Hardcore for Nerds

Hardcore for Nerds is now on Tumblr

2010-10-02T23:16:00.001+01:00

New Irish Music: So Cow, Halves/Subplots, Cutaways

2009-05-02T21:15:00.004+01:00

So Cow - 'Casablanca' (vinyl rip)

So Cow - 'Shackleton' (vinyl rip)

So I picked up So Cow's self-titled/'greatest hits' LP last week in Road Records (I would have got it there on Record Store Day, but I couldn't get in the door) and it's really rather good. A little less than half the tracks are from his 2008 album, I'm Siding With My Captors, and the rest are from his send-off-money-to-my-myspace-practically-self-released-CD first album, These Truly Are End Times and possibly also his homemade, stapled-together, super-limited ep. Some of them I know from the WFMU live session, especially the opener 'Casablanca'.

While the best songs - 'Greetings', 'Shackleton', 'One Hundred Helens' - are from the second album, all the of them fit together quite well. There is some interesting, quirky stuff like 'So Cow vs. the Future', 'League of Impressionable Teens' and various Korean-titled tracks ('Choh Ah' and 'Ja Ju Ah Pa Yo', as well as 'Moon Geun Young'). Obviously it doesn't supplant I'm Siding With My Captors, but it's great to have all these songs together and on a properly retro-progressive format. Speaking of which, the cover drawing really needs to be seen in its full size to do it justice; and the record label has got that old school gradient thing going on as well.

(the So Cow LP is a US release and can be bought direct from the label, Tic Tac Totally! Records)

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Halves - 'Blood Branches'

Subplots - 'Leech'

This split 7" by two Irish bands, both on the sort of post-rock-y spectrum, is an interesting idea. Not that it's a totally novel idea for here - most notably two Cork bands climbed Ireland's tallest mountain, Carrantouhill, to record a split 7" single entitled 'The Highest Bands in Ireland' - but it's unusual enough. The 7" is enjoying a renaissance in indie/alternative music in general, especially with bands releasing material solely on 7". Another Irish example of this is the brilliant Hooray for Humans blue 7" of 'Already Sleeping', mentioned in an Irish Times article on the resurgence of the format. It's a similar deal with this record, except it comes with a download for the mp3s of the songs. People say that people buy these 7"s without having a record player, but that just seems a little weird for me to understand. In any case, if they do, their money won't be totally wasted, as they can get a good digital copy alongside the slab of useless vinyl.

Anyway, on to the music. Halves are a mix of Explosions in the Sky and Sigur Ros-type post-rock sounds, which they do very well, but usually in the framework of a lengthy 'EP' (Haunt Me When I'm Drowsy is 32 minutes long with 7 tracks, including an intro). One side of a 7" seems rather short to adequately present their sound, although that said, it is a good song. Subplots are a band of whom I've heard a fair bit, but this is the first time I've heard them on record. To my ears, it sounds quite like Radiohead, whom I have a mixed feelings about, but again it's a pretty good song. Make up your own mind, anyway. At least the artwork for each band is excellent, and as this was quite pricey for a 7" - €5.99 in Tower - hopefully the record will be a grower.

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Cutaways are a "synth-driven indie-pop trio" (i.e. guitar, keyboards, drums) from Belfast that I think are pretty neat. Without going into all the socio-political history of this island in the 20th century, I don't know that much about bands in Northern Ireland. Of course I'm a big fan of the classic punk bands the Undertones (Derry) and Stiff Little Fingers (Belfast), but in my opinion the Radiators (from Dublin, and/or Space) were just as good if not better than either of them. Anyway, at the moment there's even a specific collaboration between indie magazines AU (for 'Alternative Ulster') and the Dublin-based State to bring bands from the South up North, and vice versa.

Hopefully Cutaways might be brought into one of those line-ups, because without actually calling them 'the next Fight Like Apes', they should fit very well into the Dublin indie scene. Even more than Fight Like Apes, they remind me a lot of Grand Pocket Orchestra (a minor-key, even quirkier version of the former) and the male/female vocals of Hooray for Humans, and even with a bit of jarring, Bats-like bounce to them. Outside of Ireland, in the mainland UK scene which I know even less about, Danananakroyd seem to be doing a similar sort of aggressively quirky indie-pop. But apart from all the comparisons, this band have really strong songs. I've listened through the full stream of the album Earth and Earthly Things (see below) several times, and it's strikingly attention-inducing, varied, and downright fun.

Promotion for Cutaways is done by Nick of Penny Distribution, which I mention because he writes a very good blog on how the music business, particularly in the case of independent artists, works - or should work - with the internet and the music blogosphere. Cutaways are using the Bandcamp service, which means you can listen to their whole album there or, well, here:

<a href="http://cutaways.bandcamp.com/album/earth-earthly-things">Milo of Kroton by Cutaways</a>

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(gratuitous picture of the So Cow LP on a duvet, with hat-tip to Those Geese Were Stupefied)

So Cow - 'To Do List'

Top 15 Irish Artists in Words (top 10)

2009-04-11T22:03:00.016+01:00

Top 100 Ticket list here, with commentary here and here

Those Geese Were Stupefied takes the bait with his 15.

1. Fight Like Apes (Ticket list #4)

"Ireland has, quite simply, never seen a band like Fight Like Apes." That about sums it up as to why this band is my no. 1, and has been for the last year and a half that I've been listening to them (starting here). Read the rest of the description in the Ticket article or here.

Their meteoric rise in that period is based essentially on two EPs (repackaged and re-recorded into a debut album) of great songs, plus a few more, and consistently fantastic live shows. Fight Like Apes aren't consciously a punk band, not even I suppose when they are channelling Mclusky, but to me their music is 90% there. The ability to be quite popularly appealing while retaining a definite hard edge has been crucial to their success. For all the people who find the band irritating or bemusing, there isn't really a corresponding faction which decry them as bland or derivative. Which can only be a good thing for Irish music.

2. Ham Sandwich (Ticket list - #!?)

While not as distinctive musically, the quality of this band's rock/pop output probably more than matches that of Fight Like Apes. Guitar-heavy, melancholy and perfectly pitched to male and female vocals, the debut album Carry the Meek is tragically underrated and under-recognised in Ireland. All-killer and no-filler, as a simple collection of songs it definitely puts them ahead of Fight Like Apes (as I did for my best of 2008 list, where it was only second to the Welsh/Australian Shooting at Unarmed Men record). Their live shows are fantastic as well, with a refreshing element of kitsch.

3. So Cow (Ticket list #99)

Lo-fi, straightforward and endearing punk-pop with the emphasis on the 'pop' in a complex, indie-rock deconstruction sort of thing. It's really difficult to describe the sound of So Cow in anything approaching one sentence, so I'll abandon that contradictory explanation for a simple statement that Brian Kelly is a pop genius. This is a rating based personally on only one album and one live show, but I can assure you there is a lot of depth to So Cow. Karl has a live review over on Those Geese Were Stupefied which declares him number one in Ireland (despite the name of the blog coming from a Fight Like Apes song).

4. Cathy Davey (Ticket list #3)

There a further acts, other than Fight Like Apes, in the Ticket top five that I do like a good deal, and definitely deserve their position, but that I wouldn't personally count amongst my top artists - Jape, Lisa Hannigan and David Holmes being of course three of them. Cathy Davey's album Tales of Silversleeve, however, was something I got into myself, even if it wasn't as rock-ish as the other Irish artists that appeal to my particular tastes. The first four songs on the album - 'Sing for Your Supper', 'Reuben', 'The Collector' and 'Moving' - are just stunningly good, while the quality of the rest, from 'Mr. Kill' which reminds me bizarrely of the sound of Green Day's Warning album, stand up equally if not as immediately noticeable. The fact that it is from 2007 (though I must have bought it the following year) but stills stands out as an obvious contender testifies to the strength of the album.

5. Boxes (Ticket list -)

A relatively recent discovery for me, this is one Irish band that definitely isn't 'indie' in the usual sense. I can't quite decide which is better, the 2008 album Animal or the 2006 (Albini-recorded) Bad Blood, but either way this two-piece's brand of post-hardcore/math-rock has made a great impression on me. They may not seem as original (at least, if you listen to a wide variety of 90s US post-punk) as some of the newer bands on this list, but they are distinctive, and accomplished, enough in themselves to be worth praising highly. Meanwhile, very few people in Ireland seem to have noticed them.

6. A Lazarus Soul

Constructed from the members of another well-known Irish rock band Future Kings of Spain, A Lazarus Soul is a more post-punk style (especially Joy Division) band based around the vocals of Brian Brannigan. The lyrical content - melancholy, reflective, and ambiguous - is about life in the parts of Dublin then as now left behind by the economic boom, but more generally recalls the impact of one of Ireland's greatest bands of the 1990s, Whipping Boy. Most of all, it's a portrait of an environment, "a hand brake wheelspin lullaby".

7. Bats (Ticket list -) and 8. Adebisi Shank (Ticket list #97)

These two bands are the cream of the current Irish underground. Bats would be my personal favourite, a sort of math-rock/dance-punk/metal combo which increasingly rip shit up every time I see them play. The first time was in 2007, supporting the Locust, when songs like 'Atom and Eve' reminded me of a more muscular Q and not U, while their more recent stuff destined for the group's first album has matured a good deal from there.

Adebisi Shank aren't really a favourite of mine at all, in that I'm not personally into their super-mathy, metallic instrumental rock, but I respect what they are doing and what they are trying to do. It's not something that appeals to most indie fans, hence the perception that they are often unfairly overlooked by Irish music critics. On the positive side, though, it appeals to a wider audience of metal and punk fans both outside and inside Ireland (the Sputnikmusic reviews of both Bats and Adebisi Shank are here and here). Given that Adebisi Shank's debut album was produced by J. Robbins, and that Bats are recording with Kurt Ballou of Converge, its clear that the real Irish alternative scene has the potential to travel some distance.

9. Chequerboard (Ticket list #19), aka Boldypants

Chequerboard's Penny Black was one of my favourite albums of last year, a beautiful, atmospheric combination of classical guitar and electronic beats. A musician and graphic artist, Chequerboard's John Lambert created something superbly nostalgic and evocative with the wonderfully packaged album, or as I (loosely) described it, "Victoriana put to dubstep". The electronica also has a harder side, as evinced on the previous album Gothica and in his recently resurfaced musical alter-ego, Boldypants.

Boldypants - 'Emotional Wreckingball'

10. Hooray for Humans (Ticket list -)

'Already Sleeping' b/w 'Hidden Hands'

This Cork-based electro-rock group with some tangential emo influences were a revelation when I first them on their heard their 2007 album, Safekeeping; that there was an Irish band who liked a lot of the same US bands I did but also made that into far-above-average indie music. The only release after that album so far has been the 7" above, which is brilliantly presented (pink sleeve, blue vinyl). In musical terms the band are fun, energetic and play great hook-laden pop songs, but at the same time you can find something much more expressive and 'post-hardcore' influenced in there. Plus, guitarist and main man of Hooray for Humans, Alan Healy, has a dead-on screamo mixtape posted on his blog.

hardcorefornerds.tumblr.com/tagged/hooray_for_humans

Hooray for Humans - 'Already Sleeping' 7"

(more to come)

Top Fifteen Irish Artists About Now-ish

2009-04-06T22:24:00.007+01:00

In a move partially designed to piss off the internet, or at least the Irish part of it (and the part that cares about somewhat-less-than-famous bands, the Irish Times published a list of the 50 best Irish music acts right now, with comments running to about three times that number on Ticket writer Jim Carroll's accompanying blog. The invitation to 'do it yourself' has already been taken up at a couple of sites, with alternative lists of fifty each on Nialler9 and 2 U I Bestow. I couldn't reasonably do a list of the full fifty (though there are plenty of bands out there), and after all the original Ticket list was the product of four professional journalists, so I'm going to stick with a comparatively meagre but more exacting fifteen. (And for the record, I'm not a rugby fan. But Ireland did just win the Grand Slam)

As with the Ticket list, these artists have all toured/released in Ireland in the last year or so. The picture is of the latest release from the artist, more or less. From the top down, as I'm not into cheap suspense:

1. Fight Like Apes - 'Lend Me Your Face' from Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion (2008) [file]

2. Ham Sandwich - 'Sad Songs' from Carry the Meek (2008) [file]

3. So Cow - 'Commuting' from I'm Siding With My Captors (2008) [file]

4. Cathy Davey - 'Moving' from Tales of Silversleeve (2007) [file]

5. Boxes - 'Animal' from Animal (2008) [file]

Download Ireland V (zip file, 21mb)

This list on Tumblr

6-10 & 11-15:

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(Adebisi Shank - This Is An Album of a Band Called Adebisi Shank)

(Chequerboard - Penny Black)

(Hooray for Humans - 'Already Sleeping' 7")

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(The Redneck Manifeso - RMNMN EP)

(Halves - Haunt Me When I'm Drowsy EP w/ elastic strap)

words above, here

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Age Sixteen - Open Up Finders, Please

2009-03-29T22:02:00.001+01:00

'Peter Pan Complex'

This album is part of a series of events making me feel very positive about modern screamo. The first is last year's releases from well-established members of bands (...Who Calls So Loud, with members of Funeral Diner and Portraits of Past) and well-established bands themselves (Sinaloa), plus Loma Prieta's new take on Honeywell-style hardcore emo in Lost City. Age Sixteen's debut may not be quite up there with some of those former releases, but it fits into an exciting pattern. The excellent blog Stokingtheroots, which already covers a lot of current hardcore bands, has a brief but detailed review of the album here, but I think there are a couple more strands I can add.

First of all, there is a reasonably obvious La Quiete influence on this band - it's that kind of chaotic yet deeply melodic sound which defines European screamo for me in contrast to the more technical style of many US bands of recent years. Yet while La Quiete's most recent output - they haven't released a full album since 2004's La Fine non é La Fine, but have had two self-titled 7"s in 2006 and 2008 - has developed into a purer form, Age Sixteen is still distinctly a punk band. The album is only slightly over 20 minutes long, and mixed with the melody is a good deal of abrasive, old-school hardcore emo moments. Like Loma Prieta, Age Sixteen has managed to reinvigorate the earlier 90s styles of screamo in a contemporary sound.

Secondly, much has been written elsewhere about the other 90s emo revival of Algernon Cadwallader. I think they're pretty cool, although I don't listen to much of them, just as I don't listen to Cap'n Jazz/American Football in the first place. Great stuff, but not my style. What I do like about some of the Algernon Cadwallader songs, however, is how flawlessly shambolic, pained, and anxious they become that they move from the state of energetic, punky indie rock to somewhere very close to the chaos of screamo. Age Sixteen, with their La Quiete-ish melodies and harmonies, approach the process from the other side but with same endearingly tender result. The jaunty opening to 'Empty Nest' I think typifies this momentary glimpse into quite a different style, naturally woven into the general sound of the song and album.

So there are my reactions to this album. It's not solely about this release, which is as much a promise of further good things from a new band and, (as the Stokingtheroots review points out) a representation of a terrific live sound, as it is an excellent release in itself, but also it is symbolic of some new sounds coming through. Open Up Finders, Please is uncompromising screamo, nevertheless with deeply melodic and even poppy touches. Age Sixteen's creative adolescence straddles the old and the new of screamo and other related genres, resulting in a suprisingly mature and contemporary sound.

Download the album here or - because if you like it as much as I do, you're going to want to support the band - buy it via their Myspace ($7 US, $8 international).

state of the musical nation - Galway, Ireland

2009-03-27T21:13:00.004Z

(Photo taken from the Indie Hour here and an MS Publisher sticker slapped on to it - instant graphic art.)

So Cow - 'This Angry Silence' (Television Personalities)

So Cow - 'I Wanna Feel The Warm Spring Breeze' (Kim Jung Mi)

"I WANNA FEEL THE WARM SPRING BREEZE (bom ahra bul baram) - 1970s Korean psyche folk singer...mostly associated with Korean fuzz dude Shin Jung-Hyun. More here. If anyone wants to get at me about pronunciation, shove it."

So Cow Sings!/So Cow In A Shed is an album of cover songs by Tuam-based lo-fi pop artist So Cow, aka Brian Kelly. The full list of songs is as follows:

1. This Angry Silence (Television Personalities)

2. I Wanna Feel The Warm Spring Breeze (Kim Jung Mi)

3. Boris The Spider (The Who)

4. Banana Uyu (Fiddle Bambi)

5. On M'a Toujours Dit (Annie Philippe)

6. Little Bear's Song (Big Monster Love)

7. They Don't Know (Tracey Ullman)

Download So Cow in a Shed

The opening track, 'This Angry Silence', is the first time someone other than Brian has been on a So Cow recording - Galwegian live drummer Tony Higgins provides drums and backing vocals. Under the moniker junior85, he's also been attempting an 'EP a week' project with three diverse EPs produced so far: Wiiiiiiiiiiide Awake (uptempo electronic music), Sleepy (ambient electronic) and now it's for everyone/now it's for noone (noise), each available for free download and as limited edition CDs.

Meanwhile, the So Cow 'greatest hits' LP has just been released stateside on Tic Tac Totally! Records. Artwork above. A North American tour is to follow in May and June, dates on the myspace.

state of the (musical) nation - Dublin, Ireland 2009

2009-03-16T21:18:00.009Z

(video found via State.ie review of the recent Bats album fundraiser at the Lower Deck, Dublin)

The above video is of Ireland's best hardcore band of the moment (and by 'hardcore', I mean prog-metalcore/death disco punk, genres I wouldn't normally like if played by other bands, so I'll just call it hardcore), Bats, performing a track from the soon-to-be-recorded album with Kurt Ballou of Converge. Their sound has developed a good deal from the excellent 2007/2008 EP Cruel Sea Scientist, less schizophrenic (notwithstanding that I enjoyed that quality of Cruel Sea Scientist) and more rounded, though still heavy and hard-rocking.

Those Geese Were Stupefied: What Road Records Should Do

Also picked up here, this is Analogue Magazine writer and fellow Bats fan Karl's list of suggestion for how Road Records could improve their sales of music in Dublin. This is following on from the sold-out and, by all accounts, successful One for the Road benefit gig in Andrew's Lane. What some people seem exercised about is the suggestion of a gap between the headliners of that gig (Jape, the Jimmy Cake and Si Schroeder) and the generation of artists which should be connecting the record-buying youth - such as there are, and those who don't are mostly beyond the reach of any store - with a shop like Road Records.

It's a fair point that established acts are the ones to headline such a gig, which moreover was organised by the artists themselves, or at least that section of the musical community - but that in itself points to a gap between the ideals of the past, however sincere, and the realities of the present and future. A band such as Fight Like Apes - for example - is also restrained by touring commitments (specifically, SXSW) but again it's likely that they have achieved their success by more contemporary, i.e. internet-based methods (based even more on very physical gigging, though), beyond the willing and recognised support of somewhere like Road.

What it seems to me to come down to, as a somewhat similarly placed "average 20 year old who for one reason or another likes to buy a CD or a 7" every now and then", is a sort of ambivalence as to whether a physical local record store is totally necessary as well as merely valuable. I've enjoyed what I've found and bought in Road, but I'm still largely too young to have a real affection for the 'record store' experience much beyond a more immediate version of mailorder.

There are other issues there, such as the difference between Road and the generally very well stocked Tower Records a few streets away, and the availability of releases by small Irish bands (which could however be ably handled by an online distro, such as Bats' Richter Collective), but most of all I'm not totally convinced that a phsyical Road Records is absolutely needed by me, or even more importantly, by someone five years younger than me (i.e., a 16-year old) now and in the future.

Friday Video: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, 'Zero'; Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Show Your Bones

2009-03-13T13:22:00.008Z

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, 'Zero' from It's Blitz (2009)

I don't really listen to that many indie rock bands, on the world scale, although from listening to the radio I'm probably more familiar with them than most other people with my otherwise obscure tastes in music. Of the handful of indie bands that I do end up really liking (the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Editors, Foals, Vampire Weekend...) it's usually because there's something in their music that I identify with, punk rock- or (specific) postpunk-wise. Not that they are punk bands, or the second coming of the Clash, or anything like that, but that they're interesting enough that I can spend time with them, absorb their music, as I would with the more solidly punk or hardcore sides of my music collection.

Of course, 'interesting enough' also just means something subjective and quality-wise - as Louis Armstrong said, there are no genres of music inasmuch as they all collapse down to 'good' and 'bad' music.

Which is all a roundabout way of saying that this a pretty good video, and sorta punk rock too (you could imagine the Ramones making it). 1980s New York new wave rock at its finest.

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Show Your Bones is my fifth favourite album of 2006 (the order isn't particularly important). I first started listening to it in mid-2007, and bought the LP in early 2008, a week before I got my turntable. The LP has a couple of differences, some might say advantages, from the CD version: it is a track shorter (no 'Deja Vú') and the printed cover (below) is unadorned by text or title. The first is an advantage because, at 12 tracks, the CD drags on a little to long with Show Your Bones's somewhat undifferentiated indie rock; the second because, well, the cover picture is stylishly and strikingly awesome.

As for the music itself, 'Gold Lion' is undeniably the best song on the album, but the rest of the tracks are all pretty great. It's the rhythm and the heaviness to Show Your Bones that makes me like it so much - it's clever and affecting rock'n'roll, energetic indie rock played with both skill and fireworks. Plus, Karen O's often versatile, often unrestrained vocals are probably the best thing to come out of rock music this decade.

sleevage.com/yeah-yeah-yeahs

Hardcore for Nerds: Friday Video [#1] - The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, 'Gold Lion'

The Bouncing Souls - The Gold Record

2009-03-10T17:52:00.010Z

'The Gold Song'

'So Jersey'

'Sounds of the City'

These three songs may be all you need to hear to know how great an album The Gold Record is: a solid 1-2-3 opening punch of punk rock. It's not like the album is all frontloaded, with it best songs behind it by track 4; it's also not the case that How I Spent My Summer Vacation being the Souls' crowning achievement in ridiculously upbeat melodic punk-pop, or its immediate follow-up, Anchors Aweigh, being next in line in the band's musical artistry, makes this album any less of a great record. Like Insomniac Doze, The Gold Record is a maturation from its predecessors, not an equal copy.

That said, 'The Gold Song' is a quintessentially Bouncing Souls track - fast, shoutalong and melodic. I remember seeing the Souls here in Dublin as part of a double with (ex-Hot Water Music) The Draft in 2006, and hurrying down the stairs in the Temple Bar Music Centre from the roof garden, where we'd spent the break in between sets, to the sound of this song's opening drumbeat.

'So Jersey' is Springsteen-esque punk-pop, which the Bouncing Souls were doing in their own way before the Hold Steady or The Gaslight Anthem, complete with organ and piano licks. It's about childhood, New Jersey and the importance of music - backing vocals from Chuck Ragan and Brett Gurewitz, among others - a common theme of the songs on this album.

I've never been to Jersey, but it's funny how its residents simultaneously seem to deprecate it and elevate it, how it's both classy and lowbrow, both Springsteen and the Souls, Garden State and Clerks II. There are sunny afternoons everywhere in the world - everywhere habitable, at least - but a Jersey one sounds especially pleasant.

The closer of the trio, 'Sound of the City' takes the directness of classic, punk rock Bouncing Souls - of 'The Gold Song' - and combines it with the nostalgic anthemicism of 'So Jersey' and other, equally classic Souls songs. Lonely streets, whoahs, soaring guitar riffs, and the philosophy of sounds and music. It's the final passage that crushes and uplifts, the essence of the Bouncing Souls translation of melancholy into optimism.

Afterwards, it's a detour into the slow, acoustic but charming 'Pizza Song', a throwback to songs like those on Hopeless Romantic and before, when Bouncing Souls were half jokey and wistful as well as - usually in the other half of the album - frenetically punk. It's followed by the super-anthemic 'Sarah Saturday', and an inspired, enthusiastic and heartfelt cover of the Kinks' 'Better Days' - "I hope tomorrow you'll find better things".

The second half of the album begins with a tribute to teenagehood and, it seems, to Iron Maiden, 'The Messenger' - "oh to be a kid with no worries it seemed so hard". 'Lean on Sheena' is another cover, this time of the relatively obscure - but rather good - punk group Avoid One Thing and, like 'Better Things', makes for a very good Bouncing Souls song. Simple but enormously affecting, and catchy as hell too:

A topical and political song - the words written by a real soldier who served in the war - 'Letter from Iraq' reminds us that 2005 and its surrounding years were one of the worst for global conflict of this millenium so far, and the role punk rock in presenting such information. (Indeed, at the show mentioned above, the singer Greg took time out of the set to remind the audience in the most humble way possible of the differences between the American people and the then government. It's okay, we Europeans already knew that). The next track 'The New Thing' is an injection of personal optimism, forming the start of a closing trio of powerful, superbly emotional songs, along with 'Midnight Mile' and 'For All The Unheard'; "for all the music left behind, all the songs left on the floors in the closets of our minds".

The Gold Record was the last Epitaph album I bought, from a label which was instrumental in shaping the sort of music I listen to now, as well as the sorts that I don't, at least not anymore. It's a maturation as well as an encapsulation of everything that's great about the Bouncing Souls - their music, their humour, their attitude and their influences.

The Bouncing Souls - The Gold Record (2006)

Epitaph Records

Hardcore for Nerds on Tumblr

2009-03-09T21:04:00.007Z

hardcorefornerds.tumblr.com

So I've moved into a new field of blogging, the tumblelog (really dislike that word). Same name, same ethos, roughly the same raison d'etre, and similar but slightly different content. Despite what the screenshot above might indicate, I'm not just reblogging (sorry, terminology again) everything from this blog, but the aim is to tie in with the main Hardcore for Nerds - which isn't going anywhere - from time to time. So Insomniac Doze is there (briefly) to tie in with A Dead Sinking Story, which I've given with Tumblr the specific highlight that it's lacked on here so far; and both tie back into what I have written on them here.

The description is 'emo, screamo and 90-00s post-hardcore. whatever you want to call it. as seen here' and the link leads to the 'emo' tag on this blog. The main aim of the new format is to keep a focus on the genre/subgenre/historical period that this blog started off with, before I became distracted by all the other sorts of music I listen to. I think the Tumblr is a good way to condense down that side of Hardcore for Nerds and Reasons to Be Emo, etc., but also to cover some fairly important bands that I haven't gotten around to writing about on here.

The thing about Tumblr v. Blogger is that while, as I outlined in the previous post, I feel writing is an integral part of (full) blogging, tumble-logging or 'micro-blogging' is more immediate - superficial, almost, but beneath that surface is a world of links to other sites; either in the form of reblogged content from those users who do have the concision of writing style to match the constraints of the format, or to existing, long-form posts from this blog (and probably some others).

The issue of how Tumblr handles content, when you actually get to use the interface, is quite interesting. Though you can select a pure text post (and I think you can then add pictures, but they need to be already hosted), the main options I've used so far are the audio and picture posts, which include text as an optional extra. Theoretically Blogger works that way as well, but I've become so used to carefully constructing posts with stylesheets, paragraph layouts, and multiple pictures and streaming clips that 'micro-blogging' feels really fresh and new.

Tumblr allows one audio clip to be uploaded per day (and no more than 10MB so sorry, no 'A Will Remains in the Ashes' or 'Unrepairable Gentleness' from Envy unless you want them in 92kps or less). Although I've been supplementing that with externally hosted files (from Fileden, on this blog), I intend structuring the new format around one new band each day, time permitting. Tomorrow I'm thinking Moss Icon.

- A large debt must go to scott pgwp's oft-mentioned and excellent Do You Compute for pioneering this field of nostalgia [micro-]blogging (although it's only vicarious nostalgia for me); he gets the first reblog for Hoover's 'Pretender', in return for a previous nod to the Genealogy Project.

- 'Hardcore for Nerds, on Tumblr' - I wanted to keep the same name really only in broad terms, but couldn't think of any snappier recombination of what is I think an already rather streamlined moniker - is still at the experimental stage, and may yet prove to be ephemeral, so any comments, suggestions or tips are especially welcome. I'm only half the process, whatever the format or the medium.

Envy - Insomniac Doze

2009-03-08T18:20:00.003Z

Envy - 'Further Ahead of Warp'

All photographs of the Insomniac Doze 2xLP - unfortunately sold out, according to the Temporary Residence Limited Catalog. Just sayin'.

Before I get on with the post for this excellent album (just listen to the rumbling bass, and trilling post-rock guitar, of the opening song above), a short service announcement...

______________________________________________

The Hardcore for Nerds (Retrospective) Manifesto, with exposition:
to present music accompanied by writing; there are plenty of album blogs with little content other than download links, so basing myself on my original inspiration, I try to offer description and explanation of music that I think other people would like to hear. The aim is for it to be well-written, thoughtful and (to a degree) personal, but not an objective review - every album I put up here I already really like. At the same time, I want to show that I like this music for a reason, and that means putting it in context - genres, movements, history, and art.
to present music accompanied by images; while music can be (and mostly is) enjoyed purely through sound, the aesthetic benefit of visual artwork is integral to its full enjoyment. Also, the internet is primarily a visual medium and text cannot generally be presented on its own. Therefore, I try at least to provide a decent-sized cover (400x400 pixels) for each album. Vinyl - I've owned a turntable for just over a year - is especially well suited to visual aesthetics, and when I'm feeling artistic I like to try out my minor interest in photography on the sleeves, records and insets.
to provide music accessibly and responsibly; of course, words and pictures can be no substitute for the music itself, and it is in this sense that the internet is the most revolutionary for the transmission of new and old styles, artists and releases. I believe in the continuing and central importance of the 'album' in music, hence the full-album downloads instead of individual tracks - that's how I like to try out and hear new music. However, for the sake of immediacy, I've also been using streaming (full-song) clips in the past while, so you can listen to the band directly. On the flip-side of accessible music is the responsibility to support the artists and labels involved; I believe that "buy it if you like it" is implied with every download, at least where practical (and where you do really like it). To encourage an ethical approach of that kind, I try to include a link to the band and/or label website, and (legal download site) eMusic where available, and likewise to the Dublin city and online store of Road Records. Furthermore, I avoid posting full downloads of current (past year) album releases, although paradoxically a simple Google Blogs or Sordo db search will quickly lead you to at least the most popular ones.

______________________________________________

Envy's 2006 album, Insomniac Doze, represented a significant shift from the almost genre-defining, 2001 release A Dead Sinking Story (one of my top six punk albums of the 21st century), itself a significant development in the expanse and nuance of the group's style from All The Footprints You've Ever Left Behind And The Fear Expecting Ahead (1999). Between these three full-lengths there is a fairly rapid evolution by the Japanese band from screamo to post-rock, and for many people Insomniac Doze goes too far in the post-rock dimension. For me, however, it's a great album in both categories, and deserving of almost as much praise as A Dead Sinking Story for creating the uniquely epic and intense Envy sound.

That's not to say I don't understand other people's criticism of this album, though I don't always agree with them. Pitchfork's 6.3 review took issue with the album's relative somnolence, describing it as "mild enough for the dentist's office", whereas I really enjoy its epic, cinematic tones. Nick from Worship and Tribute's generally very positive review for Sputnikmusic has a gripe with its "harmonic vapidity" and otherwise unadventurous musicianship; I have to agree that listening to A Dead Sinking Story, it seems much more musically creative in certain ways. As he says, it's "a trade-off; I like their ability to build huge passages out of simple, slowly repeating chord progressions, but I dislike the plodding feeling of it all"; though I find that the simplicity is mirrored by emotional intensity, the post-rock side just a part of the adapted screamo style.

'Scene' (video)

Though I came to A Dead Sinking Story some years after the fact, I was eagerly anticipating the release of its follow-up. 'Scene' was the first song - in the form of this video - that I heard, and it was really a microcosm of the issues raised by the whole album. Expecting more of the really crushing heaviness of A Dead Sinking Story alongside that same album's quietitude, what 'Scene' presented was a far slower build-up to a more muted crescendo. On the album itself, 'Further Ahead of Warp' is a more energetic if broadly similar opening song, and 'Shield of Selflessness' is the closest Insomniac Doze gets to the shorter old-school Envy style of hardcore.

'Scene' is the statement of the new Envy, which is really just an adaptation of the old Envy, as the video makes clear. All in a blue monochrome blur, views of clouds in the ether are interspersed with shots of the band performing the song live, edging towards full catharsis mode. It's the combination of the cinematic with the electric which makes Insomniac Doze work so well, long arcs of harmony mixed with smooth crescendos of angst.

'Crystallize'

Right after 'Scene' comes this next post-rock song, so epic that it takes up a whole side of one LP (as does the next one, 'Unknown Glow'). 'Crystallize' is in many ways more cinematic, and certainly more artistic, than 'Scene'. As discussed previously, it's got an insistent melody that reminds me of 'Soon' from My Bloody Valentine's archetypal Loveless, and I think that Insomniac Doze as a whole has a strong shoegaze feel to it. More importantly, 'Crystallize' signals a new interest by Envy in simple, yet arty, melodic songs that continues into their more recent, shorter releases, such as Abyssal and songs like 'Life Caught in the Rain' and 'Conclusion of Existence' from the Jesu split.

'Night in Winter'

Although 'Further Ahead of Warp', 'Scene' and 'Crystallize' I think provide ample proof of Insomniac Doze's brilliance, it wouldn't be right not to include anything from the second LP of the album. The ten-minute long 'Unknown Glow' is, like 'Scene', an epic movement of post-rock/screamo, at times almost quasi-classical, spanning the range from near-silence to aural near-destruction; 'A Warm Room' is an intense, cathartic closer with some of the most A Dead Sinking Story-like moments on the album. 'Night in Winter', however, is a particularly beautiful, atmospheric track to bridge the gap between Insomniac Doze's weightier moments.

Envy - Insomniac Doze (2006) (link via Zen and the Art of Face Punching)

Temporary Residence Limited

i wish this blog was more like tumblr

2009-03-08T12:50:00.009Z

...so that I could post like this more often.

let's see how this works out

Envy - 'Scene' from Insomniac Doze

burritolingus:

"Envy is far from your run-of-the-mill "I just got dumped by my girlfriend of two weeks and want to kill myself" scene or image conscious, attention-whoring pop-punk "emo" facade; no sir, Envy represents something far more cerebral, personal, real. It's no wonder, then, that despite the language barrier, they've become renowned worldwide as one of the finest screamo bands on Earth.
Oh, and worth noting is that (despite their album names and song titles being in English) the vast majority of Envy's music is, in fact, in Japanese. Very poetic Japanese that you could learn a thing or two from, at that."

Proper post on the album coming up next.

Friday Video - Jape, I Was A Man; The Redneck Manifesto - Thirtysixsongs & Cut Your Heart Off From Your Head

2009-03-06T22:18:00.009Z

Winner of the Choice Music Prize for the best Irish album of 2008, for Ritual. Well deserved, although the bookies should have been giving shorter odds than 6/1. See my Best of 2008: Year End November - featuring 'Phil Lynott'.

www.myspace.com/richiejape

The Redneck Manifesto - 'Cut Your Heart Off...'

Richie Egan, aka Jape, also being the bass player for this fantastic Irish instrumental rock band. This is the double cd version of their first two albums, Thirtysixsongs (2001) and Cut Your Heart Off From Your Head (2002); a new release with new artwork (the above picture is the old version) is now on sale from Road Records for €9.99. If you liked Boxes, you'll probably like this (most of the songs are considerably heavier versions of the track above), and vice versa.

Normal posting to resume soon(ish).

Friday Videos: AD/BC - A Rock Opera

2009-02-27T12:30:00.006Z

"An outstanding accomplishment in late '70s British religious rock opera, this lavishly produced adaptation of Tim Wynde and Solomon Homerton's 'fringe stage sensation' celebrates the life-affirming story of Christ's nativity as told through the eyes of the Innkeeper (played by Wynde)..."

I was hipped to this in the comments section of the AV Club's Gateways to Geekery: Contemporary British Sitcoms (they suggest starting with Peep Show). I'd never even heard of it before, likely because it only ever aired once, on BBC3 (which is one more BBCs than I have), in 2004, although it was released on DVD in November 2007. Essentially, this is a combination of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace and The Mighty Boosh, starring as it does Matt Berry and Richard Ayoade of the former, and Julian Barrett (Howard Moon) of the latter, with Noel Fielding (Vince Noir) in a smaller role too. And Matt Lucas (Little Britain) as God.

Sometimes the music is better than the comedy, but that's not too much of a bad thing in such a brilliant pastiche of 70s rock musicals. There are the metafictional conceits of Darkplace along with the bizarre theatrics of the Boosh (though not quite as bizarre) as well as the musical skill obvious in both shows. Plus large parts of the performance remind me of Grails videos, that strange irony/reverence for 70s psychedelia, and cowbell, just with a more obvious(ly) comedic target.

Amazon.co.uk DVD

Shooting at Unarmed Men - Yes! Tinnitus!

2009-02-25T20:44:00.006Z

Shooting at Unarmed Men - 'Pathos Ate Bathos'

Shooting at Unarmed Men's second album Yes! Tinnitus! is not really as good as last year's third effort, Triptych, but it's a testament to the strength of that album (my favourite of 2008) that Yes! Tinnitus! is still pretty great. In parts it benefits from being able to go back from Triptych in order to appreciate it better; in others it has a certain charm of its own.

The standout first song 'Pathos ate Bathos' starts off with Shooting at Unarmed Men's typical rhythm-heavy songwriting, post-hardcore guitar with a few spaghetti-western flourishes and a frantic but relatively simple beat. Four minutes of rocking out in this vein make for a badass introduction to the album, plus a little bit of start-stop dynamism tacked on at the end as well.

Writing about Triptych on Geek Down's Best of 2008: Rock Albums, josephlovesit referenced the Jesus Lizard and this band's "confident assholism"; likewise, the next couple songs here feature a misogynistic God and a capitalist-acquisitive cowboy. It's a snarling, intense bridge to the next really great song on the album, the single 'Girls Music' (post of the promo 7" here).

Rather like (the ever-unavoidable comparison) a Mclusky b-side put into overdrive, or "a great twisted pop song" as I described it before, 'Girls Music' is the fun, inventive side of Shooting at Unarmed Men which condenses down post-hardcore creativity. The following songs stretch things out a bit more, from the shoutalong "D-I-S-M-O-U-N-T" of 'I Am United Nations' to the slow, ratcheting melodicism of 'Pat Yourself On The Proverbial ("In the summer... she blisters... and her skin peels"). At this point, despite the garage-y immediacy of 'I Cry For No Man' and 'Get On Out And Come Right In', the album begins to drag somewhat; indeed slowed down almost unnaturally for the closer, 'In Flight Instructions Are A Joke, Say I' with its rousing chorus "she drank the whole bottle down".

Still, this is definitely a Shooting at Unarmed Men album as you would recognise from Triptych, if not quite of the same quality. Jon Chapple's voice, both literally and figuratively - i.e. musically - speaking, in this latter-day post-punk, ex-Welsh post-hardcore band deserves to be heard a lot more.

Shooting at Unarmed Men on eMusic

Myspace

a rather brilliant and suitably disturbing 'Girls Music' video:

slowcore/shoegaze/springtime post: Si Schroeder - Coping Mechanisms

2009-02-18T21:10:00.011Z

Si Schroeder - Duck!

This is a conglomeration of different things, but mainly yet another post on this truly great Irish album. For me, Coping Mechanisms is Ireland's Spiderland, though in general it sounds quite different. This week is Slowcore Week on Drowned in Sound, as highlighted on do you compute. Watching the video on his blog of Codeine's 'Loss Leader' from the excellent The White Birch album, the particular way in which Steve Immerwahr sings "water" (and, I think, "watch her" as well) reminded me of that same word in Si Schroeder's 'Duck!' ("water/off a duck's back").

So, a flimsy enough connection. Si Schroeder doesn't really play slowcore (but then neither does David Grubbs, quite, anymore) or even shoegaze, both genres largely fixed in time as early-to-mid 1990s and probably deserving the prefix post- in their current configurations. Coping Mechanisms is an album of, at first, exceeding quietness and then consequently layered and shimmering loudness, all threaded together with a rich diversity of sounds - most of them electronic of some kind. Post-rock is the obvious but relatively uninformative classification for this beautiful, atmospheric - yet substantial - album.

Diverse electro sounds make their way through current indie rockers, post-rockers and shoegazers. Best example is Asobi Seksu's new album Hush which blends shoegaze, pop and electro to a hardcore punk back-beat (somewhat softened) to impressive effect. The latest Fight Like Apes b-side 'Telephone the Real Ham Jackson' spends some time in a tasty electro-shoegaze jam after its thick, bassy and synthy pop experimentation. King of the latter, Dan Deacon's upcoming album Bromst is a dense, familiar affair (read a first impression here and an unlikely negative review here) underpinned by modern big-band percussion. With lunchtime like a mid-summer's evening here in north-western Europe, spring has arrived with a shoegazing, electrifying soundtrack.

Coping Mechanisms vinyl from Road Records

Myspace - Si Schroeder

Trust Me I'm A Thief record label

and three of Ireland's best post-rock type acts, Jape, The Jimmy Cake and Si Schroeder, are playing a benefit + celebration gig for the aforementioned Road Records:

Fight Like Apes - Tie Me Up With Jackets, 7"/video

2009-02-16T22:40:00.006Z

Side A - 'Tie Me Up With Jackets' (2:36)

(Go here for the high-definition version)

Side B [fixed] - 'Telephone the Real Ham Jackson' (6:10)

previous post - 'Jake Summers' and 'Lend Me Your Face' 7"s

'Tie Me Up With Jackets' is the first fresh song from Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion to be released as a single, excepting 'Something Global' which was released as an EP before the album... to show people what they sounded like with producer John Goodmanson. While I still don't think any of the songs quite surpass those of the original EPs, 'Tie Me Up With Jackets' was a definite grower from the full-length. I like the sweet guitar (bass) intro, with its carefully placed synthy squawks, and the agreeably daft/weird/poignant(/scary) lyrics -

"Same goes for you, I like my meatballs in a dish
and I like other people too
as the saying goes, I'm pretty nift
but I'd love to see you in the nude with overcoats tied around your head
and Japanese children in your bed"

From its quiet, low twee-dark beginnings, the song shifts several gears into the "lovely noise" chorus, which was what grabbed my attention listening to the album at first. And the "cha cha cha" part is crucial in a live setting too.

The video outdoes the song, really, however, with its arty conception of Fight Like Apes, the cartoon pop band, and the band of technicolour sonic experimentation. Combining synched-up ink blots with rotoscope-like overpainting of film footage (a brief flash of the underlying image at about 0:25) along with the gratuitous, clichéd shots of an Irish-band-on-a-windswept-beach (North Strand/Dollymount?) it's an impressive work for the Irish scene. Just like Fight Like Apes themselves, then.

The b-side, 'Telephone the Real Ham Jackson' - possibly their most inpenetrably bizarre title yet - is at once a bit of an oddity and a natural progression from the style of the a-side. Starting off again with some great bass, it then develops into a weird, chanting Indian-like melody and briefly a Suicide lo-fi moment, before kicking back in with the stomping, poppy bass rhythm and ultimately tailing off into shoegazey-electronic noise.

Today I listened to this and the leak of Bromst for the first time, and the two - b-side and sophomore album - seem to go well together. At just over six minutes it's unusual for a Fight Like Apes song, and probably too much of a digression to get much play live, but it's in a similar vein to 'Lumpy Dough' which I found similarly engrossing on hearing it first. Maybe not as immediate or as catchy as the rest of their work, but certainly an interesting direction for them to go in as a powerful - more in artistic than commercial terms yet - pop band.

(if anyone wants a mediafire file of these rips, just ask I guess)

Get the 7" from Norman Records

The Boom: parts 2 + 3

2009-02-15T18:05:00.002Z

(inset from the cover of the first Boom album, Movin' Out)

'Sacrifice' from Any Day of the Night (1999)

untitled sixth track from The Death of A Star (unreleased, third album)

As a big fan of Movin' Out, a jazz-flavoured but still very rock-y album, it's a little strange to hear these two later, instrumental albums which sound, if anything, more jazz than rock. Except that there's also dub and ska (Chris Farrall of the Sorts and Hoover plays percussion on Any Day of the Night) and definite funky overtones - the review on Insound for the same album says "one might mistakenly address The Boom as a funk revivalist band. Not so. Though the brass section shows reverence to the seventies, their swerving and strutting are more Miles Davis than P-Funk, more blue than red".

The unreleased follow-up, on which Joseph P. McRedmond of the Crownhate Ruin and Hoover plays guitar, seems to steer even deeper into jazz territory, like it actually could be a Miles Davis album. Obviously the switch to the instrumental style on both albums allows Fred Erskine more time to concentrate on playing on trumpet, alongside Carlo Cennamo on all three albums with his alto sax. Other line-up changes, for this third album include the substitution of Lincoln drummer Justin Wierbonski for J. Carrier, and John Wall, previously of Kerosene 454 and co-owner of the Slowdime label, for bass player Booker T. Sessoms III.

It's that last change that seems to me to make a marked difference between the second and third albums. Whereas Movin' Out and Any Day of the Night have that excellent and stylish jangly, funky jazz bass sound, the third album shifts more to the softer dub and ska wnah-wnah (like 'wah-wah', but with more 'n') of the Sorts and Sea Tiger. The lengthy track I posted from the third LP for streaming above (apologies to people with sub-optimal internet connections) focuses on the guitars and sax in a remarkable jazz fusion opus. At half the length, the six-minute 'Sacrifice' from Any Day of the Night runs like an earlier version, with its dubby electronics and frantic horn phrasing.

Although both these albums are great, in my opinion at least The Death of a Star is probably the more accomplished jazz record, so it's a pity that it was never released, due to John Wall's departure for better things from the band and label. However, thanks to Joe McRedmond, we have at least the untitled tracks:

The Boom - The Death of A Star

and for comparison (this is a reader's link):

The Boom - Any Day of the Night

Buy:

Insound - Any Day of the Night LP/CD, Movin' Out CD

Asobi Seksu - Strawberries 2x7" (+ live at Crawdaddy, Dublin 11/02/09)

2009-02-13T13:00:00.016Z

(inside of the gatefold. All artwork by Sean McCabe)

("Limited Edition Red Vinyl With Strawberry Scented Sleeves" - yes, really. Subtle enough, but in a sugary-sweet flavouring sort of way. As one might expect.)

'Strawberries' - Edit (3:29)

'Strawberries' - CSS Remix (3:19)

This double 7" came out in November 2007, a month before the Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight) single, both in support of their second album, Citrus. Currently they're touring their third, Hush, which officially comes out on February 17th, on Polyvinyl Records. Obviously I'm more familiar with the songs from Citrus, of which there were a few played at the gig - notably 'Strawberries', 'Pink Clouds Tracing Paper' and 'Thursday'. The songs from Hush sound very strong though.

First thing that hit me about the band was the sound of the drums - absolutely pummelling, a piercing bass drum - which makes a lot of sense given the drummer's previous work. Actually it reminded me, in a live setting, of a favourite Irish band of mine, Ham Sandwich (though I would make the comparison more generally anyway), who have a heavy rhythm section, shoegazy guitar and a female vocalist as well. Though there can be few modern comparisons with the vocals of Yuki Chikudate, which are simply stunning (and surprisingly audible in the context).

The show drew to a close with the My Bloody Valentine-clone of 'Pink Clouds Tracing Paper', and for an encore, a transcendentally distorted version of 'Red Sea'. Thankfully it didn't reach the sound levels or duration of MBV's recent "holocausts", but it's always a good thing when, in a gig, the visual and auditory inputs from the stage cease to appear to be 100% experientially, in-the-same-room real. Now that's shoegaze.

Other reviews here and here. It also was Gig of the Week in the Irish Times too, with a nice photograph, but only it seems available in the print edition.

Reasons to be Emo #200 / Hoover - The Lurid Traversal of Route 7

2009-02-01T21:35:00.004Z

200th post/reason -

Previous Reasons to be Emo*:

#150 / Hot Water Music - Moonpies for Misfits

#140 / Swing Kids - Discography

#100 / Jawbreaker - Dear You

#50 / Shotmaker/Maximillian Colby - Split

#1 ? / Han Shan - s/t 7"

* if you think about shit like that, that is. Excellent analysis of that question here on the Prisonship. The half-dozen featured examples here aren't meant to be canonical, and definitely are not intended to be definitive; instead, they are choices of what that genre means to me, an ongoing selection of diverse highpoints.

'Distant'

The core of the genealogy, The Lurid Traversal of Route 7 was Hoover's only full-length recording. Originally recorded in 1993, in the first year of the Clinton administration, released on Dischord Records in 1994, and remastered in 2004/5. The last three songs on the CD version, 'Return', 'Private' and 'Dries' were from a separate vinyl release from the LP of Lurid Traversal, and together make up thirteen tracks on the album.

'Distant' opens up with atmospheric noise, harsh and mechanical, and a little bit of percussion, then rhythm, and then the heavy guitars kick in. It's taut, it's tense - barely controlled rage and stop-start dynamics over low, slinking basslines. "3000 mile view/ through a telescope" with the last word screamed out with an unexpected, yet not incongruent, intensity. 'Pretender' operates on the same kind of taut rhythms, locked into a driving groove with propelling guitar and vocals. The song moves forward and upwards with every riff, until disintegrating momentarily at the end.

'Electrolux' builds the sound up again slowly, with deliberate beats and ominous, humming guitar. Clearer guitar balances the equation, lulling the dubb-y, intense atmposhere of the song along. 'Electrolux' erupts, first in guitars, in shouts and screams, and then in vibrant trumpet, a soaring cacophony of sound that swells and collapses back into the rhythm below, which has grown in intensity. Minimalism conflicts with outward expression, emotion with weighty, deliberate pace.

'Electrolux'

Every song on Lurid Traversal drips with intensity and emotion, balancing explosive hardcore and post-hardcore with near-empty, Slinty post-rock, shifting between states with every verse (though, of course, there are no verses to the lyrics). Thus a song like 'Shut' winds it way between quiet and loud in a very Fugazi-ish way, focusing its emotional punch on the crescendo of guitars, yet also expressing itself in the transitional spaces between sounds. The tone created is extremely dark but with carefully crafted, melodic moments of beauty - like the cricket-filled instrumental passage of 'Route 7' - entwined with deep and sonorous rhythms. It's accessible at the same time - the opening to 'Regulator Watts' trips lightly and gently underneath whispered, distant vocals.

Again, the emphasis on rhythm propels the album on through each song, carrying the momentum of post-hardcore heaviness onwards each time, ripping it up and building it up again. 'Father' combines the stop-start dynamic with a near-continuous, insistent beat, rapidly advancing towards its chaotic explosion, and disintegrating like 'Pretender' into annihilating noise. Similar but more immediate and direct than 'Electrolux', 'Cable' shouts out its rhythms with brassy, brash anxiety, and climbs into the heights with distorted reggae and blues riffs.

'Letter'

The dynamics and contrasts of typical 'emo' guitar bands, like the tender yet destructive passions of Indian Summer, course through The Lurid Traversal, but are combined with the equally typical complexities of Dischord post-hardcore groups, resulting in epic and intense creations of late-model punk rock. The first part is evident on the arpeggiated, whispered intro to 'Letter' and its linear progress to ear-crushing, violent catharsis; the second in the equally quiet, almost abstract opening to 'Cuts Like Drugs' and, then, its expressionistic guitar jabs combined with enveloping sound and tense rhythm. In fact, the catharsis of the latter eventually emerges as the most intense of the Hoover sound.

'Cuts Like Drugs' (Live on WFMU - thanks to Matt for splitting it up)

"Some people say this sounds like Fugazi,and they miss the point. It sounds like classic DC twin-guitar midtempo style, as do Fugazi and a hundred other bands. The important part was the way the evil slithering basslines made it seem so dark and serious, and the way the singer worked up from whispering to a tortured animal howl at the end. 'Cuts Like Drugs' has it all."
Andy Radin (fourfa.com)

"The epic "Cuts Like Drugs" plays out like the bastard child of Lungfish and Fugazi, a slow plodding drone with the guitars feedback chiming in and out wrapping itself in and around the package fully developing the experience. But it is the song "Cable" that in my eyes stand out on its own. A hymn of dissatisfaction, the brooding demons that swim through all our minds. When they cry out, "I was programed to kill you." it's almost heartbreaking in how at its most earnest these words speak out in the most succinct fashion of modern day society."
sweetbabyjaysus (Burning Down the Dreams of Forever)

"Hoover were one of the greatest DC bands to come from the Dischord label. Their full length, The Lurid Traversal of Route 7 was and is one of my favorite records. Fred Erskines bass (later of Crownhate Ruin and June of 44) is a driving force and the twin monotone guitars of Dunham and McRedmond cut and scathe and slither while Christopher Farrall keeps everything in time. Or out of time, in a very Hooverish way."
blend77 (Zen and the Art of Face Punching)

"hoover is probably the most influential dischord band never to feature ian mackaye. They arrived in them halcyon early 90s days when DC was starting to register the profound effects of dubby, downbeat-y rhythms and of touch and go records heavies like slint, the jesus lizard, rapeman et. al. Their the lurid transversal of route 7 is for me a high point in american hard/punk/core/rock…
despite so many of our friends getting engaged one way or another with corporate rocking for best and worst, dischord - and hoover - always spoke to a kind of freedom (to rock, to angst-i-fy, to experiment) that only the outlands of indie rock could abide, at least back then."
lexdexter (The Prisonship)

I'll leave you to appreciate 'Return', 'Private' and 'Dries' yourselves:

The Lurid Traversal of Route 7 on Dischord Records (CD/digital)

Download link (from Burning Down the Dreams of Forever)

Slowdime (reunion) EP and Side Car Freddie/Cable 7"

Vampire Weekend - The Kids Don't Stand A Chance 7"

2009-01-31T18:07:00.003Z

Side A: 'The Kids Don't Stand A Chance'

This is one of the simplest, most effective songs on the Vampire Weekend self-titled album, which is in itself quite a simple and effective pop record. Sure, this song's got strings on it (like the other best tracks, such as 'M79' and 'Walcott') but they don't come in for a while, and when they do arrive, they're restrained. Originally I thought this song, coming at the end of the record, stood out more from the rest of the album - like a pop-punky Clash track - but now I see it's more of a perfectly pitched, langurous finale.

I'm never really sure what people object to about Vampire Weekend, or what they find irritating about one of 2008's deserved best debuts. Too cloying perhaps, too quirky - for me it's just great indie pop songwriting. 'The Kids Don't Stand A Chance' has more than a good melody and hook; it's the absorbing sense of atmosphere that weaves the sound of Vampire Weekend into my soul - vocal affectations, slow beats and lush Afro-Caribbean guitars with a swirl of faux-Baroque decoration. It works for me, if evidently not for others:

"Baroque-ska!? Like a hellish mix of UB40 and The Left Banke."

Mark Prindle's Micro-Reviews: Hip New Bands That The Kids Dig

'The Kids Don't Stand A Chance' was the Vampire Weekend song I used for my end-of-year mixtape:

The (very) Best of 2008 Pt. 1

Side B: 'The Kids Don't Stand A Chance' (Chromeo Remix)

Ever wondered what Vampire Weekend would sound like in 1983? Despite what Mark Prindle might say, it's not exactly the same; it's this. Blocky, upfront synthesiser beats and New Romantic keyboard side-swipes. That is, until the quietitude and following euphoric ascent, as the entrancing beats give way to more natural snippets of the songs - and then back to - horns?

Stereogum says "It's a fun listen -- syncopation and synths run rampant, the signature guitar line gets a keyboard makeover with some new chord movement in the mix. Sounds like Ezra gave 'em a new vocal melody to work with, too".

It's remarkable how Vampire Weekend have managed to fold some twenty-five years of pop music (twenty-five, or twenty-eight, decades if you want to include Vivaldi) in on itself, making chronology irrelevant. Like the cover picture for the record, a sodium-lit tableau of Risky Businness-esque privilege, or a Janus-faced, empty winter scene. They're a sort of end-of-history pop band, with no groundings in these modern times except for being them. They don't represent a point in time in pop music, but a sweeping together and away of all those points. I'll take this over any indie trend-setters, thanks.

Boxes - Animal; Road Records

2009-01-30T18:11:00.008Z

Boxes - 'Animal'

There's been a lot written in the Irish blogosphere (blogo'sphere?) about the decision of Road Records to close down. The causes and consequences of Dublin's premier independent record shop disappearing have been discussed at length here, and the best tribute to the store is written here. I think the most I can add is to highlight a recent purchase from the shop, an independent band from the same city, just by way of showing what was important about Road Records to the alternative music scene in Ireland and Dublin.

Personally, I had only been going to Road on a regular basis since about this time last year, when I got a USB turntable and, separately, got into Irish indie music. Prior to that, the shop was too esoteric and, well, indie for my tastes; and besides, there's a perfectly good Tower nearby for more ordinary-alternative sorts of purchases - a fact which must have sidelined Road for most music fans of my generation.

The combination of vinyl and Irish, however made, Road a real necessity for my listening experiences. The excellent Human Bell LP was album of the week or month; Shooting at Unarmed Men's superb Triptych album was displayed in the window for some time (possibly because it looks awesome); and favourite Irish albums from last year like So Cow's I'm Siding With My Captors and Chequerboard's Penny Black came from there as well. Of the Irish releases sourced in Road, I invariably got the crucial listen from the Indie Hour radio show/podcast - which has also unfortunately come to an end at the same time.

I heard the track above from Boxes in passing on that show, and was going to buy the album but put the purchase off (and should have gone to the album launch in the Lower Deck, too) and never did. Until I was looking for some last purchases to make from the shop -it doesn't even seem like there's a sale on, but people just seem willing to help clear their stock and buffer some of the losses. So Boxes - Animal it was (plus the new Cap Pas Cap 12" and Fucked Up - Year of the Pig, which is about as underwhelming as The Chemistry of Common Life). As it turned out, I should have been listening to this album a long time ago.

Here's the description from the store - that was one of best things about Road, the little mini-reviews of practically every album or single - as displayed on the Boxes website:

"album number three from this irish based two piece featuring mark hayes on drums and gavin cowley on bass and vocals. the album is another superb slice of post punk, math rock, post rock and old style sludge rock. its full of hard hitting but also quite intricate sounds with hints of no means no, shellac, don caballero, jesus lizard, fugazi and all things amphetamine reptile related."
(Road Records july 2008)

Animal is Boxes' third album - their second was recorded with Steve Albini, so you can tell there's a track record there - and was recorded in Experimental Audio studio in Dublin. Sonically, they're like a heavier version of current Irish favourite multi-instrumentalist R.S.A.G, or a funkier Young Widows (or, equally, a more AmRep-py Fugazi). It's metallic without being too metallic, which is what I like, and it's got the intense mathy sound of their influences down well, while still sounding sufficiently original to be interesting.

I've chosen the title track because it's, predictably, a good introduction to their sound (though far from the sum of it), but also an extra track from the album, 'Picture', because in part it exhibits, in a way that 'Animal' doesn't quite, the Irish nature of the band - 'Picture' has the typical post-rock/post-hardcore vocals in a quite noticeable Dublin accent. Which may not be particularly important, but I still like the song even more for it:

Boxes - 'Picture'

You probably won't be able to buy Animal online from Road anymore (though try your luck if you're actually in Dublin), but you can get their second album Bad Blood on Cargo Records

[Update: Road Records have Boxes - Bad Blood for sale]

FLApes album review in NME

2009-01-26T21:49:00.007Z

via Unarocks, the New Musical Express review of Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion:

NME.com - Fight Like Apes

"post-hardcore synthery" Wtf?

"built a nest from shards of Enter Shikari, Test Icicles and Le Tigre and then thrashed the shiny fuck out of it" Engaging metaphor, but Test Icicles? Enter Shikari? Two/three bands I vaguely remember hearing about, and not in a positive way, in 2007? (2006?)

"Dananananaykroyd gone new wave" Ditto. I dunno, Dananananaykroyd sounds pretty new wave in the first place to me. Like Kajagoogoo.

"comic-book geek-joy of early Ash" Okay, I like that one. Bonus points for mentioning an Irish band.

"FLA are the anti-emo..." If you say so, Emily Mackay (How ironic.)

"...a funny, clever slap of fun. Turn the other cheek, eh?" Quoting scripture is always a good conclusion.

Actually, apart from those quotes, the review's not too bad - if a little vacuous. The album itself is awesome, of course.

Fight Like Apes UK album release & tour - details

Arty new video for 'Tie Me Up With Jackets'

State.ie review of Fight Like Apes live at Koko, London

David Grubbs, Live @ Whelan's 24/01/09

2009-01-26T20:29:00.001Z

David Grubbs, 'An Optimist Declines' from An Optimist Notes the Dusk (2008)

This show is the first time I've been sitting down in Whelan's, with candles in little glass jars, jazz-club style, and beermats on the table. David Grubbs was listed in The Ticket as 'Rock-pop experimentalist. Recommended'; I knew him before from appearances on Codeine's The White Birch, from (pre-Slint) band Squirrel Bait, as well as Bastro; and his latest solo album garnered considerable praise in the Prisonship's best-of. Armed with those recommendations and connections - though Gastr Del Sol passed me by, insofar as bands from past decades can be said to have done so - I still wasn't sure what the show would sound like, apart from that track from his album above.

The set-up was sparse: an amp on top of a case with a mic in front of it, and another mic in front for vocals. Support was from Debutant from Aberdeen, an impressive singer-songwriter with a penchant for heavily-delayed post-rock guitar, building up from quiet chords to full-on looping ear damage. The show was promoted by Forever Presents, who brought Dan Deacon and Matmos to Dublin last year, and gave respective support slots to Jape and Si Schroeder, the latter my favourite Irish proponent of the shoegaze-y post-rock guitar style. Here, though it was a bit one-man-band Mogwai at the very end, on the whole his set was varied and interesting, and very enjoyable to listen to.

It didn't prepare you much for Grubbs, and it's hard to know what would. Obviously the context was the same - one man + electric guitar; but the content of the performance was quite different. In fact, if you were doubting the versatility of the guitar as an instrument, this would have been the show to go to. Personally I don't know much, if anything, about the technique of guitar-playing, but as with all art, I know what I like. And I liked David Grubbs.

That's not to say that the show was all rapt adoration of his axemanship. He could have played a full set of slowcore guitar, all spaces and reverbating chords, and it would have been amazing. However, he didn't, and the performance gained from being challenging. Combining stoner rock (echoes of Earth and Grails) and slowcore (especially Codeine) with bluesy riffing, the set built up through a diverse range of songs including 'An Optimist Declines', with its affecting vocal cadence and heavy guitar; through more pop-oriented folk and Americana, but still imbued with the slowcore ambience, such as 'Eyeglasses of Kentucky'; and concluding with a lengthy instrumental which seemed to blend the sounds of stoner rock guitar with those of a banjo and an ambulance siren.

I picked up the album from him at the edge of stage after the show, too. It doesn't disappoint either, but it's still quite challenging. Reading the press one-sheet (pdf), there's an interesting paragraph which says

"Much continues to be written about the end of the album and its splintering into the MP3dom of individual songs. An Optimist Notes the Dusk is at one and the same time an album and a collection of splinters. There is no contradiction. Do we dare suggest it sounds very 'playlist'?"

The album is just six tracks, which can be either described as varied or incoherent (if you wanted to be negative), without getting into Zen-like oppositions. Opener, and easy stand-out, 'Gethsemani Nights' is very reminiscent of the earlier For Carnation, though here the guitar, while still as (largely) clean and sparse, is more insistent, heavier in its tread, like a fastidious bluesman; and behind it a trumpet - by Nate Wooley - somewhere between Abilene and Human Bell. It's slowcore with an extra weight, an initially challenging further dimension.

Musical Rooms Part 52: David Grubbs

(Just trying out posting in Trebuchet. Let me know if you'd prefer reading in a serif font)

Friday Video: Grails - Acid Rain DVD Trailer

2009-01-23T18:08:00.012Z

I got an email today from someone at Temporary Residence Limited about a new video from Grails promoting their new DVD, due out in April. I had been planning on posting the new-ish live videos of Dan Deacon - w/ ensemble - from Pitchfork, but this is probably more useful for me to post. Grails have the whole visual and sonic art combination down quite well (see this post), so their videos are usually a joy to watch. The 'commercial' for Doomsdayer's Holiday was a great idea - though I'd love to see the television channel that interrupted its programming for a Grails video - and this is the same concept, except for a DVD rather than an album:

"Grails - Acid Rain DVD [due out April 7th]
Following up their widely acclaimed and most successful album, Doomsdayer’s Holiday, Grails unleash their first-ever DVD, the career-spanning Acid Rain. Centered around a half dozen mind-altering music videos from their last few albums, Acid Rain also features nearly two hours of live shows from the past several years. Packed full of bonus material and special treats, Acid Rain is as bizarre, eclectic and otherworldly as their albums, with the added spectacle of debaucherous activities, vicarious cult obsessions, and street preachers on rollerskates."

'Acid Rain' happens to be my favourite track from Doomsdayer's Holiday, the epic, surf-drenched and slow-moving finale. It's a good title for a "career-spanning" DVD; as it is a culmination of the varied and progressive post-rock styles of Grails, and also distinctly different from most of the rest of the album. It's impossible to predict where Grails will take their sound next, which is great for a band in an otherwise often repetitive genre.

Since another TRL band, also broadly in the post-rock genre, Envy, produced an excellent DVD - Transfovista - not too long ago, I'm assuming this release will live up to a similarly high standard.

Rockin' the Obama-nation

2009-01-20T21:48:00.010Z

(click to increase size)

An updated and more refined version of this graph.

Left to right, the ratio of visits on Hardcore for Nerds received from each state (August-November 2008) to its share of US population (adjusted for broadband penetration). And on the vertical axis, the positive or negative vote-margin in each state for Obama-Biden (Delaware, Hawaii and Illinois have been re-adjusted to 2004 levels). The trend (regression) line has an r-squared value of just under 0.55, which is an expression of how well the date points conform to a linear trend (answer: moderately well).

For example: Pennsylvania (PA) had 1.54 times the number of visits that would be expected from its population size (against the number of readers from the US overall) and broadband penetration, and went for Obama by a margin of 10.37%. It's also quite close to the trend line, meaning it's not an outlier...

Alaska, what's up?

D.C., rock top!

Mississippi, you need more punk...

Addendum: same graph with the readership expressed as visits per 100,000 population (adjusted for broadband penetration) here.

Friday Video: Foals, 'Olympic Airways', post-Skinscore

2009-01-16T20:56:00.013Z

A nice summery video from Foals, the best popular math-rock band of 2008 and one of my records of the year with Antidotes. The sound seems (intentionally?) muffled at first, but it's a beautifully shot video of one of the most thrilling, trilling quiet-ish songs on the album, and a great display of youth shenanigans. Which brings me to the point that, after their performance of 'Hummer' on the popular TV show Skins which gained them a large and youthful fanbase, they proved to be a tremendously interesting and worthy post-punk band. Antidotes is a crystalline, energetic post-rock album, filled with sweet hooks and a pulsing beat that keeps it going through eleven tracks of desultory experimentation. And no guitar chords.

_____________________________________________________

Anyway, I'm sooo over Skins... At first, I thought getting rid of all the old characters mightn't be too bad an idea, given that the show isn't Saved By The Bell and youth is a transient phase, but now it seems that the new cast is allowing them to regress the central attitude and vision of the show. Parts of the second series were actually really classy television, and the first season had novelty and daring behind its shock! hedonism! aspects - this season appears to have neither quality.

The trailer looks exciting enough; of course, neither of the two previous elaborately shot sequences was meant to bear more than a figurative resemblance to the events of the series itself. So in this case, it's what the creators of Street Wars would have you believe the average Friday night out in Britain is like. Dubiously aged drinkers in a stereotypical English pub suddenly turn to ransacking the place, beginning with lighting distress flares indoors. The opening sequence of the series - "this day has potential. It's pregnant" - introduces: a cocky skater kid who cheats death and serious traffic accidents; a semi-Chav-like guy who drinks lager in the morning; and a semi-autistic nerd who counts calories. Eventually, Harry Enfield gets nutted in the face. Oh dear.

Nobody expects Skins to be realistic, but we do expect the comedy to have a point. So far, this series seems as aimless as the tabloid idea of drunken teens it was supposed to lampoon. Nevertheless, I'll probably still watch it - the first episode at least - to see if the jokes or the characters get any better.

Series 3 trailer (featuring TV on the Radio, 'Halfway Home')

Episode 1, part 1 (featuring Fucked Up, 'Son the Father')

Joseph McRedmond Interview + TCR Unreleased Demos w/ Alex Dunham

2009-01-14T17:02:00.016Z

'An Open Bottle'

First of all, here's a set of unreleased demo tracks from the Crownhate Ruin with Alex Dunham that were temporarily lost from the internet - Joe McRedmond still has them on tape - but which have resurfaced recently. This is what the man himself said about them on his Facebook page, apparently:

"Some unreleased not very good, poorly recorded The Crownhate Ruin songs with Alex joining us, and David Titus Batista on drums. I’ll be surprised if you enjoy it."

True, they're not great sound quality, but they're still a fascinating - and enjoyable - listen if you want to hear the sound of the Crownhate Ruin paired with some of the extra guitar/vocal pyrotechnics of Regulator Watts. Essentially an album's worth of new songs - tracklisting at the bottom of the post - plus a great version of 'Blood Relative' from Until the Eagle Grins:

Download (thanks to Nick at dischord dot org)

_______________________________________________

Secondly, here's an interview I did in the last couple of days with Joe McRedmond - the guitarist for Hoover and the Crownhate Ruin, as well as many other Hoover-related projects (see below).

If you want to hear what he's doing now - and I definitely recommend this - check out Saggiatore.

Tell us about yourself:

My name is Joseph P. McRedmond, I am a half Irish half Sicilian male born and I am considered tall.

Of the various bands you played with after Crownhate, i.e. The Boom, The Sorts, Sea Tiger, etc., which albums/singles did you record on?

I remember recording on a couple of songs with Sea Tiger, The Sorts last record "Six Plus", touring with the Boom, recording on the Him record "New Features", playing bass on two Michael Nace LP's, recording demos with The Perfect Souvenir with Vin, and many practice tapes and live recordings of Rancho Notorious, and unheard demos playing bass with Gun, and a couple of singles with Admiral before all of this. [Edit - and my short lived project with James Brady from Trusty called "The Velvet Kid"; there is 1 limited edition single out there somewhere. I think Tanzania.]

Of those groups, were there any experiences that were especially memorable, or groups that you enjoyed playing with the most?

I remember them being all memorable at the time it was happening.

Within Hoover - e.g. 'Electrolux', and 'Relectrolux/Electrodub' - and in later groups like the Sorts, and in Regulator Watts as well, there's a lot of dub influence: I know that's common with a lot of Dischord and related bands, but was there anything or anyone specific it came from in Hoover? Or was everybody into it equally?

Everybody turned each other on to different musics, we would all bring mix tapes and would request things when necessary...and Jamaican music is the best music, as you can see in its influence on the world...there'd be no hip hop without Jamaica...it's deep late night party music with your friends usually with a message.

Until the Eagle Grins is usually the first record people get into after The Lurid Traversal. When you started up The Crownhate Ruin with Fred Erskine, what was the musical idea behind it? Where did you want to go from Hoover?

To keep playing and touring and recording and find a good drummer. and that's just what we did. And then we would jam forever and take our time putting music together and mostly just play as much as possible. We did a lot of quick out of town trips those two years.

What was the origin of the name Crownhate Ruin?

On the way home from rehearsal one night we passed a Crown Gas Station and Fred said "What do you think of the name The Crown Ruins? and I said what about the Crownhate Ruin? and then it was the name.

Kerosene 454 are listed in the thanks for Until the Eagle Grins, and I heard that you jammed with the Wall brothers for a while. Apart from the label (Slowdime Records), what was the connection with that band?

I originally met Alex in the summer of 1989 in Pittsburgh when Admiral played a show with Wind of Change which also featured Jim and John Wall. When Alex moved to DC he moved in with me, and I was already playing with Fred and Chris after Chris and my band with Geoff Farina of Karate, (our band was called Victor Deluxe) broke up after two shows as Geoff decided to move back to Boston. Alex started playing with us of course. On our first tour we played some shows with Kerosene, and then they moved from LA to DC. Hung out together at parties and more and more people move out here. In the middle of The Crownhate Ruin times, Fred and I moved into a house directly behind Kerosene's house, so we put two ladders up and climbed the chain link fence. After Crownhate and Kerosene broke up we had a little band called Vita Bruno with Jim, John, Vin, and myself. Rehearsed for a year and never got anywhere. Then Fred asked me to join The Boom, with a little prodding by myself, to go on a tour of Europe. John Wall was in the band at the time. We would practice in the Kerosene house. While we were gone, Vin replaced us with Mike Markarian who I lived with and Brandon Butler. They played as Vita Bruno til Brandon replace everybody and started an earlier version of Canyon.

The unreleased Crownhate demos with Alex Dunham are pretty much all new songs, apart from 'Blood Relative'. How likely was a second Crownhate Ruin album?

It was very likely, but we just couldn't play together anymore... Fred was busier with June of 44, Alex with Regulator and Vin with school. So David and I continued playing together off and on.

What do you think about the term 'emo' (or its sister codeword, '90s post-hardcore')?

I don't think about shit like that.

Anything in current punk or hardcore, or post-hardcore that you still listen to or enjoy?

The Eternals. The Good, The Bad, and The Queen, the more funky stuff.

Favourite record (new or old, I guess) of 2008?

Kutiman's "Kutiman" or the Jackson Conti record.

Favourite record in the Hoover family tree (that you didn't play on?)

The Him record "Universe Peoples" or "Many in High Places Are Not Well" or The 2nd Boom record "Any Day of The Night", or The Sorts "Contemporary Music" or most of the Sea Tiger LP.

Favourite record in the Hoover family tree (that you did play on?)

The 3rd Boom LP that never got released, but I have on soulseek.

Thanks

No sweat.

_______________________________________________

Demo tracklisting:

10. An Open Bottle

11. The Two Fuckers

12. Trapped Like A Mime

13. As Your Hatred Grows

14. Baby Blue and Black

15. Blood Relative

16. Dismantling Hell

17. Success

(6- An alternate version of 'Open Bottle', from this four-song, 8-track recorded first demo by the band, from 1995 - thanks to Matt)

Sinaloa/Wolves - split 7"

2009-01-13T16:29:00.006Z

(The picture above is a hand redrawing - by me - of the actual cover, ~~which isn't available in any significant size on the internet~~ [actually, go here]. A much smaller, but more accurate thumbnail, is below...)

Wolves - '16'

Sinaloa - 'New Teen Craze' & 'Strike Aloud'

From 2004, this split 7" - long out of print - features one of the very last songs by Wolves (who never had any songnames, just numbers - high-concept hardcore) and a pair of comparatively early songs from Sinaloa, who released their third full-length in 2008, Oceans and Islands.

Wolves were a post-Orchid band: the guitarist and singer Brad Wallace was the bassist for Orchid, and went on to play in Bucket Full of Teeth; the drummer went on to play in Ampere; and this split was released on Will Killingsworth's label Clean Plate Records. Quite apart from that - and I'm not the hugest Orchid fan - Wolves were an awesome frantic emo band for the time they were together. Essentially, they were the closest the 21st century has gotten so far to reproducing the combined energy and melody of the Swing Kids.

Like last week's post on Loma Prieta, both these bands recreate different elements of the 90s emo sound in modern fashions; Sinaloa, in turn, sound like a more muscular Moss Icon. Previously I posted the split LP by Ampere and Sinaloa - there's also a Wolves/Ampere split, and a Wolves/Transistor Transistor split, both on 7". However, this is possibly the best, and certainly ultimate, Wolves song, and out of all those other bands Sinaloa are definitely my favourite.

Here's good review of the split from Andy Malcolm of the excellent Collective Zine:

"I think this 7" has been hotly anticipated by certain folks. Luckily, it doesn't disappoint, as both bands contribute some fine songs. Wolves have split up, but they go out on a high note with a quality slice of their emotive hardcore. Garbled vocals and excitable guitars fire off rapidly for the duration. One guitar keeps the melody going at a torrid rate whilst the others and drums blast a tight rhythm. Sound.
Sinaloa then blow me away every time with 2 stunning songs on the b-side. They are a Moss Icon for the 21st century! Heh. I'm sorry. Anyway, this is amazing music, full of so much passion and sincerity and all the other things which I get out of my favourite records. The varied vocals by times spoken and cried spill out over the repetitious guitar and rhythm, inducing much swaying back and forth in my little wooden chair. The guitars roll and twinkle, the drumming marches on and it's all so perfect. As an added bonus they explain their songs. I personally couldn't ask for more. My favourite style of music played by kids that care. Wonderful. Apologies to the band, but it's your own fault for being so fucking good."

Download

Wolves discography on Zen and the Art of Face Punching

Sinaloa discography on Achilous

sinaloaisastate.com

wolves.hampshire.edu

Sunday Videos - Ramones, Subterranean Jungle

2009-01-11T15:01:00.011Z

The Ramones, 'Time Has Come Today' (1983 music video)

'Time Has Come Today', Chambers Brothers original version

The song above (insert your own joke about cowbell) is from one of my very favourite Ramones albums, along with Ramones and End of the Century. 1983's Subterranean Jungle is a glorious psychedelic punk-pop album, that tends to get explained away as their last confused experiment with the Spectorised pop dreams of End of the Century and Pleasant Dreams and the necessary precedent to 1984's Too Tough To Die 'comeback'. For me, however, the Ramones I fell in love with was the kooky experimentation, not so much the leather-jacketed posturing, though that was good too - more so in 1976 than in 1984.

Pleasant Dreams does have, of course, 'Psychotherapy' and 'Timebomb', two great blistering Ramones punk rock tracks, but the rest of the album is largely made up of late 60s psychedelic/soul covers - the opener 'Little Bit O' Soul', originally by the Music Explosion, and the Chamber Brothers' 'Time Has Come Today' - their own attempt at psychedelic rock, 'Highest Trails Above', as well as the obligatory bouncy pop song, 'My-My Kind of Girl', and the slightly stranger take on the concept, 'Everytime I Eat Vegetables I Think Of You'.

The best part about Subterranean Jungle is how the 60s pop and soul sound mixes so well with the pioneering pop-punk sound of early-80s Ramones. 'Outsider', for example, a classic Dee Dee Ramone song covered notable enough by Green Day, comes off a "throwaway" cover of 'I Need Your Love' by The Boyfriends, and the rather unlikely Music Explosion opener. The psychedelic covers fit in with the more straightforward punk songs, even though Johnny Ramone was the most in favour of the band taking a harder, non-pop stance, it's his vibrant guitar that cements it all together. 'Time Has Come Today' thus sounds like a relatively normal Ramones song to me, at least in the context of this album.

From the liner notes to the reissue of Subterranean Jungle, by Gil Kaufman:

"...In that spirit of commitment, the nearly epic (for the Ramones, anyway) four-and-a-half-minute cover of the Chambers Brothers' 1968 psychedelic hit "Time Has Come Today" made sense as a last-minute addition to the sessions. Although they had also been preparing a cover of 1910 Fruitgum and Co.'s "Indian Giver" (originally cowritten and produced by Cordell and included in this expanded reissue), the group decided to include "Time Has Come Today" after Marty went to get help for his drinking problem.
With session drummer Billy Rogers behind the kit, they cut the song with former Heartbreaker Walter Lure - Marty's drinking buddy for much of the sessions - doubling most of Johnny's guitar parts. According to Johnny, the cut marks the first and only time in the group's history where two different guitarists are playing simultaneously on a studio recording. It was pegged for a single, and longtime manager Gary Kurfirst says it was the latest in a line of songs the label thought would be the band's breakthrough hit.
And while Johnny says they tried to reproduce the Chambers Brother sound as closely as possible, there were limitations. "It was difficult for Joey to sing," Johnny says. "He was competing with the Chambers Brothers, and when your getting into soul singers, it's hard for a white rock singer to compete with that." Joey gives it his best, though, alternately growling the lyrics and sing-speaking them in a rubbery baritone as the band plays a reverential cover of the song. They made a video for that song as well, but the single didn't take off, and the album stalled out at #83 on the Billboard charts."

Last night I was watching Remember The Titans - as there's no episode of Friday Night Lights on this weekend - for the first time and, as much as American football is still a largely mystifying activity to me, it's a pretty great film. Okay, it gets a little wholesome for its own good sometimes - compared to the remarkable dramatic realism of Friday Night Lights, the TV show - but the true story of racial conflict and triumph is still quite impressive in its exposition. 'Time Has Come Today' appears briefly in the film, at the scene where the newly integrated high school opens its doors to the accompaniment of protesters waving "Parents against Busing" placards; it's a revolutionary song for revolutionary times (according to Wikipedia, the sound effects on the long version of the song were intended to replicate the sounds of the war in Vietnam).

Incidentally, the cast of teenage football players is very interesting to look at now - the movie was made in 2000 - starring as it does Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris as Julius) from The Wire, as well as Turk (Donald Faison as Petey) from Scrubs and Randy (Ethan Suplee as Louie) from My Name Is Earl.

Long version - 9 minutes - of 'Time Has Come Today' on YouTube.

Ramones - Subterranean Jungle (Expanded Edition) via ABC Afterglow

I talked about Pleasant Dreams and Subterranean Jungle by the Ramones previously here.

'Little Bit O' Soul' by the Music Explosion, 1967 (first song on Subterranean Jungle):

Loma Prieta - Last City

2009-01-09T21:20:00.006Z

Loma Prieta - 'Bridges' (01:52)

This excellent screamo (aka 'skramz' in modern ironic hip-speak) album didn't get enough play for me to include it in my end of year list, and though it still probably doesn't beat out the rather different ...Who Calls So Loud album, I think it's worth highlighting, in a manner of speaking. What impresses me the most about Last City is how much it sounds like one of the most extreme 90s emo/hardcore groups, Honeywell - their discography is on the blog, here - while also fitting in with contemporary sounds and styles of screamo. It's essentially a pastiche, but a perfectly executed one, and one leading to a rather creative and original album.

Given that what the 'screamo' genre has evolved to now is a complex, intense jumble of sounds - especially very technical patterns that I'm totally incapable of discussing - emotions, and of course screams, it's probably not worth trying to a lay out a road map of where the different constituents of this album - or any other, but particularly this one - come from. If I did create one, however, it would be a complicated journey through Honeywell, and San Diego-core, into proper 'screamo', from Orchid out to Ampere, across to Japan and returning via Euro screamo and France, and into 2008 with a few more connecting flights added on. As well, there are many recent paths that don't match my tastes - Kidcrash, Off Minor - and the (separate) fact that listening to mediocre screamo becomes rapidly tiresome. Perhaps because it is still quite a specific genre, songs tend to abound in cliches drawn from a rather narrow pool, and it's easy to become disillusioned about screamo's ability to still pack a creative punch.

So by rewinding the spool of musical development back a decade or so, Loma Prieta's latest album resurrects some emo signifiers - primarily, very distorted screaming vocals and sharply pitched, almost screeching feedback - that haven't lost their contribution to musical intensity since 1995. At the same time, Last City is full of modern touches, like the melodic arpeggiated interludes between the blasts of noise, the Ampere-like attention to rhythm and heaviness, or the fuller, more epic (read:better produced) crests of the screamo sound itself. It's the interplay between these - in a sense - contrasting elements that makes the album so interesting; although it doesn't hurt that the ten songs average out at about a little over two minutes each, blasting through concentrated experimentation at attention-deficit speed yet with just enough breathing space to actually appreciate the music as a whole.

I'll wrap up with the concluding paragraph from Nick's review for Sputnikmusic.com:

"While Last City is not a genre redefining album (there are still obvious traces of Ampere and You and I here - but what better bands to rip off?), it certainly is an excellent album. Its 22-minute runtime makes good on Loma Prieta's claim that "our LP is your EP," and feels like a complete, if bite-sized unit of music. Ultimately, in a genre where recombination is being done with increasingly disappointing results, it's nice to hear a band that "gets it." Loma Prieta have produced a vital and compelling emotional hardcore album in 2008 that unabashedly invokes its predecessors while still fighting the genetic dilution that has plagued emo in recent memory."

www.myspace.com/lomaprieta

CHUG LIFE: Loma Prieta (discography)

Leatherface - Little White God

2009-01-09T15:25:00.012Z

Leatherface - 'Little White God'

(Click to view larger)

____________________________________________________

Leatherface - Little White God 7" (RUG16/Domino, 1994)

A1 - 'Little White God'

B2 - 'I Gotta Right'

B3 - 'Meaning'

& from Leatherface - Win Some, Lose Some 7" (DUMP018/Rugger Bugger Discs, 1994)

04 - 'Discipline' (live)

05 - 'Colorado Joe/Leningrad Vlad' (live)

Download

Buy Little White God 7" from Domino Records

Discography information from www.x1984x.com the Shipyards

____________________________________________________

I found this via an mp3 blog a week or so ago, but I just listened to it yesterday. The five tracks appear to be from two different 7" releases, albeit consecutive ones. In any case, 'Little White God' is one of the indescribably superb Leatherface's best songs (the opening track from The Last album, previous post here), while a couple of prime-era Leatherface b-sides and a pair of early live tracks make for a nice collection.

I've read 'Little White God' described as 'reggae-influenced', which makes a certain amount of sense from the song's bouncy nature; plus, ever since the Clash or the Ruts, British punk has often absorbed strong elements of its companion genre. It's somewhat akin, in a hardcore setting, to the dub reggae influence on Fugazi's Repeater, which was released around the same time as Leatherface reached their early-90s prime.

Aside from that, 'Little White God' is an outstanding post-hardcore song about drugs and personal choices/addictions. Leatherface lyrics always have a certain ambiguity about them, in the combination of apparent positives and negatives, or ironic and (apparently) sincere statements. I'm never sure exactly what they're saying, but I understand just enough for them to make an impact.

Further impact comes from the excellent cover artwork, a masterpiece in the technological-industrial blazing punk post-hardcore meme. Though I'm not quite sure why someone would be welding a razor blade - if that what's it is - it sure looks fantastic. Added to that, as I just realised today, is the strength of the block-lettered 'Leatherface' name - in red or black on the other albums - with its dropped shadows and almost-typical font (look at the R) which is just the right side of subtle and artistic.

Of the B-sides, 'I Gotta Right' is an enthusiastic fast-loud rock'n'roll hardcore type of song, with prominent, riffing guitar work; while 'Meaning' is the slower, more melodic type of post-hardcore typical of the Minx album - where Leatherface lost some of the cathartic immediacy of their masterpiece, Mush, but mostly made up for it with less obvious, almost balladic pathos. The two live tracks - flip-side to the 7" release of 'Win Some, Lose Some' and 'Ba Ba Ba Ba Boo' - take several steps further back, right to Leatherface's first album, 1989's Cherry Knowle which was much more straightforwardly hardcore-like than anything else the band did after.

Sonically and lyrically, the authority-critical 'Discipline' and the obviously cold-war-era 'Colorado Joe/Leningrad Vlad' ("USSR, USA, they're so gay" - I think using the word in an ironic twist on the 'happy' meaning rather than simplified homophobia) are the link between 80s hardcore punk and its progression, in the Leatherface sound, into 90s post-hardcore - quite outside of Dischord Records and the post-Revolution Summer group of bands, although there is a Leatherface/Jawbox live split.

As it happened, Leatherface moved - largely via Mush - from being purely known in the UK scene to relatively wide recognition in the US, and joining the Avail/Hot Water Music/J Church group of alternately gruff and poppy post-hardcore bands - and eventually leading to the sublime Leatherface/Hot Water Music BYO split series album (posted here) that marked the return of Leatherface after the Last breakup.

New Dan Deacon Cover Art (+ new track)

2009-01-05T22:18:00.010Z

(via egoeccentric)

The new Dan Deacon album, Bromst (out March 24th on Carpark), one release I'm very much looking forward to this year, has been revealed to have this rather beautifully - and unconventionally - autumnal cover art. Given that Dan Deacon is part of a multimedia art collective, I guess it's no surprise that it looks good (see the cover to the previous album, Spiderman of the Rings, here). While speaking of the new album's "promise of a thematic and aesthetic shift", Stereogum sums it up rather nicely:

"The Bromst stuff offered hip-hop glints with scratched vocal-samples in the mix and deeper, more deliberate dance beats than Spiderman, while retaining some of the album's quirk and whimsy at its core. This album cover is very true to that."

It also reminds me of the secret Skins episode, but that's probably just me. And no, that's not a bad thing.

UPDATE (via Thrill Pier): A track - the last - from the album is now streaming on Pitchfork. It's very, very good. Key phrase from their description: "Deacon somehow manages to keep the densely packed midrange just this side of a headache"; but read (and listen) to the whole thing, it's great. I think it sounds oddly and momentarily quite like U2 at around the 5-minute mark, but apart from that it's a really interesting denser, slightly darker reprise of the Spiderman of the Rings sound.*

What is curious, though, is that I can't think of anything from 2008 that made a major impact on me - or appeared to have impacted on the wider critical consciousness - in the same way that Spiderman of the Rings (and to a lesser degree, Battles' Mirrored) did. I'm not one of those people who say 'this year was disappointing in music' because, well, it wasn't, and I don't see how you couldn't find some stimulating art somewhere in the world - but at the same time I don't recall meeting anything as interesting-sounding as Dan Deacon in 2008.

Potential candidates? Vampire Weekend or Fucked Up, to take two oddly connected groups: both interesting and accessible sounds, and although I react to the hype(/backlash) surrounding each band quite differently, I still don't see either as revolutionarily novel. I'm talking popular non-mainstream albums here, aka 'indie' - the stuff that gets picked up by Pitchfork and other, worthier publications, and not obscure post-hardcore/screamo/regional artists that actually made my Best of 2008 list ahead of, or nearby, the aforementioned Vampire Weekend.

Also, 'ahead' of Spiderman of the Rings in 2007 I placed Arcade Fire's Neon Bible and Dinosaur Jr.'s Crumble, not because I though either were particularly challenging and new-sounding, but just because I liked them so much. However, I still rate Dan Deacon as an artist who opened my ears and eyes that year to fantastically good music, as well as joyously action-packed live show. Perhaps it is too much to expect that every year, but why not be ambitious about living in a global network of music enjoyment and discussion?

Of course, I already have a few areas of interest in retrospectively exploring the 'new' music of 2008 via some of the Best of 2008 lists spread across the internet, particularly those featured in this earlier post. Fennesz's Black Sea, as noted in josephlovesit's Best of 2008: Pop Art list and in several other locations, seems an interesting, intriguing, out-of-my-usual-listening-orbit choice, but then again that's probably why I haven't actually listened to any of it yet. Dan Deacon also originally appeared to lie at a similar distance from my usual listening habits, but crucially it had - in 'Crystal Cat' at least - a certain punky aesthetic and accessibility.

On that last basis, I'd nominate So Cow's very accessible, very - if tangentially - punk rock, and very interesting album I'm Siding With My Captors - plus a great live show, even if only as a supporting act - as my Dan Deacon of 2008. Especially as Karl of Those Geese Were Stupified has written a brilliant review of it for the latest instalment of his year-end list (#7 of 10-7). A more novel or worthy album to fill the 2008-shaped mental gap in Dan Deacon-like indie music excitement, I can't think of.

* Now, I just need a translation for "8-bit euphoria" into the frantic, ska-happy sound of the So Cow album.

Sack - Other Voices set

2009-01-02T17:01:00.013Z

'Sugar Free' & 'Tag'

'Latter Day Saint' & 'Pressures of Modern Life'

Shortly before Channel 6's Nightshift - Ireland's only halfway decent music video show on TV - got shut down by its evil corporate bosses in TV3, I saw for the first time ever the video for Sack's 'Laughter Lines', aka the song that Morrissey said "should be No. 1 forever". Unfortunately, I'm unlikely to see it again anytime soon, because it's not on YouTube - proving a) that good music television is not made completely redundant by the internet (it's not on Muzu.tv either, or (laugh) MTV Music) that b) most things by Sack, one of Ireland's best modern bands, are really hard to find.

So here is Sack's set from (Irish public broadcaster) RTE's Other Voices series in 2006, partially as a two fingers up to TV3 and an illustration of where the license fee actually goes (as opposed to Green Party, government minister for communications, Eamon Ryan's less than fantastic performance in explaining the virtues of public broadcasting against Vincent Browne's disingenuous block-headedness) and also because it's a very good live performance. In fact, it's probably my favourite performance of the several Other Voices series, even ahead of Fight Like Apes.

Self-described as "Frank Sinatra fronting the Pixies", Sack actually fits that description quite well. Crooning vocals revolving around a subtle electro-poppy, shoegaze-y indie sound and, yes, a certain Morrissey/Smiths quality. I wasn't very familiar with the band before seeing their Other Voices performance. 'Sugar Free' starts it off slow and gentle, not even touching the keyboard until three minutes in, and then only to accentuate the gradual curve of the song. 'Tag', by contrast, opens even quieter, yet stronger, with Martin McCann's vocal hook "I've spent this evening, watching you leaving", and from thereon in the song soars ever more upwards. Sack presents a certain sort of combined sonic and visual scenery in their carefully crafted pop. In the background, there is the beautiful musical textures created by the band; and in the foreground, the dramatic gestures of the frontman in his snazzy Suggs-style Fred Perry shirt.

At the time, I was only just getting into keyboards and pop music in general as valid means of artistic expression, something that also went along with discovering Bob Mould's post-Husker Du band Sugar and their first album Copper Blue. It may be an odd association, but it's not one without parallels. Both Mould and McCann are active as DJs in the gay club scene - and both are balding, stocky 30- to 40-something year old men - but what really interests me is the music here and the use of keyboard melodies in guitar-based indie or 'alt-rock' music. There's something about Sack that replicates the expressiveness of Sugar or later Husker Du, when they hit something sweetly poppy yet still obviously alternative.

In the second part, 'Latter Day Saints' is an upbeat, driving, melodic song with a groovy, slightly jazzy - in the showtune kind of way - chorus, "I'm trying hard to be a latter-day saint". The longer, more melancholy 'Pressures of Modern Life' combines instrumental atmosphere - vibrato guitar and keyboard blips and bloops - with the same kind of gentle melody and shoegaze-y drive: "suicide in a college town (ooh-ooh-oooh)". It's an almost defiantly pop sort of song, in its ending lines followed by the last, sugary riffs - "they got him, those demons/they repossessed his soul".

sacktheband.net

You Are What You Eat - b-sides and rarities

Festive Bestuv/Best Of Best ofs 2008

2008-12-30T18:35:00.022Z

1. Best-Of Roundups

2. 2009 Schedule

Recommended Blogroll Best-Ofs:

Failing the Rorschach Test: The Best Albums of 2008: from #30 to #21; #20; #19 ("and then eventually to #1). Example - "Fucked Up - The Chemistry of Common Life: There was a lot of good hardcore music released this year. This wasn't even in my top ten." Plenty of hardcore/punk/screamo/post-rock/crescendo-core...

Geek Down, Best of 2008: Rock Albums, including Grails, Shooting at Unarmed Men, Mogwai and Have A Nice Life plus one other. Also, Rap and 'Pop Art' albums.

The Prisonship: Bestuv 2008, pt. 1: Haven’t Heards, Haven’t Heard Enoughs, General Trends. Example, 'Haven't Heards' - "No Age: I dunno, Bob Mould likes it". Also including Zomes, Earth, 'shoegaze' - i.e. "lush, rich gtr-blankets draped over sex-vocals with the feet-cymbals peaking out from under them blankets".

Last Train to Cool/Worship and Tribute (Sputnikmusic writers)

Still waiting on: Zen and the Art of Face Punching (his Best of 2007 list, from February 2008!)

Irish blog lists:

Swear I'm Not Paul: Best of 2008: Irish Blogs & Publications, Update 6 - like Largeheartedboy's worldwide aggregate list, but actually manageable.

Nialler9's Irish Albums of 2008 Reader's Poll: Jape and Rarely Seen Above Ground (see HfN: Year End November) at #1 and #2, streets ahead of the rest; Fight Like Apes at #3, Chequerboard at #9, So Cow and Ham Sandwich at #15 and #16 respectively.

Those Geese Were Stupefied: Best of 2008, including Interlude 2: Homemade, stapled-together super-limited EP, So Cow - Wackity Schmackity Doo (Unreleased); and Interlude 3: Free Download, Dublin Duck Dispensary - Luanqibazao, review by Brian Kelly, a.k.a. So Cow - example: "It's been tagged as no-fi. Incorrect. This is fi. It's pop-fi and it's smile-fi. It's gallop-fi and it's fist-fi."

Best Combined Post-Mcluskyite Inclusions in a List:

Gimme Tinnitus - Top 51 Downloadables of 2008 including Future of the Left, 'Adeadmanalwayssmellsgood' - "Award: Best awesomeness of the year" and Shooting At Unarmed Men, 'Boredom Is The Feeling That Everything Is A Waste Of Time' - "Award: Best song that took for fucking ever to be released in the states of the year".

Best/Most Inappropriate Description of Ham Sandwich - Carry The Meek:

Egoeccentric, Evil Bob's Best of 2008: "6. ...Ham Sandwich's first album mixes perfectly the female vocals of surprise preggers Niamh Farrell and fucking mentaller Podge McNamee to make some great pop-rock tunes. Great stuff all round."

(and thus) The Two Best Albums Of The Year That Almost Nobody's Heard (Yet):

Triptych.zip

Carry the Meek.zip

(If you like, buy: Shootingatunarmedmen.com, Eathamsandwich.com)

Best of Albums of 2006*, including:

Envy, Insomniac Doze

Shooting At Unarmed Men, Yes! Tinnitus!

Si Schroeder, Coping Mechanisms

The Bouncing Souls, The Gold Record

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Show Your Bones

*because it takes a year to hear about all the really good albums, and another year to appreciate them properly.

Looking forward to in 2009:

Dan Deacon, Bromst

and So Cow Greatest Hits LP

and Bats - split 7" with Fist Fite and forthcoming full-length album.

Happy New Year!

Regulator Watts - The Aesthetics of No-Drag

2008-12-29T18:56:00.002Z

(Image from Jason Farrell's design site - various other, larger pictures online have the colour tones messed up so this is the best one I found. Jason Farrell also did the design/layout for a whole lot of other Dischord/Slowdime and Hoover releases)

This is the last major part/post of the Hoover Genealogy Project. I'll come back to The Mercury CD at some other time, and possibly other releases by The Boom/The Sorts/Sea Tiger... and Frederick Erskine's Just a Fire, which is very good too. However, the essence of the Hoover family tree has been for me the trio of Abilene, Radio Flyer and Regulator Watts. Which essentially makes it the Alex Dunham tree, but oh man, can that guy play guitar. The main alternative branch is of course Frederick Erskine and Joe McRedmond in the Crownhate Ruin, who produced the closest thing there is to a 'follow-up' to Hoover's The Lurid Traversal of Route 7 in Until The Eagle Grins, and then the former of which who went on to do great things in June of 44, et al, before re-intersecting with the Dunham branch on Abilene's second album. Of course, there a plenty of other groups scattered in and around there, for example Sevens; and a couple of 7" releases by pre-Hoover groups Admiral and Fine Day, which I suggest you go to Proven Hollow's long-dormant blog to find, as that was only where I heard about them myself.

The list of posts in the Hoover Genealogy Project so far:

13. Hoover - 'Side Car Freddie' b/w 'Cable'

12. Live on WFMU: Hoover, Lincoln and Crownhate Ruin

11. The Sorts, Sea Tiger - 'How Did You Get There', 'Theme Song' 7"s

10. Abilene - Two Guns, Twin Arrows

9. The Crownhate Ruin - Until The Eagle Grins

8. The Crownhate Ruin: Vol. 1-3

7. Abilene - s/t - (after eggcityradio.com)

6. The Boom - Movin' Out

5. [The Hoover Mixtape]

4. Radio Flyer - In Their Strange White Armor

3. Regulator Watts - 'New Low Moline' 7"

2. Hoover/Lincoln - Two-Headed Coin 7"

1. Hoover - s/t reunion EP

Regulator Watts came into the series early on with the 'Rocket to Chicago'/'New Low Moline' 7", also part of the 1998 Mercury CD. I guess I held off posting the first full-length until I could better absorb and thus transmit it, while the two-song 7" is a much more accessible way to get into Regulator Watt's high-octane sound. However, there are two songs from The Aesthetics of No-Drag which work well as an introduction to the album: the opening track, 'Mercurochrome', and the album standout, 'The Ballad of St. Tinnitus'.

Regulator Watts - 'Mercurochrome'

'Mercurochrome' is an opener of the kind that condenses down the intensity of Lurid Traversal's 'Distant' and cranks up the volume on Radio Flyer's 'Allied' into a whole other level of high-powered, electrified post-hardcore. Lyrics on a variation of "old grandads got my number/sinking highballs/hit me with it my mind/blind at the same time" added to the fact that mercurochrome, as I understand it, is another name for iodine (i.e., the disinfectant applied to wounds) makes this a particularly painful song. At the very start, 'Mercurochrome' is almost entirely a wash of screeching, atonal guitar noise, temporarily interrupted by a noisy rhythm and more conventional, rockish structure, but returning to its jagged, unreconstructed sound throughout.

The sense of barely controlled chaos is practically a cliche in Hoover-related bands, but 'Mercurochrome' puts it to especially vivid and immediate use; as do the following songs, '20th Century Ltd.' and - after a brief interlude of quiet instrumentation in 'Halifax' - the hypnotic, penetrating 'Candy Bullet O'. As is often the case with three-piece groups, Regulator Watts have the capability to create a lot of noise and abandon within each song, accentuated by the piercing, practically tortured sounds of Alex Dunham's guitar. 'Seedtick East' lays off on the punk rock fury with a calmer, slightly dub-influenced track which opens with an almost train-like boom and echoing, distant drums and vocals.

Regulator Watts - 'The Ballad of St. Tinnitus'

Even more traumatic than 'Mercurochrome'. Coming off the last swipe of guitar feedback in 'Seedtick East', 'The Ballad of St. Tinnitus' opens quietly, over a heavy drum pattern and a climbing guitar line that suddenly soars into ear-shattering volume: "I lost my mother to the needle, my father to the bottle" (though the lyrics sheet doesn't use the pronoun 'I') "let the people sing...". In 'The Ballad of St. Tinnitus' the harsh guitar sound developed over the previous tracks - and indeed, in Radio Flyer and Hoover - reaches its point of greatest refinement and intensity. 'Tinnitus' - the common affliction of those exposed to loud noise - is painfully beautiful music, a beat by beat, minute by minute attack on the conventions of rock sound, and a statement of distorted purity in art and artifice.

'Pemberton Red' works perfectly as more subdued follow-up, rather reminiscent of the calmer, yet tense, explorations of Radio Flyer. Alex Dunham's voice has a noticeably broken quality to it, almost as if injured and withdrawn from the exertions of 'St. Tinnitus', yet still enveloped in the rolling, accented rhythms of the song. 'Chechero' is another instrumental, atmospheric interlude, repeated on The Mercury CD at greater length. In The Aesthetics of No-Drag it leads into another slow-building but hard-hitting rocker, 'Eleven', which handles the quiet-loud transition and ultimate, cathartic crescendo in a very Hoover-ish manner.

'False Idols', written by Seven's Bobby Sullivan (see Proven Hollow's post here) is the dubbest track of the album, and in fact redone as 'Version Idols' for the last track of The Mercury CD. Along with Hoover's 'Electrodux' and the 'Relectrolux/Electrodub' version on the reunion EP, 'False Idols' marks the overt inclusion of the influential dub sound within the post-hardcore style. With this in mind, 'Firecrackerjack Tippy' seems to start off as a ponderous exercise in that combination, a hazy, slow-moving rhythmic track interjected with swiping, melodic guitar phrases which grow louder and more emphatic as the song goes on. It's as much Radio Flyer, and even Abilene-ish, as it is Hoover-like, but it also includes the extra dissonant edge of the Regulators Watts sound.

A reprise of the earlier instrumental track, 'Halifax Hellbound' adds a momentary passage of grinding guitar before giving way the album's final track, the supremely intense and aggressive 'Witchduck' - a remarkable, fiery closer. As much as 'Mercurochrome' and 'The Ballad of St. Tinnitus', this song incorporates the disparate elements of rhythm, distortion, screaming vocals and disturbing atonality into a tight rock structure; in essence coming probably just as close to a total reconstruction of the Hoover aesthetic as the Crownhate Ruin did a year beforehand.

Regulator Watts - 'Witchduck'

Regulator Watts - The Aesthetics of No-Drag (1997) (via Kissmysoundsystem)

Slint - Glenn/Rhoda 10" and Mogwai - Batcat 12"

2008-12-28T11:31:00.006Z

Slint - 'Glenn' (1994)

Slint - 'Rhoda' (1994)

Mogwai - 'Batcat' (2008)

Slint's EP contains, minute for minute, the best music of their slender but massively important output - Spiderland a greater, but far longer, opus of the early 90s Louisville sound and post-rock point of origin. (The songs were recorded in 1989, after Tweez, but were never released until after Spiderland, in 1993/4) For a description of these two two songs, allow me to return to one of the very earliest posts on this blog, written before going to see Slint performing Spiderland in Tripod, Dublin - at which 'Glenn' and 'Rhoda' were played as part of an extended encore:

"1. this EP almost perfectly bridges the fairly disparate sounds of Tweez (a lo-fi, desultory and crunchingly metallic album) and Spiderland (a twisting, epic and subtle masterpiece of post-rock). 'Glenn' rejuvenates the minimalistic sound of Tweez, tightening it up and adding an extra dimension of tension to the instrumental style. The song quickly builds up into a crescendo, which almost immediately goes nowhere, except to introduce an ominous humming sound... part reminiscent of the antagonistic noise of Tweez, part prescient of the eerie claustrophobia of Spiderland.
2. the music of this EP was for me the most 'accessible' part of Slint, coming as I was from a particular musical direction. Previously, I had an allergy to the whole aesthetic idea of post-rock or math-rock (don't worry, I'm on meds now... the doctors call them the mercury program). The song 'Rhoda', in no small way, helped change that. You see, I was listening to a lot of Maximillian Colby, which was a very heavily Slint-influenced emo/hardcore band, similar in vein to the Swing Kids or perhaps Clikatat Ikatowi. But Slint-influenced is not the same as Slint, so when I downloaded Tweez (the only Slint record Touch and Go have released on eMusic... insert conspiracy theory here) I was a little disappointed, not to say confused. Because this alternate version of 'Rhoda' is simply so much better than that entire album. Right from the starting notes, it is probably Slint's loudest song, performing a similar synthesis of styles to 'Glenn' but simultaneously amping the sound up several notches, drenching the spaces between jagged riffs in perfectly pitched feedback, descending into weird, metallic noise and finally collapsing into a droning whine..."
(Slint - "Glenn/Rhoda" EP, August 2007)

I can't believe I had "an allergy to the whole aesthetic idea of post-rock or math-rock", because it would make a listening to a lot of what I follow now very painful. The Mercury Program are a very good band, though. After that post was the review of the gig itself, still probably the best I've seen in the last 18 months (including the Dinosaur Jr. reunion tour and Battles, twice, with the only real challenge being seeing Si Schroeder live for the first time as well).

"3. When they started playing the first few bars of 'Breadcrumb Trail', it sounded like the most familiar thing in the world. This was basically like listening to the album, but better in every way. Or if you were able to listen to the album at tremendous volume, in a room full of people, maybe that... The first sequence of 'Breadcrumb Trail' and 'Nosferatu Man' was pretty damn rocking, and then they slowed it down a bit for 'Don, Aman', when the two guitars came and sat opposite each other on stools in the middle of the stage. Halfway through 'Washer' I was thinking, maybe now I understand a little bit more what Indian Summer felt 'with the needle dragging the end of the slint lp', and where they took a lot of their sound from. The same with 'For Dinner' and the echoes of Max Colby... not really that all those bands are derivative, but that Slint just created this massively important aesthetic. Finally, with 'Good Morning, Captain', we were left with "I MISS YOU!!!" reverberating in our ears, and wondering... what happens now?
4. They played 'Glenn' and 'Rhoda'! That is, after playing Spiderland in its entirety, they played the Glenn/Rhoda EP in its entirety. I was pretty stoked to hear the album, and that would in itself have made the gig awesome, but hearing those two songs live just blew me away. Especially after just writing a review of those songs, to hear them so unexpectedly was memorable to say the least. Mind you, I used to think 'Glenn' was a quiet song. Not so live, however... 'Rhoda' was also upgraded to "earth-shattering". Just awesome."
(Slint - Live @ Tripod, Dublin)

Since then, I bought a record player, and pretty much along with it, a vinyl copy of Spiderland (the way it's meant to be heard). Later on this year, new reprints of the self-titled/'Glenn'/'Rhoda' EP, whatever you want to call it, arrived in the shops. I have to say the difference in quality - in audio terms and in the general experience - is less easily discernible than with Spiderland. Hence, the streaming clips are just ripped from the CD version. However, the pure aesthetics of the EP are enhanced by the 10" version, from the film noir-ish cover art (supposedly inspired by this 1992 book of NYPD crime scene photographs) to the unnamed, crimson-soaked pictorial side A/side B labels on the record itself.

(Click to expand)

A further enchancement of this most perfect encapsulation of the Slint sound and energy came also with the 2008 release of Mogwai's 'Batcat' EP for their current album The Hawk Is Howling. What a 'batcat' is, I don't know - visual, visceral horrorshows aside - but Mogwai did follow in the footsteps of another Slint (okay, Albini/Shellac) influenced band, Mclusky, with their song titles. And yes, that's not a hawk on the album (or at least it doesn't look like one), and no, it's not howling. But 'Batcat' the song is a condensed epic of post-metal, crushingly heavy, noise-making guitars and intricate post-rock composition, which immediately reminds me of Slint's 'Rhoda', the re-worked version.

It's not just 'Batcat', the second track on the full album after the winding, harmonious 'I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead', that makes the EP worthwhile, however. Two tracks on the flipside to 'Batcat', 'Stupid Prick Gets Chased By The Police and Loses His Slut Girlfriend' and 'Devil Rides', showcase Mogwai's less intense, more subtly crafted post-rock soundscapes, in a sort of combined 'Glenn' to Batcat's 'Rhoda'. The upfront heaviness of the EP is in some ways mirrored by the accessibility of the full-length, for all its sprawling, double-LP expanse:

"...Mogwai's sound on The Hawk Is Howling is in the style of their last few albums. The melodies on The Hawk Is Howling are direct and overt. It's grown man, heart-on-their-sleeve music without being veiled in pretense--probably why it got a 4 on Pitchfork. When Mogwai get heavy, they sound like Tool. And it rules. Mogwai are a great rock band because they sound honest."
(josephlovesit, Geek Down - Best of 2008: Rock Albums)

Slint - Touch and Go / Quarterstick Records

Slint 10" at Road Records

Mogwai - Matador Records

Asobi Seksu - Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight) 7"

2008-12-23T18:31:00.017Z

Side A - 'Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight)'

Side B - 'New Years'

For last year's Christmas post, I gave you the Guinness seasonal television ad and Weezer's Pinkerton/Hiroshige's 'Night Sky at Kambara' (the cover picture of that album). This year, I've already given you The Snowman cartoon, and now here's an Asobi Seksu 7" of the Ramones 1987 song 'Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight)'.

Download (vinyl rip)

(Click pictures to increase size)

Asobi Seksu, based around the guitar of James Hanna and the vocals of Yuki Chikudate, combine the two elements of 60s girl-pop (another 7" of theirs is an original, 'Stay Awake' b/w 'And Then He Kissed Me' by The Crystals) and shoegaze into a fantastic modern indie-rock/punk-pop band. The Spector-ised pop-punk is resonant with the Ramones themselves (End of the Century is a favourite album of theirs for me) but also with current bands like Glasgow's Camera Obscura or Brooklyn's Vivian Girls. At the same time, the shoegaze reaches level of sheer indulgence and My Bloody Valentine-worship - nearly always a good thing - particularly on the second album Citrus. 'New Years' is one of the best tracks on that album, too.

Though I was familiar with some of their songs already, probably from the radio, it was hearing the 'Stay Awake'/'And Then He Kissed Me' 7" via Burning Down The Dreams of Forever that hooked me on the band. The author of that blog, Sweet Baby Jaysus or just 'Jay', is also the author of the quote/mission statement in the top right corner of this site. He also tour managed for Asobi Seksu in the US, and below is a picture from his collection of him and Yuki:

Asobi Seksu on Polyvinyl

Asobi Seksu on eMusic (incl. 7"s)

Band website/myspace

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

At the End of a Fucked Up Holiday: Punk Rock 1998-2008

2008-12-20T21:14:00.005Z

Pennywise - 'Badge of Pride' (Straight Ahead, 1999)

Fucked Up - 'Son the Father' (The Chemistry of Common Life, 2008)

(the post title comes from a mis-remembered line in the Embrace song, 'End of a Year'. It would be a mixtape post, except for the fact that there's nothing in between those two songs that I really want to include - and therein lies the rub, and the 'holiday')

This isn't an anti-Fucked Up post, or an anti-hardcore post. It's a pro-punk rock post, and a pro-progressive punk rock post. I do think that the current Fucked Up album is overrated, but I also think that the importance of things being overrated is, well, overrated. So my aim is not to denigrate that album, but to put it into some sort of perspective.

'Badge of Pride' is the song that got me into punk and hardcore, via Punk-O-Rama #5 (2000). That album, Straight Ahead (1999), still stands up for me today, as does its predecessor, Full Circle (1997). In that respects, it's thus the first and the last straightforward - however melodic or 'poppy' it might otherwise be considered - hardcore song in my listening history.

At the time, "Hardcore 'til the day I die" seemed to me the most impossible ambition, philosophically speaking, but also the most sincere musical statement that I had ever heard. Some of the lyrics became gradually more problematic as I grew older - for example, how do you square "Say what you wanna say I'm not listening anyway" with a liberal, progressive and democratic political outlook? It's not impossible - part of the sincerity of hardcore/punk is the expression of attitudes in conflict with, as well as in support of, idealism - but it is difficult, and I think it's that tension, above and beyond purely sonic issues, that drives the typical listener, from across generations, along the line from hardcore to post-hardcore.

Beginning with this post and this post, I attempted to address a fellow blogger's contention - urbanology - that Refused's 1998 album The Shape of Punk Come marked the last really great hardcore/punk record. I came up with a personal list of, broadly, post-hardcore and screamo albums from the last decade, or part of it. For me at least, those six records (from Hot Water Music, American Steel, Mclusky, Envy, La Quiete and Sinaloa/Ampere) covers the main movements in 'new sounds' that have kept punk and hardcore fresh. Even this year, which hasn't exactly been spectacular for punk - with the exception of the one album featured above - has provided new variations on the post-hardcore and screamo fronts from Have A Nice Life, Loma Prieta and ...Who Calls So Loud; as well as my personal favourite punk album of the year from Shooting at Unarmed Men.

Mostly for the reasons outlined above, there is an almost complete bias amongst those choices away from straight-up hardcore. Upon posting the list, I was encouraged to go listen to Modern Life is War's outstanding 2005 album Witness - which is of superb quality, but still not quite my thing. And more recently, urbanology returns - to 1998 - with the twin brother to Refused's The Shape of Punk Come, Abhinanda's Rumble. This record, also from Umea, Sweden, represents another side of the same end-of-the-century movement:

"In retrospect this period with its releases, its shows and the lyrics, the whole scene seems like the climax of the new school hardcore in Europe; soon after that the music changed and hardcore-music got more into metal and tough guy shit, while the scene that held up the ideals of punk and hardcore (sometimes in a very dogmatic way) branched off the limited possibilities of the music. The last records from Abhinanda and Refused are a good symbol of it. Both bands told in many interviews, that after their releases from 1996 they fell into a black hole and soon started to search for a new way, in music and expression in general. Refused undoubtedly went to the highest step with “the shape of punk to come“, the epitaph and throne of that sound in one. A few weeks after the release, and I hope I remember it the right way, also after Refused split up, Abhinanda released Rumble. A superb record, still with a hardcore basis, but with typical Swedish garage rock’n’roll influences and thirst for experimentation. The songs are rocking like hell, not as arty as Refused, more directly, but not losing the hardcore spirit, the rage, the desperation and the hope."

Rumble is very good, undoubtedly, and an interesting artefact from an overlooked scene, but it also sounds rather dated. A decade old, and it sounds quintessentially like an album from late 90s punk and hardcore. Now we've moved on, far beyond the Epitaph sound and its apogee with The Shape of Punk to Come. Post-hardcore and epic screamo - each one and two decades old already, at least - define the alternative edge of contemporary punk. While I'm partial to some more traditional hardcore, I don't mourn its absence, in stylistic rather than innately spiritual forms, from 2008.

Which brings me directly to Fucked Up, The Chemistry of Common Life. I'll begin by saying that it is a good record, even a very good record - but only potentially, or a slight possibility of being, a great record. In terms of hipster criticism, it makes an impressive #2 in the AV Club list, and a slightly more realistic #17 in the Pitchfork Top 50. Interestingly, in the latter #16 is the Vivian Girls s/t, and #15 the Crystal Castles s/t; both albums arguably more punk, subversive, and creative whilst being - respectively - catchily pop and vapidly electro.

The problem - for me - with The Chemistry of Common Life is that it's being held up as the absolute height of art-punk experimentation, as the apotheosis of post-hardcore. Yet when I hear it, it's a quasi-thrashy hardcore record with a (really) nice guitar sound and songs that extend past five minutes. Those songs are good - they have intelligent lyrics, great hooks, and generally a very agreeable mid-tempo pacing. The growling vocals absolutely don't bother me at all, as anyone who normally listens to hardcore is already familiar with that particular aesthetic.

Essentially, Fucked Up is a surprisingly normal hardcore record, admittedly with a lot of bells and whistles, and an arty gloss that makes it attractive (and this is a really good thing) to people who wouldn't normally listen to hardcore/punk. At base, there isn't then that much difference between the three-and-a-half minute long song from Pennywise above, and the six-and-a-half minute one from Fucked Up - apart from a misperception of the genre of hardcore, or the development of post-hardcore.

When looking for the development of punk rock since Refused - or as Pitchfork takes it back to, Husker Du's New Day Rising - it's to the side genres that the true aficianado turns: the sound of Revolution Summer and all the tunes that this blog originally focused on; this century, the noise-rock of Mclusky or the epic screamo of Envy; in 2008, the post-punk of Shooting at Unarmed Men or the latest developments in post-rock and screamo; or, slightly more commercially, Vivian Girls and Crystal Castles (perversely, I'll stick with them rather than the somewhat dull No Age). Making a melodic hardcore album not only just doesn't cut it for the most progressive record this decade, but also reflects the basic, straightforward hardcore sound - still valid, and still enjoyable - that all the really exciting albums moved away from.

- a guy called Clint got in touch about his sorta-melodic-hardcore band from Toronto that isn't Fucked Up, but who have a very nice EP/album available for download. It's called Outsourced from the New Enemy, and you can get it at their website here. And in case you're wondering, I don't usually do this sort of promo stuff, but in this case I just really like their sound.

Friday Video: Shooting at Unarmed Men on Radio Dingbat

2008-12-19T14:12:00.003Z

Despite them producing my album of the year, I don't really know all that much about Shooting at Unarmed Men. So this interview from a podcast series site in Australia (where the group is based) is interesting to me at least. The live segments are pretty exciting too:

114: Shooting at Unarmed Men
The angry, spiteful, but undeniably comic music of Jon Chapple’s Shooting At Unarmed Men project is the feature of this weeks episode. Jon discusses the recording of his latest album Triptych, his approach to song writing, the bands numerous line-up changes, and his thoughts on life as a musician post-Mclusky. This interview and performance were filmed at the bands August 11 2007 performance at the Rosemount Hotel.
(RadioDingbat.com)

And that other band that Jon Chapple was in? Here's a little taster of their live performance:

('friends stoning friends', 2001)

Lydia Lunch/Suicide - Frankie Teardrop 10"

2008-12-15T20:43:00.011Z

Lydia Lunch - 'Frankie Teardrop' (originally from Suicide - Suicide, 1977)

This is the latest release from the Alan Vega 70th Birthday Limited Edition EP Series from BLAST First (petite), the same as Bruce Springsteen's cover of 'Dream Baby Dream'. This one won't get as much attention - that post of mine got picked up by Metafilter - but if anything, Lydia Lunch, from the original No-Wave movement, is best placed to cover probably Suicide's most aggressive song:

"Lydia Lunch.
Known to Rev & Vega as the Baby Faced Killer who they so kindly chaperoned through that lost downtown night world crucible from where both their futuristic, and highly influential, black arts would be born.
Artistic Kings & Queens from the dumpster side of town.

Lydia gets all wet and dirty with thought of what young Frankie Teardrop might do to her, over a twisted frug of an electronic beat-nicked soundscape by David Knight."
(BLAST First (petite))

Yeah, if you read that last part - best not play this in the streets, it might frighten the horses. The transition from male to female vocals - equally unconventional in the original and cover, and both intensely carnal in their own ways - and the more 21st-century sounding backing track makes this a really good updated version of 'Frankie Teardrop'.

Of course, the original is pretty untouchable, and the 'Frankie Teardrop, the Detective vs. The Space Alien' extended demo version which, while interesting enough in itself, is still a far ~~cry~~ echoey scream from the finished version we all know and fear:

"...We're all Frankies

We're all lying in hell"

The cover image is very real: an X-ray from a knife attack in November 2007 on a 16-year old boy in London (he survived) that was released to the press by the Metropolitan Police.

(Click to expand images)

10" vinyl available from Cargo Records

Downloads from BLAST First (petite) on eMusic - this particular release isn't up yet, but the Springsteen and Horrors ('Shadazz') are

Friday Sound and Video - 'Walking in the Air'; late winter schedule

2008-12-12T21:44:00.007Z

If anybody reading this is an Anglophile, you should love this. If you're British or even Irish, you should already know it (and made up your opinion on it). It is (or at least the first four minutes of it are) the song 'Walking in the Air' from the animated children's film The Snowman:

"'Walking in the Air' is a song written by Howard Blake for the 1982 animated film of Raymond Briggs' 1976 children's book The Snowman. In the film the song was performed by St. Paul's Cathedral choirboy Peter Auty. For the subsequent single release, which reached number five in the UK pop charts, the vocals were sung by Welsh chorister Aled Jones, who became a popular celebrity on the strength of his performance...
The song forms the centrepiece of The Snowman, which has become a seasonal perennial on British television. The story relates the fleeting adventures of a young boy, and a snowman who has come to life. In the second part of the story, the boy and the snowman fly to the North Pole. "Walking in the Air" is the theme for the journey. They attend a party of snowmen, at which the boy is the only human. They meet Father Christmas and his reindeer, and the boy is given a scarf with a snowman pattern."
(Wikipedia)

The story was enchanting for me as a child, though a temperate climate and global warming have meant I've hardly ever experienced a 'White Christmas' (I've experienced snow, of course, just usually in January or February and often only up in the hills). 'Walking in the Air', with all its fantastical beauty and choral grace, is a little bit like 'Silent Night' or other religious Christmas songs, although The Snowman is completely secular: simply a reflection of the domestic, rustic even, non-commercial experience of Christmas,which has itself become part of seasonal popular culture in Britain and beyond.

The song has strong pre-Christmas connotation as well, though, because in Ireland it has been used for years as part of An Post advert for Christmas stamps, which obviously starts showing early in December. Unfortunately that clip (which uses an excerpt of the film) isn't on YouTube, but you can watch the full film, in better quality than the video above, introduced by David Bowie, that king of pop and oddly quaint British culture (see the film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (aka 'Senjou no Merii Kurisumasu', aka Furyo). The 'Walking in the Air' song itself is spread between further sections 2 and 3.

In continuance of the spirit of giving, here's a sort-of Christmas song from that dude who played electric viola in the Velvet Underground:

John Cale - 'A Child's Christmas in Wales' from Paris 1919 (1973)

______________________________________________

However, since it is a bit early for all this, be assured that I should have something far more punk rock (and vinyl) to post closer to Christmas. In the meantime, the schedule should also include these following posts:

- Pennywise vs. Fucked Up: Punk Rock 1998-2008 (a follow-up to The Shape of Punk To Come: 2001-2007)

- Lydia Lunch - 'Frankie Teardrop' 10" (same series as the Springsteen/Suicide record I posted back in October)

- Regulator Watts - The Aesthetic of No-Drag and The Mercury CD (continuing, and indeed concluding the major part of, the Alex Dunham guitar-melting part of the Hoover Genealogy Project, after handing over the Fred Erskine/June of 44 side to Time Isn't On My Side)

- Slint - 'Glenn'/'Rhoda' 10" and Mogwai - 'Batcat' 12" (this one's been dragging on for a while, and The Hawk is Howling doesn't seem to be ranking very highly in year-end lists thus far; but - obviously the important thing - I do have some nice photographs of these records. Plus 'Batcat' is still an amazing song)

- Possibly some more end-of-year mixtapes, more genre-specific (e.g. best of punk). However, I'll try and wait for more lists to be put up by other people, so I can get the fullest inspiration, range of inputs, etc.

The (rest of the) Best of 2008 Pt. 2 - with words

2008-12-08T21:18:00.014Z

Hardcore for Nerds: The Best of 2008 Mixtape, Part 2

('Jingle Bells & Snow Drifts')

Total: 29.6 mins

(Download)

7. Cold War Kids - 'Every Valley Is Not A Lake' - 3:34

8. The Gaslight Anthem - 'The Patient Ferris Wheel' - 3:34

9. Chequerboard - 'Toy Winds' - 3:53

10. So Cow - 'Shackleton' - 3:54

11. Foals - 'Olympic Airways' - 4:19

12. Envy - 'Conclusion of Existence' - 5:08

13. Fight Like Apes - 'Snore Bore Whore' - 5:20

Welcome to the doppelganger of Zeitgeist II - part two, the lower half of Hardcore for Nerd's top dozen (plus one) albums of 2008. These are the - at least -'very good' records; yet, although perhaps not reaching the excellence of the top six, they have many of their own moments of the sublime.

I've created a different coloured cassette in part because says-it doesn't have a 'side 2', but also because there's a sort of yin-yang division between the two mixes. Pt. 1 was the (comparatively) hard-rocking, propulsive and at times dissonantly erupting side; Pt. 2 is groovier and more expansive, though, at times, equally sonically dissolute - and on this basis, it has the festive subtitle 'Jingle Bells and Snow Drifts'.

Pt. 1 was almost exclusively guitar rock; Pt. 2 (excepting, mostly, the jazzy rhythms of Cold War Kids or the Springsteen-esque pop of The Gaslight Anthem) shades towards electronic sounds. Given those admittedly not completely sharp contrasts, there is also another important element of the yin-yang separation: the containment within each part of its opposite - the little oppositely-coloured dots in the tradtional ying-yang symbol. So, while on the one hand the first mix had the ambient sounds bleeding into Grails 'Natural Man', on the other this mix features the explosive, dissonant guitar freakout of So Cow's 'Shackleton'.

1. Cold War Kids, 'Every Valley Is Not a Lake' from Loyalty to Loyalty

(Category: Alt-Americana (Jazz-Blues subcategory) Album of the Year - Runners Up, The Black Keys - Attack and Release)

"every sermon is not the gospel, babe,
let me put it another way, every valley is not a lake"

From Robbers and Cowards to Loyalty to Loyalty there is a huge improvement, but also a strong strain of familiarity. Cold War Kids have made a better album with better songs all round, but their sound - piano-laden hooks, trilling guitar, bluesy rhythms and disjointed construction - is still the same. Particularly, if you wanted singer Nathan Willett to dial down his wassailing, you'll be disappointed. For me, it's an essential part of the band: that edge of sonic anarchy and extra touch of expressiveness. In part, he's a guy channelling female blues singers, or channelling Jeff Buckley channelling female blues singers (and no, he's nowhere near as melodious... but it works better this, the dissonnant, way). 'Every Valley Is Not a Lake' isn't the strongest example of that factor, but insofar as it does display the vocal experimentations of Loyalty to Loyalty, it blends well with the expressionist lyrics and jangly blues-pop to make a very fine song.

2. The Gaslight Anthem, 'The Patient Ferris Wheel' from The '59 Sound

(Category: Alt-Americana (Springsteen subcategory) Record of the Year - Runners Up, Bruce Springsteen - 'Dream Baby Dream', The Constantines - Kensington Heights)

Noel Murray, Popless - 30 favorite songs of 2008:

"It took me a spin or two to get used to the pop-punk polish and relentlessly anthemic nature of The '59 Sound, but I kept returning because the songs are so catchy—like Bruce Springsteen's Born In The U.S.A. as recorded by The Bouncing Souls"

I've been following Noel Murray's 'Popless' column over at the AV Club throughout 2008, and at times intrigued, inspired, baffled and amused by his alphabetical trawl through modern popular music. Plus, of course, finding wonderfully apt descriptions of artists I myself know quite well - of which this is one. The song he chose, incidentally, was 'Miles Davis and the Cool' which I used for the Year End November selection. In the end of the column, furthermore, it seems that other albums that Noel Murray was listening to this year included Human Bell and Future of the Left. A man of taste.

'The Patient Ferris Wheel' perhaps shows up the Bouncing Souls, Jerseyite punk-pop influence even more. If the Gaslight Anthem have their limitations, then the only really pertinent one is that The '59 Sound is a surrogate for the successor to 2006's The Gold Record by the Bouncing Souls, or Anchors Aweigh (more refined in its Springsteen-ism) or even (anthemic pop-punk masterpiece) How I Spent My Summer Vacation. For the moment, however, there's

"standing in the Jersey rain
thinking about what an old man said
maybe I should call me an ambulance
I've never felt so strange
standing in the pounding rain..."

3. Chequerboard, 'Toy Winds' from Penny Black

(Category: Electronic Album of the Year - Runners Up, Rarely Seen Above Ground - Organic Sampler, Matmos - Supreme Balloon)

It's been a pleasure to come back to this album again after marking it up for consideration in April. Even better, it seems to be cropping up quite frequently in comment submissions for Nialler9's Irish Albums and Songs Poll 2008. The winner two years ago was Si Schroeder's Coping Mechanisms, which I've discussed on this blog before, and of which there are certain echoes in Penny Black. 'Toy Winds' is the concluding track, which showcases perfectly the two elements of Chequerboard's sound: classical guitar lilts and glitchy electronic beats. Atmospheric music made extraordinarily visual (the creator, John Lambert, is a professional graphic artist as well) with the stunning artwork, and the conflictingly nostalgic sense of wistful Victoriana put to dubstep, in a loose sense, and meticulously crafted electronic sounds in general.

4. So Cow, 'Shackleton' from I'm Siding With My Captors

(Category: Irish Release of the Year Pt. 2 - Runners Up, Bats - Cruel Sea Scientist, Halves - Haunt Me When I'm Drowsy, Heathers - Here, Not There)

It's a bit disappointing, now, to hear So Cow backed with a drum machine - after seeing the current rhythm section in action, live - but it works, or is at least excused, here in I'm Siding With My Captors' mini-epic love song 'Shackleton' and its journey from minimum to max. It has its own "personification, exposition and tragic irony" all within its opening three, or even two, minutes: as the songwriter-within-a-song drafts his masterpiece, only to strip it all back down again, to the beat of a tinny drum machine and what sounds like a miniature organ; and haaving "paid the cellist for his time", all that's left is a heartful plea "one day I'll write the song that you require, and until then lalala [guitar noise]". Repeat, and close. Beautiful.

5. Foals, 'Olympic Airways' from Antidotes

(Category: Indie Album of the Year pt. 2 - Runners Up, Crystal Castles who were on Skins too)

A further stretch of finely crafted indie electronica, Foals 'Olympic Airways' is among at least a handful of other brilliantly constructed songs from Antidotes, the album that immediately separated Foals from being just another angular post-punk band, that happened to be on Skins playing one of their (now) duller tracks, 'Hummer', and showed them to be something altogether more interesting. After all, Radiohead's 'Nude' was used as almost the entire basis for the second season trailer of Skins - which was, televisually, also very interesting - but no-one goes around calling them 'Skinscore'. The breathy tension, the ably created mood of experimentation, and the obvious catchiness, make this track out to be what Q and not U's Power could have been had it taken another, equally valid direction. There's a certain post-rockiness to the sparse guitar lines, and the slightly over-predictable crescendo, but overall they are superficial elements to the underlying stylistic substance - nebulous, but affecting -of the track.

6. Envy, 'Conclusion of Existence' from Envy/Jesu (Split EP)

(Category: Electronic Release of the Year Pt. 2)

Like Noel Murray's brief summation of The Gaslight Anthem above, this rather lengthier discussion of the Envy/Jesu split on sputnikmusic reflects a lot of my own thoughts on this record (I only have it in mp3 form at the moment, because it has only been released in Japan for most of the year, but I have the white vinyl on order). I'm far more of an Envy fan than a Jesu, but I like some of the work from the latter (more so than from Envy's other split partners this year, Thursday) and combination makes even more sense when one considers the direction Envy has been heading ever since A Dead Sinking Story. The most Jesu-like, electronic track, 'Conclusion of Existence' is barely screamo in any sense, but it's still very strongly Envy. Glitchy electronic beats, again, take up half the song before exploding (at 2:44) into unexpected strings and, in general, the sort of chaotic beauty, though now somewhat more restrained and subtler, that made Envy so surprising in the first place.

7. Fight Like Apes, 'Snore Bore Whore' from Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion

(Category: Irish Album of the Year Mostly Re-recorded So It Doesn't Count (As Much) But Still Really, Really Good)

And finally, the album I couldn't leave out of the mixtape, and which really is in its on way one of the best of the year - the Fight Like Apes full-length debut, and the album closer 'Snore Bore Whore' (originally, of course, the closer to the 'Do You Karate?'/David Carradine Is a Bounty Hunter Whose Robotic Arm Hates Your Crotch EP). One half hushed melody synth ditty, one half total wall-of-sound shoegaze synth epic; one complete miracle of a song. Do, if you're a convert, watch the ecclesiastical performance from Other Voices (recorded partly in St James' church, Dingle, Co. Kerry; it's also the original composition - as it does, technically, sound better on the album) below:

The (very) Best of 2008 Pt. 1

2008-12-06T17:10:00.009Z

Hardcore For Nerds: The Best of 2008 Mixtape, Part 1

Total: 29.9 mins

(Download)

1. Shooting at Unarmed Men - '------------' ('Peristalsis') - 3:38

2. Ham Sandwich - 'click... click... BOOM!!!' - 3:21

3. ...Who Calls So Loud - 'What I Learned in the C.O.U.M.' - 9:38

4. Vampire Weekend - 'The Kids Don't Stand a Chance' - 4:03

5. Grails - 'The Natural Man' - 4:41

6. Human Bell - 'Ephaphatha (Be Opened)' - 4:40

Hello and welcome to the successor to Hardcore for Nerd's first end of year mix, Zeitgeist: The Mixtape (2007). These are the top six records from the provisional best of 2008 list in the last post. Each one is assigned to a category, some of which categories repeat themselves here or in the other half of the top 12, and some of which are slightly frivolous.

'Runners Up' for each category are included to give some depth to the list, and because it is rather early and I'm working from a provisional end cut, I've included a few extra releases I just discovered from Zen and the Art of Face Punching's new 'Stuff To Get Into' which lays out several excellent punk/hardcore records that had passed me by.

I've discussed all of these records at length in previous posts, so rather than repeating myself as to the descriptions, explanations, exhortations and justifications relating to the albums as a whole I will stick to the particular track at hand. (None of which, by the way, have been repeated from previous mixes) This carefully selected mix, which comes in at just under thirty minutes in length and thus one half of a cassette tape, has - if I do say so myself - a very good flow and sense of coherence, despite its variety of sounds and styles. So do enjoy the second part of the Zeitgeist series, from Hardcore for Nerds...

1. Shooting at Unarmed Men, 'Peristalsis' from Triptych.

(Category: Album of the Year Pt. 1; Contemporary Punk Rock Album of the Year - Runners Up, Fucked Up - Chemistry of Common Life, Failures - s/t, and (if you're in the US) Future of the Left - Curses)

"Your Dear John letter/had grammatical errors/
and failed to mention that you're a cunt
Your Dear John letter/had grammatical errors/
and your spelling was atrocious"

And so begins the third and final disc of Triptych. A heavy, raging song lyrically resonant of Mclusky ('Gareth Brown Says' from Mclusky Do Dallas - "all your friends are cunts/your mother is a ball point pen thief" - though the swearing is mostly a cultural British thing, and not evidence [necessarily] that all Welshmen are misogynists) but still several steps removed musically. As with the rest of the album, it's avant-garde, ironic hardcore; a faster, punker version of Young Widows. And the closing couplet to the song? "It's called peristalsis/ ...fuck off!"

2. Ham Sandwich, 'click... click... BOOM!!!' from Carry the Meek.

(Category: Album of the Year Pt. 2; Irish Album of the Year Pt. 1 - Runners Up, Fight Like Apes - Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion, Jape - Ritual)

It's difficult to follow up the preceding fury without it being something less harsh, but here's the track with the hardest edge from Carry the Meek, anyway. The review in the end-of-year roundup of State wrote of the album, which came in at 24 of 50, that it arrived as fully-formed singles collection. All the songs are stand-out tracks, which is a prime reason for why I think this album is so good. 'click... click.. BOOM!!!' combines in stereo sound deep bass, crushing distortion and a lighter melody, female and male vocals, into a great dynamic pop song. Three justified guitars and great songwriting make for punk-pop, pop-rock, whatever, with real weight.

3. ...Who Calls So Loud, 'What I Learned in C.O.U.M.' from ...Who Calls So Loud.

(Category: 'Real' Screamo Record of the Year - Runners Up, Sinaloa - Oceans and Islands, Loma Prieta - Last City, Suis La Lune - Heir, La Quiete - s/t 7")

A nine-and-a-half minute long screamo song? Yep, that's what defines one of the greatest releases of the year. The true sound of screamo - blurred with some very pedantic and unnecessary descriptions, but having very recognisable and salient features - has been around, and evolving at a reasonable pace, for at least a decade at this stage. Building on the epic mode of preceding band Funeral Diner, ...Who Calls So Loud's debut album is a roller-coaster ride of barely-restrained emotion and technical proficiency, of which 'What I Learned in the C.O.U.M.' is the effective apex, as well as possibly the greatest excesss. As noted just above, there are numerous good screamo releases this year, from across the US and Europe, but this is still my definite favourite. Previously I've oscillated between the US vein of hardcore and 'Euro screamo', searching for the right balance between emotion, melody, speed and technical skill. This year, I think I've found it.

4. Vampire Weekend, 'The Kids Don't Stand a Chance' from Vampire Weekend.

(Category: Indie Album of the Year Pt. 1 - Runners Up, whatever else the cool kids are listening to these days - s/t)

And how to segue between screamo and Vampire Weekend? It's a difficult task, and one I've already attempted; but in this case, I chose a particularly appropriate, somewhat atypical track from everyone's favourite over-hyped indie debut. Seguing from the closing ambient streetsounds of ...Who Calls So Loud', it's the opening, solo rhythm of Vampire Weekend's last song on their album. 'The Kids Don't Stand a Chance' has a softer, looser feel to it than the other tracks, almost as if it's been produced differently from the rest of the album (it hasn't, as far as I know). Lyrically and compositionally, it is in reality just as archly indie - itself a perfectly acceptable quality - as the rest of Vampire Weekend, but to me it gives a certain warm feeling of, say, a Clash record. If you've seen singer Ezra Koenig's very competent appearance as guest vocalist for Fucked Up, you'll know there is an extra dimension to this band. But even the more obvious ones are more than remarkable enough.

5. Grails, 'The Natural Man' from Doomsdayer's Holiday.

(Category: Post-Rock/[un]Conventional Style Album of the Year - Runners Up, Mogwai - The Hawk is Howling, God Is An Astronaut - s/t, The Jimmy Cake - Spectre and Crown)

For this band I have, as in the case of the previous mix, eschewed the typically heavier, more forthright songs from the album, such as 'Reincarnation Blues' and 'Predestination Blues', despite the fact that, on the surface, they are probably closer to the album's intended 'sound' overall. And right from the start, 'Doomsdayer's Holiday' makes it clear that Grails are in take-no-prisoners post-rock mode; ramping it up exponentially from equivalent rockers like 'Silk Rd.' from 2007's Burning Off Impurities. Likewise, I saw an Irish commenter named Void describe the album as "giving post-rock a much-need Gothic metal kick up the arse" which strikes me as an excellent description for Doomsdayer's Holiday. Still, it is in the spaces between noises that I have learned to enjoy Grails - a sort of Zen-like self-abnegation, anticipating the heaviest of riffs in the most minimal of sounds, and finally creating the 'post' somewhat apart from the 'rock', while also merging them together in an extraordinary level of cultural complexity. There's no spoon, either.

6. Human Bell, 'Ephaphatha (Be Opened)' from Human Bell.

(Category: Post-Rock/Post-Hardcore Variation Album of the Year - Runners Up, Zomes - s/t, Have A Nice Life - Deathconsciousness, Young Widows - Old Wounds)

With this album I've taken the opposite approach to Grails, and selected the shortest, brashest track from Human Bell's exquisitely crafted LP of minimalist, instrumental post-rock, a coming together of Andy Heumann (Arboretuem) and Nathan Bell (Lungfish). 'Hanging from the Rafters', from the original mix in April, is probably more representative of the full record. Here, the rhythmic composition of guitars, which defines the whole album, is here swathed in simultaneously ethereal and abrasive trumpet sounds. For fans of the Boom or Abilene - you'll like this.

provisional best of 2008 + conceptual framework

2008-12-05T13:02:00.004Z

Soon after I finished the last post, I started trying to work out a top 10 overall list... which extended itself somewhat into becoming a top 12. And in fact, I'm quite happy with it. I'm saying 'provisional' mostly because I haven't worked out a mix for it yet, or written the full selection up (again), and not because I really expect any change to it - just allowing for some dramatic, unexpected change in the interim. Here it is, with further explanation and rationale below:

1. Shooting at Unarmed Men - Triptych

2. Ham Sandwich - Carry the Meek

3. ...Who Calls So Loud - ...Who Calls So Loud (2x10")

4. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

5. Grails - Doomsdayer's Holiday

6. Human Bell - Human Bell

7. Cold War Kids - Loyalty to Loyalty

8. The Gaslight Anthem - The '59 Sound

9. Chequerboard - Penny Black

10. So Cow - I'm Siding With My Captors

11. Foals - Antidotes

12. Envy/Jesu - Split EP

_________________________________________________

I was motivated into putting up this list now by this rather interesting post on Pretty Goes with Pretty about the nature of year-end lists. It's framed around the notion of trust, as in, what can we take from either professional or amateur blogger lists as to the quality of their year-end selections? For my part, I don't think I really expect anyone to trust me - but to consider my choices on merit and with a bit of imagination. Obviously, it's a personal best-of list, and it's not trying to make any objective statement about the the very best albums released anywhere. Everybody's list, in its exact formation, and ideally in its strongest conclusions, is and should be unique, even idiosyncratic. At the same time, for it to have any usefulness, a list should connect in some ways to other people's experience of music this year; it should be representative, as it were, of the cultural 'zeitgeist'.

With that in mind, and quite separate from the individual justifications for albums, which will follow later in the month with a full mix and artwork, this is an attempt to create some clarity about this list. To start with, I broke it down by category, so each place on the list is assigned to a particular genre or origin, with most categories appearing twice (I'll list the exact categories in the full post). Beyond that, the overall ordering of the list is fairly loose, a general 'feel' of what is the very best and what comes closely behind. In fact, completely disregard the ordering of the bottom six - it's irrelevant in comparison with the top of the list.

If that's the fairest way to do a list, instead of tying oneself up with strict ranking and comparing vastly different albums, the question remains of where exactly the judgement of quality lies. As the PGwP posts says: "It seems to be assumed by all readers that somewhere on any given top ten list, a gap must exist between the truly outstanding and the merely good. The question is, where is that gap? No one’s list includes that important detail, hence no one’s list is trustworthy. Add to that one's personal knowledge of how few of 07 picks still get regular play around the house. Surely the same will happen with these 08 releases." In answer to the first part, the top six albums are what counts for 'great' in my book for 2008, and the lower half dozen are merely 'very good' - by comparison. For the second part, I've included at the bottom of the post last year's best-of list (taken from a much smaller pool of listened-to albums, by the way) for comparison. I think all the picks stand up, and even for those albums which I may not have listened to that often since, I still remember why I chose them in the first place.

The second issue I'm able to fairly conclusively address is that of pool or sample size, or that "we have no reference point: okay, you’ve got a top ten—how many albums did you actually hear? How can I possibly know how discerning you’re being? Shit, you’ve got a top fifty—are you just ranking every album you bought? How can I possibly know how discerning you're being?". In the previous post, there's a longlist of about thirty/thirty-five albums, which is the sum of albums that I've seriously considered this year. Nearly all of them have been discussed in previous 'Best of 2008' posts; and to trim them down to a category-based top 12 is largely to create a lot of fully deserving 'runners-up' (e.g. Mogwai, Sinaloa, Zomes, Bats, Fight Like Apes - that last largely because half the tunes appeared twice in the 2007 list). Below I've shown which picks came from which stage of the year.

- distribution of list through previous 'Best of 2008' posts:

#s 1, 2, 6, 9 and 11 from Year End April; #s 3, 4 and 10 from Year End August (pts. 1 and 3); # 5, 7, 8 from Year End November; # 12 sort of fell through the cracks, though I did post on it here and here.

- equivalent list for 2007:

1. Dinosaur Jr. - Beyond

2. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible

3. Dan Deacon - Spiderman of the Rings

4. The For Carnation - Promised Works (reissue/collection)

5. Fight Like Apes - David Carradine is a Bounty Hunter Whose Robotic Arm Hates Your Crotch ('Do You Karate?' EP)

6. Fight Like Apes - How Am I Supposed to Kill You When You Have All the Guns? ('Jake Summers' EP)

7. Envy - Abyssal

8*. Christian Scott - Anthem ('21st century bebop')

9*. Battles - Mirrored

10*. Japancakes - Loveless (MBV cover/tribute album)

* addendum