I know that I have mentioned before of my recent conversion over to the cult of the cassette tape. This has lead to some great discoveries, of course forcing me to ask the question, “What have I been keeping myself from for the past couple of years?”
It was through another tape purchase that I discovered the band Chat Logs. Maybe part of my love for this batch of songs is partly because of the element of surprise. I wasn’t planning on buying this album, didn’t even know that it existed, and now I have it here with me
What I got was an aggressive bass assault with grinding guitars and menacing vocals. The perpetual, circular bass-line of “Eat Your Heart Out” is intermittently interrupted by a heavily echoed, distorted and pitch shifted guitar that’s doing it’s best interpretation of a blues break, but is run through a experimental noise-rock filter. And many of the songs take on a similar structure, with persistent bass holding everything together while the guitars and vocals buzz, screech and echo all around it.
“Am I Right, Or Am I Right?” clocks in at just over 19 minutes with its 4 tracks, the perfect EP length. Personal favorite “Mooks” is mostly instrumental (or at least has a lengthy instrumental break in the middle) with a great winding lead guitar line that sounds like a more unrestrained Constantines track.
The album is available now through Already Dead Records and Tapes, a limited run, specialty press label run out of Chicago that is absolutely worth checking out for fans of sometimes obscure, experimental, electronic, hard-edged garage and all other genres in between.
Ultra distorted, lo-fi psych punk. That just about sums it up.
If you know anything about Purling Hiss, and Permanent Records that originally put this album out back in ’09, it’s that they are both synonymous with fuzzed out, lo-fi (sometimes to an extreme) psych/stoner garage rock.
This recording is overblown, in the red nearly the entire time, really capturing the energy and immediacy of a debut release. Since this album came out 5 years ago Purling Hiss has gone on to release tons of stuff on other labels like Woodsist and Drag City to name a few. Purling Hiss has gone from the solo project of Mike Polizze to becoming a full-fledged band, jamming non-stop on endless tours across the country.
“Almost Washed My Hair” lays out an 8 minute guitar solo over static harmony that explores almost every classic rock guitar idiom known to man while simultaneously slicing through squeals of feedback and an incessant wash crash cymbals. “Montage Mountain” takes the noise element up a few hundred notches, with guitars bleating and screaming wildly, trying to find their place. Both tunes stretch on for what seems like an indefinite period, again, just a noise, feedback jam session. And I didn’t even bring up the track “Purple Hiss,” the longest on the album, clocking in at 14 and a half minutes.
And now that we have a better idea of what Purling Hiss sounds like in their current incarnation-specifically a Sabbath influenced, stoner rock guitar riffage band-it’s interesting to be able to hear where that all started. Head on over to the Permanent Records site to grab one of the limited edition cassettes or vinyl while you can, as I’m sure they aren’t going to last very long. If you miss out, you can still head to their bandcamp and get in on the download.
mchtnchts – “The Spoiled West and its Freshly Minted Infants” on Already Dead Records
I used to consider myself to be firmly in the camp of anti-tape. I just couldn’t understand why it was that people were bringing back such a (thankfully) dead medium. The angle that I was looking at was, well there is a reason that I always buy stuff on vinyl and it’s because it sounds better and is a more authentic representation of the actual music than a digital representation from a CD or mp3. It seemed to me that recording stuff to tape was simply an effort of creating nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake, and it just seemed completely backwards.
Not long ago, though, I was reading about how the community that has sprung up around creating tapes considers them to be an act of rebellion of sorts. It’s much cheaper and easier to distribute tapes than it is to record vinyl, and it doesn’t require nearly as much technology as is required to create digital files. That is something that I can get down with. If it is a means for more people to get their music out there, and in a medium that is tangible, then how could anyone not support that. I think what finally sold me was when I got a pair of tapes from Crash Symbols. Sure, the nostalgia is there, but the tapes and the artwork for Julie’s Haircut and Exotic Club are so captivating. How could I not love it? What is going to happen though is that bigger bands are going to try to cash in on this, creating tapes for no reason other than “they seem to be getting more popular.”
Well, this isn’t about me. I was just pointed in the direction of a label, Already Dead Tapes & Records, and discovered that it’s a pretty good place to poke around. According to the site Already Dead Tapes was founded by Joshua Tabbia and Sean Hartman. The label is run by Joshua Tabbia, Sean Hartman, Ray Jackson and Alex Borozan and they are a DIY record label releasing cassettes, vinyl and fine art in small editions.
What specifically brought me to the site was a tape by mchtnchts. “The Spoiled West and its Freshly Minted Infants” is a fresh blast of noise from bent circuits and analog sources from a pair of musicians from the Bay Area. There’s a sample on the page. Make sure you act quick though, the release is limited to 40 tapes…well, 39 tapes.
Looking around a little more there’s some bouncy garage rock from Panda Kid’s “Summetry” 12″. I think they are from Italy. I feel like Italian indie rock is stalking me, or maybe it’s the other way around. That one is pretty fantastic and worth a listen. They end up sounding like a roughed up Beach Fossils in some ways, with similarly breezy and carefree aesthetic, though taken to some strange dark places at times. Only 30 of those available. And then there is the art-rock weirdness and bass heaviness of Comfort Food’s “Dr. Faizan’s Feel Good Brain Pills” tape. Both great and for very different reasons.
Have fun checking out all the stuff on Already Dead’s site. To get to the bandcamp pages for the bands, just click on the “i” next to the play button on each page. I have yet to come across something not worth hearing. Follow the links below and check out the bandcamp pages linked above. All of these releases are extremely limited, so if you are thinking that you want to get something, you’d better grab it while you can. Otherwise, grabbing the albums digitally on bandcamp might be a good contingency plan, but I think supporting this great small-edition label is definitely the best way to go.
As I continue to play through all of my favorite releases of the year, trying to put together some sort of end of year compilation, the release that I come back to almost every day is Twin Peaks’ debut LP “Sunken.” I think that I’m going to have to say definitively that that is my favorite release of the year. My one complaint about “Sunken,” though, is that it’s way too short, but I guess that this tiny little single can tide me over until 2014 with its expansive 4 minutes and 17 seconds of material. I’m just going to consider these two songs as “Sunken” bonus tracks.
Both “Flavor” and “Come Bother Me” are considerably more poppy, and considerably less washy/reverbed out. You can take a quick listen to both the tracks above, and then you can head over to the bandcamp page to drop $1 on a download, or send it as a last minute gift.
According to the bandcamp site the single was released on cassette via Tripp Tapes this past Friday, December 20th with a 7″ via Jeffery Drag Records coming soon.
You can buy “Sunken” over here on CD, vinyl, or as a digital download. Check out the video for “Stand In the Sand” off of that album below.
Endless Bummer are comin’ at you with 4 tracks of gritty, garage punk mayhem on their “Ripper Current EP.“
Lance and Liz, proprietors of Chicago and Los Angeles’ “Permanent Records” recorded this 4 track burner with Ty Segall and was released on In The Red Records (home to Ty’s ten million bands and some albums by Thee Oh Sees) at the end of October.
Being a fan of their podcast when it was going strong, this album delivers exactly what I expected it to. Short blasts of raw energy that sound like everything that I know they love thrown in a blender and blasted out all over the place in one cathartic heave. There’s not much more to say other than take a listen and bask in its glory. Equal parts noise and surf rock.
Check it out above or on their bandcamp page. Also, two other tracks not included on the EP are up on their soundcloud page. Head over there to listen to “B Movie” and “Runaround.”
The thing about mechanical music, or minimalist music, is that after a while one starts to hear the groove that is buried within the music, despite it desperately wanting to hide that side of itself. Every aspect of music is on a spectrum, but that spectrum loops back around at the ends so that any parameter, if it gets extreme enough, starts to seem like exactly its inverse. Take Kraftwerk for example, that music is so stilted and stiff and mechanical to the greatest possible extent that it actually seems to swing. Or take the incredibly highly organized and structured music of integral serialism. It is so ordered and every parameter is so thoroughly thought out that the music actually goes beyond order and starts to sound like chaos. Boulez starts to sound like Cage.
Well, that was a long way of saying that Chicago Kraut/prog/psych rockers CAVE are back with their 3rd album, “Threace.” Every song, on their previous releases, is an exercise in singularity. The groove (or lack of groove that becomes grove) locks in and doesn’t let go. Every riff is distilled to a thumping, driving, powerful, robotic cycle. Stereolab on acid trying to play Black Sabbath: that’s CAVE. That pretty much says it all.
Check out the video for “Shikaakwa” below, and some of their other videos up on the Drag City page. Highly recommended for fans of, well, yes, Stereolab and Black Sabbath.
“Threace” is currently available on Drag City as a CD, LP, Cassette, mp3 or FLAC download. You can check out more tracks here and here. CAVE is currently on tour around the US.
Well, it might be too late for this now, but I sincerely hope that you heeded the warning at the beginning of the video, because they are not messing around. Oozing Wound wants to make sure that you are headbanging, even if that means it is the result of a seizure.
I’m placing this one right in between Slayer and Liturgy. More toward the Slayer side of things than anything else. For a few minutes at the beginning of the song I was wondering if it was going to be an instrumental or not. The band pummels that opening riff into the ground in a fit of metal hypnosis. It isn’t until about a minute-twenty in that the actual lead line/opening riff comes in, followed by the raspy, vocals that are clenched tight not very far behind.
Three full minutes of thrash metal insanity, going 900 mph straight toward a brick wall. Pretty intense. Pretty awesome. The ending motto is pretty classic too. Check it out above. If you aren’t awake now, you will be.
Chicago’s own Oozing Wound released their debut album, “Retrash,” last week on Thrill Jockey. Pick up a copy of the LP, pressed on virgin vinyl and packaged with a fully artworked inner sleeve and free download coupon; or the CD version in 4 panel mini-LP style gatefold package here. You can also hear a preview of each of the tracks at that link.
There is also a limited edition screen-printed LP version available at Permanent Records Chicago. Grab it while you can.
Jason Molina’s life ended tragically this past March after an extended battle with severe alcoholism. With him closed the door on the possibility of any future Songs: Ohia or Magnolia Electric Co. albums; the last thing that we heard from Molina was his collaboration with Will Johnson from 2009.
His legacy will certainly live on through his prolific output as a songwriter, most notably the final Songs: Ohia album (or the first Magolia Electric Co. release, depending on how you would like to think about it). That album was released 10 years ago, and now Secretly Canadian is giving it the recognition that it deserves with a special deluxe edition release.
To me, the album is masterful from top to bottom. His deeply affecting voice that trembles alternately with sadness and confidence, the entire album is like that in a way. There are lyrics that, depending on from which angle you consider them, are either inspirational or, especially in light of his recent passing, devastating. Take, for example, a lyric from the album opener “Farewell Transmission” in which Molina intones “the real truth about it is, no one gets it right. The real truth about it is we’re all supposed to try,” a line that is accompanied by a pedal steel, pouring all the sadness in the world into the line.
For the most part though, the songs can be heard as hopeful. Molina sings about wanting to make changes, and wanting to just hold on. They all teeter on that edge of hopeful and hopeless. “Almost Was Good Enough” begins with an admission, still referring to trying, always trying. “It’s been hard doin’ anything. The winter’s stuck around so long. I kept tryin’ anyhow, and I’m still tryin’ now, just to keep working. I remember when it didn’t used to be so hard, it used to be impossible. New season has to begin, I can feel it leanin’ in, whisperin…”
These themes of trying and still needing to try harder; the optimism of getting better, mixed with feelings of inadequacy; still not being good enough. The endless struggle and battle with this inner unrest….
“Almost no one makes it out. Almost no one makes it out.”
…and knowing the whole time how it is going to end. But he still holds on to that hope, at least through this album. Despite almost no one making it out he then states proudly “you’re talkin’ to one right now.” Again, a line equivocally interpreted as being one of those who gets out, or one of those who doesn’t. Sadly, any possible ambiguities have been wiped clear from this lyric. Sadder still is the sorrow placed out front on the closing track “Hold on Magnolia.” Molina’s voice soars as the band grows behind him, unable to drown out the complex mix of emotions being belted forth from his powerful baritone.
“Hold on Magnolia to that great highway moon
No one has to be that strong
But if you’re stubborn like me
I know what you’re trying to be
Hold on Magnolia, I hear that station bell ring
You might be holding the last light I see
Before the dark finally gets a hold of me
Hold on Magnolia, I know what a true friend you’ve been
In my life I have had my doubts
But tonight I think I’ve worked it out with all of them
Hold on Magnolia to the thunder and the rain
To the lightning that has just signed my name to the bottom line
Hold on Magnolia, I hear that lonesome whistle whine
Hold on Magnolia
I think its almost time”
This album, if you haven’t heard it, needs to be heard. It’s sad, and tragic and beautiful and powerful and everything that any album should be.
Smith Westerns have traveled an interesting course across their 3 album output. Their first release was noisy, awash in reverb and tape noise. The songs themselves were rough around the edges, energetic and brash. That’s a great place to start. After the follow up, “Dye It Blonde,” it became apparent that the band was not happy with letting things stagnate, or letting their sound grow tired.
And it definitely isn’t as if they scrapped everything and started over. The sound of “Soft Will” was buried under all of the noisy elements of their debut. This most recent release is calmer, more confident, moving away from the glam- and punk- influences and trading those for the sounds of something somewhere in between dream-pop and chill-wave. I know, I know, I hate those labels too. To be more specific, comparing them to other bands one would have to place Smith Westerns in the company of Real Estate, or MGMT at their loftiest.
Or maybe they are letting some other influences shine through. There seems to be a clear Pink Floyd influence on the song “XXIII,” that piano line sounds very similar to Dark Side of the Moon era Floyd, specifically “The Great Gig in the Sky.” The classic rock vibe doesn’t end there either. The guitar line (and the tone for that matter) in “Best Friend” is taken right out of that era, think Badfinger.
The laid back vibe of Pink Floyd, or Real Estate permeates the entirety of “Soft Will.” Even when tracks like “Only Natural” pick up the pace a little bit beyond mid-tempo, it still manages to emit the chilled out aura that matches Cullen Omori’s vocals. His near falsetto doesn’t quite hide behind the instruments, but his breathy delivery certainly exudes the kind of shyness that isn’t really shyness at all, but more like someone that is more mercurial, reflective and lost in thought.
“Cheer Up” is maybe the song on “Soft Will” that is least like any of the others on the album. The minor turn that the song takes when Omori sings the lyric “cheer up” presents an interesting juxtaposition that is only righted in the bridge of the song, an exciting and lofty section that carries through to the end of the song. My one critique would be that they need to write more songs like “Cheer Up,” and “Only Natural.” I think that the band is at their best when they move away from their comfort zone. As their sound is solidifying along these lines I think that they need to learn to rely less on melodic lines, changes and chord progressions that they have already explored. This album could be a step away from something truly great.
Smith Westerns know how to write a single, that is for sure. Any of the songs that appear on “Soft Will” could easily find a large audience. They’re are all catchy, very well written and interesting. Hopefully the band will continue to release albums on a regular basis. As it is now we are getting a new Smith Westerns album every 2 years, and not a bad song on any of them.
The band is currently on tour through the end of November, where they will conclude with a show in their hometown of Chicago.
Oct 11 Austin City Limits Music Festival – Austin, TX
Oct 12 Emo’s – Austin, TX Tickets RSVP
Oct 26 Life Is Beautiful Festival – Las Vegas, NV
Nov 11 Webster Hall – New York, NY
Nov 13 Paradise Rock Club – Boston, MA
Nov 14 Wescott Theatre – Syracuse, NY
Nov 15 First Unitarian Church – Philadelphia, PA
Nov 18 9:30 Club – Washington, DC
Nov 20 Magic Stick – Detroit, MI
Nov 21 The A&R Music Bar – Columbus, OH
Nov 22 High Noon Saloon – Madison, WI Nov 23 Vic Theatre – Chicago, IL
“Soft Will” is currently available in the iTunes store, or on vinyl (comes with a CD).
This album was brought to my attention through the Permanent Records email list, my favorite record store in Chicago (they have recently opened shop in Los Angeles as well). “Come” is Philadelphia’s Psychic Teens’ second full length record. Part psych rock, part garage rock, part abrasive noise. From the sneering vocals and angular guitar bending of “NO” to the buzzsaw dissonant counterpoint of “RIP” and the feedback assault of “BUG” the entire album creates beauty through hazy, gritty guitar noise and a punchy bass with punk-rock drumming.
The hooks are there, just below the surface. The mix and overall aesthetic of Psychic Teens reminds me a little bit of The Telescopes, or even My Bloody Valentine mixed with White Hills in parts. An element of shoegaze is present, but not as a rule. Take, for example, album closer “VEIL.” That song’s slow dirge, with gently chorused guitar, holds back the flood of a Russian Circles’ circa “Enter”-like thick wall of bass heavy distortion. During moments like this it’s difficult to determine whether this should be categorized as straight up metal.
The standout for me, however, is the hypnotic half-step foundation of “LUST” that is periodically broken up with a slightly out of tune 2nd guitar. The entire thing shifts considerably upon the entrance o a heavy dose of feedback squeal and a metal power-chord crunch that leads into a four-on-the-floor stomp.
I guess you could call it whatever you want as long as you listen. The band can readily move between and beyond categorization with very little effort. They seem to be placing themselves right at the edge of several intersecting styles. Another great example of the diverse Philly music scene.
Take a listen to the album above or on the SRA Records bandcamp. Albums are available in a variety of formats including CD, oxblood colored vinyl, and cassette with a few bundles that include a variety of other things thrown in for good measure.
