Three Penny Opera - 2GTEG25H2G4503344

Three Penny Opera, named after a Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill musical, were the band which formed directly after the demise of the Canadian hardcore/emo group Shotmaker. Shotmaker, whose split with Maximillian Colby I have posted here (and referenced several times already), are one of the loudest and most uncompromising of all the 90's emo bands. Their signature sound - of playing "rocked-out emo like they were pissed as hell and wanted desperately to play fast but somehow couldn't", as Fourfa puts it - is very much continued in Three Penny Opera, with perhaps some better songwriting skills. Four songs, ten minutes, and one rather odd title.

Kicking off with a low hiss and a barrage of drumming, ‘New Kids Gang’ is nothing if not a raging, full-on electrical storm. While not quite as terrifyingly heavy as some of Shotmaker’s stuff, Three Penny Opera aren’t far off. In other words, they don’t mess with the formula much. ‘1,000 Miles’ adds in a few more characteristic breakdowns while the singer yells “It’s funny things just change” ("I remember smiling, laughing… and I remember, screaming"). ‘Separate Directions’ takes similar steps, bringing the guitar line down to throbbing, ponderous depths in a way which kind of remind me of the Swing Kids’ '43 Seconds’. Finally, ‘Observation’ takes off into frantic, high-pitched guitar riffs which puncture the wall of noise, periodically, like the calls of Sirens.

Shotmaker/Three Penny Opera are emo in the way that is a little bit different from, and a little bit similar to, a lot of the usual bands. Radin’s description still stands for Three Penny Opera – whether they are more or less pissed-off in their new Brechtian guise is for you, the audience, to decide. It’s the infuriating, explosive tension between blistering speed and achingly slow rhythm which defines these two bands. It is in that conflict that their art emerges; in the moment of poise between loud and fast, there’s a certain immanent beauty to be found. It’s not quite Zen Enlightenment, that propelling balance, but rather an instantaneous Quality of hardcore. Spiritual, no; mystical, perhaps; intangible, probably; musical, definitely.

The whole sonic aesthetic is so brutalised, battered and twisted in all of these songs that they clearly belong in the hardcore emo end of things, with bands like Mohinder, Swing Kids and, indeed, Max Colby. But Shotmaker, and even more so in the case of Three Penny Opera, are neither so fast nor so sparse as such bands. Shotmaker’s wall of noise was always something else; on this Three Penny Opera recording it seems the guitars are so loud and high that they become continuously lost in static, formless and unrecognizable. Maybe this band desperately wanted to play shoegaze, yet could never leave the hardcore sound: maybe they were just a band lost in a punk haze.

Three Penny Opera - 2GTEG25H2G4503344

Rancid - Let's Go

What do Rancid albums and Star Trek films have in common?

They both alternate in quality, with all the odd-numbered ones being a little off. Rancid s/t, mostly, is the band just finding their sound, Rancid V, is, well, Rancid trying to be the hardcore band they’re patently not, and …And Out Come The Wolves, while generally considered their best, personally seems to me to be the poor relation of its follow-up. Whereas Let’s Go, Life Won’t Wait and Indestructible are all excellent albums in their own different ways. Disagree with me, by all means, but I’ll have to call you a Trekkie for it.

Extending and bending the analogy a little further, let’s discuss the Rancid ‘look’.

Studded leather, obtrusively altered facial and cranial appearances, big boots and heavy clothing – all in the circumstances of belligerent, heavily masculine and tribalistic attitudes of bravado. Sound like Klingons to you? Have a look:

'Nihilism'

You’ll notice the squeal of guitar feedback at the start of the song (the first on the record) just to let you know this isn’t a Green Day album. From there on in, it’s a reassuring blast of traditional punk anarchy…

"Nihilistic feelings moving/If you try really hard you’ll see right through them/Nihilism..."

To be serious, this is a really good album. It is 23 very catchy songs, noisy, destructive and full of hooks – all propelled by the very notable bass lines of Matt Freeman. Loud and energetic, with more than a veneer of pop-punk – Billie Joe Armstrong was close to becoming Rancid’s second guitarist, and has writing credits on one of the album’s best songs, ‘Radio’. It’s also quite angry, with a strong element of social realism in the lyrics, with songs like ‘St. Mary’ and ‘Harry Bridges’, or ‘Dope Sick Girl’ and ‘Side Kick’.

Let’s Go can be favourably compared to, say, the first Clash album, but it’s also a musical statement of its own time, blending East Bay punk-pop with the sounds of third-wave ska, fourth-generation punk rock and even 80’s hardcore – this is a Californian album, after all – and all with the ‘pop sensibility’ which made them stars. Maybe it can even be compared to the Ramones – after all, it is called ‘Let’s Go’, echoing (perhaps with a more political overtone) the cry to exuberance of that particular song. Anyway, Rancid is Rancid, love ‘em or like ‘em.

So here’s another of the best songs on the album ‘Salvation’, a slightly slower-tempo Armstrong vehicle (Lars is mostly in the chorus) about down-and-outs, urban poverty, and that great punk stalwart, lyrics with the word ‘baby’ in them:

'Salvation'

"Come on baby won’t you show me what you got/I want your salvation"

(It might be obvious, but I don’t actually know anything about either street punk or Star Trek. Just so you know.)

Rancid – Let’s Go

Bouncing Souls vs. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

A brief digression from music and literature into art; I wrote up Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance over at Steady Diet of Books, but I thought that it needed something a little extra.

Zen is axiomatic in rejecting the value of writing, and of verbal communication in general, and it lets art fill the gap to a certain extent (communication of feelings through ink and watercolour painting, for example, although haikus perform the same function). In Pirsig's terms, art is the exhibition of dynamic Quality - or what we might call aesthetics.

The Bouncing Soul's Anchors Aweigh is probably their most aesthetic album yet. I called it earlier a punk-pop record which "veered towards comparative 'seriousness', with broad Springsteenesque brushstrokes, and was overall a poignant album with, at times, an unusually overt political message". I can post it up if it's requested, but I already have its immediate predecessor up. What it's got to do with ZMM is, honestly, not much, but it has got these excellent pictures of a motorcycle road trip. More transcontinental transcendence, as it were. And somebody's got to keep the counterculture going these days, too...

Don't forget that you are born free/It's better to die on your feet than live on your knees

('Born Free')

Harvest moon in a desert sky/making good time as we pass it by/where ever this road takes us/it was meant to be

('Highway Kings')

Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska

I saw her standing on her front lawn just twirlin her baton/ Me and her went for a ride sir and ten innocent people died...

I've seen this album described, half-jokingly, as Springsteen's emo record. If you've already heard Nebraska, you might just understand that. Emo like Moss Icon at their most repetitively circular and dirge-like, perhaps, or Hoover in one of their most pyschologically anguished ultra-quiet build-ups. You see, Bruce brings a lot of emotion to this recording, but it's not the heart-on-sleeve, slightly melancholy exuberance of Born to Run - instead, it's a catalogue of despair and brooding, incipient sadness. Often, it's not merely 'eerily' quiet, it's goddamn scarily quiet.

Mister state trooper, please don't stop me...

In fact, there's a different niche of punk that this album takes its influence: Suicide. Springsteen was a big fan of the no-wave New York minimalist duo, and presumably still is, since they continue to put out some very good stuff. Not only is their a sonic affinity audible in the sparse, empty arrangement of the album as whole, but one song - 'State Trooper' - is a direct homage to classic '77 Suicide. The same hollowed-out motorycle-engine beats, the same tense vocal delivery. It's not quite as terrifying as 'Frankie Teardrop', but it comes close.

I got debts that no honest man can pay...

If Kerosene 454 is a "temple" to the DC guitar sound, Nebraska is equally - if inversely - monumental to the Springsteen sound. Listen to 'Atlantic City' and it follows the familiar curve, except the song stays mostly subdued and hollowly, painfully empty. Springsteen always was a Dylanite, and the harmonica is prominent here, but it sounds like a voice from another room. The folksy singing and the lulling, melodic guitar licks are there too, but hovering just above silence. The voice or the harmonica swells, a haunting backing vocal intrudes, the guitar strumming gains some insistence, but still 9/10ths of this recording still sounds like lonely emptiness. Nebraska is a cold, black quietness largely uninterrupted by anything other than deeply human pain.

Well now, everything dies, baby, that's a fact/But maybe everything that dies someday comes back...

Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska

AFI - Black Sails in the Sunset

'Tis the season to be gloomy - so I thought I'd celebrate with some black, theatrically introverted goth-punk. I was thinking I'd post this up on Hallowe'en night, but I was busy (playing badminton, if you want to know) and anyway AFI have another record to that effect (the All Hallows EP). Today is All Soul's Day, so that should be appropriately gothic.

This isn't about any particular festival, however, as much as it is about the autumnal mood altogether. The clocks are set back, and the afternoons are darker. The weather is colder and windier. It's autumn, or, as you Americans quaintly call it, 'fall'.

I have a very clear memory of listening to this album while walking home from school, through a dark field, wrapped in a coat and a pair of headphones. Another Discman(TM) moment. I've always been a middling AFI fan - I got Art of Drowning, then Sing the Sorrow, and finally this album (plus the EP mentioned above). Anything after or before never particularly interested me, while I can find something of particular interest in any of those three albums. Art of Drowning is, hands-down, a plain good punk record; Sing the Sorrow, at least when I listened to it first, was an interesting exercise in experimentation and the more expansive kind of sound. Black Sails is, however, the album I turn to most often.

For all the overwrought theatrics, gothic affectations and sing-along masochism, AFI was a damn good hardcore punk band (What they are now is not something I really want to talk about - and what they were before was not, in my opinion, very listenable!) At least when you wanted something accessible, melodic and easily available. AFI was my emo before I discovered emo - I even wrote a creative writing piece under the influence of this album:

'Autumn Sunset'

The sky. Burns.

Blood-red sun glows on the horizon, below clouds rimmed with crimson. No silver linings but the tint of fire on every one. The canvas of the sky painted in vivid shades of orange pinks stretches overhead- from deep, rich colour in the west it fades to faint wispy smudges in the east. Darkness comes closer with every minute.

A gust of wind carries past a flurry of leaves. Each one different, sanguine red mixed with saffron and brown. The last few hang frail, delicate, dying from a tree that is just a dark silhouette against a fiery backdrop.

Hold a single leaf in your hand. Dry and crinkled, like tinder, fuel for the fire of autumn. Weakened by age it was once soft and green now it is just a shade of summer. Its leafy flesh is dried and ripped, tattered and torn, just a fragile skeleton.

The dimmed sun retreats behind the skyline. The black and grey of night fills the air. Colours fade in one last display, the fire quenched as it submits to the cold of night. Long shadows now cover all the ground as the light is gone.

With each passing, the setting sun departs earlier as winter comes. Nights lengthen and the sun sets in the afternoon. No more drama of colour as the trees stand bare. Above the sky is now obscured by grey cloud, monochrome and lifeless. Autumn sunsets come to an end as we wait for the world to grow again.

It was pretty derivative; actually, it was mostly a pastiche of the lyrical stylings of Black Sails, amongst other AFI records. But it was also meant to convey the atmosphere of that dark field, and of the season as a whole. To this day, this album still slightly sounds to me like it's being played in the dark - there's a sense of space, and of organic tension. It's got a good beat, too.

AFI - Black Sails in the Sunset

PS : If I haven't convinced you of the merits of AFI, and you want something a little more authentic to rage out to in the long evenings, how about some Reach Out/Honeywell ? - "a little taste of brutality under these red November skies" - thanks to sweetbabyjaysus.