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).
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 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."
* 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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
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:
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)
(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."
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."
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.
(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.
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.
Today - November 21 - is No Music Day - which basically encourages people not to listen, make or otherwise involve themselves with music for one day of the year. I say, screw that. Not because I can't go without music, but because I can reserve the personal right to rationally and intelligently choose to listen to it ('it' being good music, of course) as and when I want.
You can read Bill Drummond's explanation for the idea here, which is essentially a rant of disillusionment with modern music. No Music Ireland gives as the first suggested reason "to reconnect with an art form through abstinence". How typical for a Catholic country - Joyce would be rocking slightly in his grave. So here's some music to rebelliously indulge in:
This is Hoover's first 7", released in 1992 as Dischord 79.5/Hoover Limited 01. Their second, 'Return', was released shortly afterwards (FLEX says '92; T-DT-B says '93) as Dischord 86.5/Hoover Limited 02, and its three songs ('Return'/'Private'/'Dries') are included in the CD version of Lurid Traversal (1993, Dischord 89). Their split with Lincoln, released on Art Monk Construction, was released in 1993.
This 7" is quality stuff as well as an insight into the early sound of the band. 'Side Car Freddie' starts off with a soft - indeed, barely audible - sort of 'twinkle-emo' a bit like Indian Summer or Current (and as this is obviously a vinyl rip, you've got that little bit of crackle in there too) but when the rhythm section kicks in, you know that it's Hoover. There's an instant groove to it, and then the way 'side car freddie' is sung, just holding on at the end.
There are both typical and atypical elements to the song, at least from the perspective of their later work. The pounding drums and climbing riff accompanying the second chorus of 'it's under pressure' don't sound particularly usual, but they work into the structure or dynamic of a Hoover song.
The b-side is an - also partially atypical - version of 'Cable'. Rhythmically, it's (mostly) the same, but it lacks Erskine's trumpet as applied on the Lurid Traversal track. It gives it a sort of stripped-back, minimalist feel by comparison, emphasising the rather direct, though artfully complex beat to the song. Even without the assistance of the trumpet, there's still that violent, anarchic but completely well-placed moment of catharsis at the end of every crescendo.
'Cable' was the first Hoover song I ever heard - as I suppose might be true of quite a few people around after the fact, since it's featured on the 20 Years of Dischord compilation. It is an excellent track, and probably one of Hoover's most emphatic songs, but I never thought of it - mainly on account of the trumpet's prominence - as being particularly representative of the rest of the album. Hence, this version is quite interesting.
When looking for the cover for 'Side Car Freddie' - I'd be grateful if anyone could provide a larger version - I found an excellent blog by someone else who likes to write about Hoover (and Obama). Here's what he says about 'Side Car Freddie':
"AT the peak of their craft, Hoover created a hardcore punk sound that was engaging and very challenging. Most interestingly, their music conveyed a feeling of dire menace, but somewhat indirectly, so that the feeling was hard to place. The effect was cool, like a Jim Thompson novel set to a distorted punk score. Hoover’s first 7″ release, “Sidecar Freddie / Cable,” displayed this to great effect (particularly on the A-side), showing how quickly they outgrew the superficial Fugazi influence heard in their earliest songs."
There's also another great post on Current. Both posts combine some good YouTube footage of live shows by the bands with some very thoughtful discussion of their music as a whole.
The 'new beginnings' part of this post, as well as being a bit of carried-over enthusiasm, is I guess fairly obviously a reference to this being me essentially getting to the 'start' of the Hoover Genealogy Project, in terms of recorded output (the Endlessly Rocking post above also includes the video of Hoover's first show, if you haven't seen it already). Looking back at the first post on the reunion EP, I see that it has been just under a year since I started. It's still unfinished, which I guess should be another reason for 'new beginnings' - June of 44* (a band who, unfortunately, have never come naturally to me) and Regulator Watts as well as some of the further reaches of the family tree, and maybe even some kindred spirits as well (perhaps obliquely - I want to follow Blend77 again and do a post on The Mercury Program). For now though, let's stick to the roots.
* While browsing through Ape Mummy's blogroll, I found a blog called captain's dead with a live show from June of 44 recorded in Louisville in 1995. You can stream and download the individual songs.
And in a furtherance of the 'new beginnings' theme, Matt from Time Isn't On My Side has taken it upon himself to start a June of 44 Genealogy Project, kicking off with the minimal, folksy post-rock of Rex's self-titled album from 1995. Look forward to more explorations of the 'Louisville Sound' on there.
** Regulator Watts is sort of the opposite problem to June of 44 - so much of their essentially guitar-driven sound is immediately accessible to me, searingly complex, atonal, and discordant though it is, but as a whole I find their work - either The Aesthetic of No-Drag or The Mercury CD - difficult to follow. I think perhaps I'll deal with both releases simultaneously, and see if my face melts off in the process.
Over at my other blog, Steady Diet of Books ('unveiled Fugazi reference') I've made the first post in a good while, on a book that I've barely just finished reading, Jon Savage's Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture. The whole book is fascinating, from a historical, social and cultural perspective, but what was obviously going to be of particular interest to me was the chapter on "German Swing Kids and French Zazous". The first being the inspiration for the 90s San Diego emo/hardcore group, but the movement being in general a fascinating expression of rebellion through the cutting-edge music of the 30s and 40s, jazz (and a mirror to a lot of the later youth rebellion of punk).
Hence, after a cursory description and review of the book, I spend most of the post providing a summary of the relevant chapters.
The picture above is nothing to do with jazz, it's just on the front cover. 'Swing High' was, apparently, the adopted greeting of the 1930s Dusseldorf-based International Rhythm Club.
'Moments Pass’ from Moonpies for Misfits (EP), No Idea Records 1999.
Choosing A Flight and a Crash as one of the standard bearers of punk rock in the 21st century didn’t go down too well, but by and large I stand by my choice. However, I am a bona fide fan of old school Hot Water Music, and yes, I could see Forever and Counting (vinyl repress in the mail!) as my favourite too, or Fuel for the Hate Game, or No Division. Moonpies for Misfits is a four-song EP that fits, musically, in between Forever and Counting and No Division (it was released on the No Idea label in the same year, 1999, as the latter album was on Some Records).
It may not be the very best HWM record (for that, see above) but it’s still almost perfect in its own way. I found this review on Amazon which sums it up pretty well:
“The little DIY outfit from Gainesville that could. Hot Water Music have kept their integrity intact throughout their rise from Florida emo-core legends to mid-major label rising stars. This EP offers 4 songs from an era when the band was just blooming and realizing the extent of their artistic ability...”
Or, more generally, consult the emo non-bible that is Fourfa, which says (in reference to Finding the Rhythms/Fuel For the Hate Game, which is a few years earlier, but still the old Hot Water Music style):
“Takes the best of the Fuel/Fugazi twin vocal/twin guitar drive and adds a sweaty Avail pop-punk pulse, with scratchy, gruff singing that doesn't need to be beautiful to get the point across. This band positively embarrasses bands with only one singer.”
If you want a great overview of the Hot Water Music sound from Finding the Rhythms up until No Division (and including a brief diversion into the Blacktop Cadence’s Chemistry for Changing Times), head over to Music for the Working Man and download the two podcasts available there. Mostly, he lets the music speak for itself, but adds in some of the story too and - best of all – isn’t afraid to say the word ‘emo’ or ‘emocore’.
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’Moments Pass’ opens up Moonpies for Misfits with a relatively unusual, for Hot Water Music, sideswipe of feedback - and then kicks, or rather chugs, into life. Sometimes earlier HWM sounds too dense, too full of weight, to be easily accessible – and this might turn a lot of people off – but what this song demonstrates is the melody suffused into the hardcore drive, a legacy of the ‘emocore’ genre in general and of the album Forever and Counting in particular. ‘Moments Pass’ is a song about seizing life as it comes, or as the liner notes to Live at The Hardback say: “this song is about taking advantage of the time we have with our friends or loved ones now. Mainly because we never know what tomorrow will unfold.”
“and up to yours to sit down for a fucking cup of coffee and shoot the shit.”
‘Another Way’ is one of Hot Water Music’s personal/political songs, like ‘A Clear Line’ from A Flight and a Crash. “Say what’s wrong with this way, beside the fact it’s not in the book you read”. Independence, tolerance, plurality and “no division” are all elements of the Hot Water Music philosophy; but it’s personal too, a way to live one’s own life in co-existence and in community with others, despite all the difficulties inherent in that approach. E pluribus unum, and all that. I’m not sure if I should really mention Obama (again) here, but from what I see the US has immensely polarised politics – compared to a broadly social democratic Europe, at least – and this is something punk hasn’t often helped with. Often with good reason, of course, but I’d much rather see an emergence of Obama (left of-)centrism than a re-run of anti-Reagan (and anti-Bush) punk rock with McCain as presidential hate figure.
"Day by day we all change. Systems change.
So why can’t we accept other ways, in respect
to learn for our own?"
‘Where We Belong’ is a relationship song, a “song as a story of a crucial turning point in two people’s lives. Two people who found a peace through love they thought they would never know and learned how to keep it… from rooftops then, to rooftops now we’ve seen why we’re still here and who we’re both about…” (Live at The Hardback liner notes.) A lot of this song sounds more like Fuel For the Hate Game, a rawer, rougher sound, before it moves into a meandering, melodic passage straight out of Forever and Counting. Climbing and building, ever upward and rhythmically.
“Start now. Start right. Stay strong. Stay tight.
And we can rise side by side."
'Moonpies for Misfits' is another song that tells a story, of change from youthful arrogance/indifference to similar but more mellowed adulthood, still as strong and as forthright but more lastingly so: "face to face here we stand strong, but this time we stand for good". It's the quintessential post-hardcore song, the sound and the attitude from after the heady excesses of punk. Just as heavy - though a slower song than the other three - and fundamentally moving, it also has that profound sense of repose, of position, of difficult calm, that inhabits Hot Water Music's best work.
Moonpies for Misfits is out of print at No Idea, but plenty of copies are still available on Amazon. Live at The Hardback is still for sale on vinyl or CD from No Idea.
* Moonpies, for non (Southeastern?)-Americans, are a trademark type of biscuit (‘cookie’) consisting of two round Graham crackers sandwiching a marshmallow and dipped in chocolate. The English translation of ‘Moonpies for Misfits’ would essentially be ‘Wagon Wheels for Wankers’.
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(Click to expand & read liner notes)
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A final note on the cover artwork. Just looking at it on the screen now, it's amazing. There are equally good Hot Water Music covers, such as the discombobulated man on A Flight and A Crash or the bellicose mutants on the front of Fuel for the Hate Game. In fact, all their album covers are of superbly high quality - because they are all done by the same artist, Scott Sinclair (SINC, as you can see in the corner.)
It's a pity, because of the high quality, that there isn't much on the internet about Sinclair's work - although he is a professional artist. He has a Myspace and a website in construction (there's nothing there at the moment, other than a damn cool title picture). I remember he used to have a site where one could look at a variety of his work, HWM and non-HWM.
I'm no art critic, but I guess I could describe SINC's style as a sort of modernist, semi-cubist form. Although it has evolved just as much as the band's sound, it has always matched Hot Water Music's vibe: hard edges, muted colours, but a whole lotta feeling and pathos put into the image. 'Moonpies for Misfits' has the one central figure, a man stripped to the waist and apparently carrying a pick-axe. In its stance, it could almost seem like a Socialist Realist tableau - but the figure appears just as skinny and emaciated as it does muscular - more Picasso-like. SINC's artworks, particularly his skeletal, awkard male forms, often put me in mind of Picasso's The Old Guitarist - although it's a Blue Period painting, not (directly) a Cubist one. Either way, there's that sense of physical tragedy, of the conflict between the weaknesses and strengths of the human form.
SINC's figure stands against an abstract background of back-and-forth arrows, all except one bright red arrow painted in muted colours. But they are not so abstract as to be unreal - the figure casts a definite (and harsh) shadow against them. All surfaces exhibit the same coarse painted texture, except for the figure's trousers and the upper block of the image, which are scoured rough, lending the whole a tactile but indistinct feeling. In front of the other elements, white shapes fall from the sky, their identity ambiguous - they could be raindrops, feathers or leaves. Finally, whatever they are, they reflect the same pallid white glow as comes from the bare torso and head of the figure, and the understated but by now emblematic rough lower-case text of 'hot water music' in the upper left.
The link above to 'The Old Guitarist' includes a modernist poem, possibly inspired by the painting, and written by American poet Wallace Stevens, 'The Man with the Blue Guitar'. The first six lines:
"The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.
They said, “You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.”
The man replied, “Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."
I'd like to think that the painting and the poem both reflect something of Hot Water Music. What exactly though, I'm not sure.
The wisdom of dead Germans
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First as tragedy, then as farce? There's nothing to be found in Victorian
ideologies.
Are there self-identified "farces" I should view that meet the criter...
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Hey! I entered a tee shirt for submission at Threadless.
If you like it, please take a moment and click the above image to go vote.
VOTE HARD!
If it wins...
Murder By Death/O'Death Split 7"
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"Murder By Death are releasing the first of 7 records in a 7" series where
they trade covering songs with other bands they know. The second 7" will
featu...
