sonics in full-tilt glory, which means we’re solidly if momentarily on Segall’s turf. But “(I Can’t) Get Around You” tilts the proceedings back into Presley’s favor, and with gusto; the song is essentially a tug-of-war between Anglo derived pop-psyche (replete with nasal-blockage vocals) and some exquisite amp-fuzz circa ’66 Los Angeles. From there the loopy rocking of “Scissor People” and closing sing-along strum and bop of “Tongues” are just gravy.

After some consideration, it seems that Segall’s strongest overall contribution to Hair lies in how he tempts Presley’s approach out of the bedroom and onto a larger, bolder stage. Certainly there is nothing inferior or less-admirable about the oft-twisted intimacy that hovers around the existing White Fence material like an enveloping and intoxicating florescent cloud, and indeed Presley has already exerted flashes of a more extroverted nature. For example, there is “Harness” from last years’ Is Growing Faith, and the stellar Brit-DIY nod of “Baxter Corner” from his 2010 self-titled solo debut. But on Hair a vigorous quality of conception pulses throughout and it draws largely from Presley’s creative wheelhouse; much like Segall’s work on his lonesome, it’s not polished or pro, but it oozes with the same confident, punk-derived attitude.

Apparently, there is more in the can from this match-up, so it remains to be seen if Presley’s impact on Hair is representative of the whole, or if this album was sequenced to sit in contrast to an additional volume where Segall will assert the fiery potency of which he’s most capable. Either possibility would be equally welcome.