Today’s Mood #1

Sometimes a whole album doesn’t quite lift the fingers onto my grubby keyboard. I can’t quite muster the oomph necessary to inflate my words past that one song that is slowly worming its way into my daily thoughts. Plus, sometimes I just want to say my ephemeral peace and move onto other chores in my daily agenda. Anyhow, this will be the first of a frequent series of posts devoted to a single song. If I find myself whistling it in the morn, you can be sure I will be sharing it in the eve.

Bill Fay

“Garden Song” from s/t album

http://www.mediafire.com/?obj2dwddooe

Prevailing winds have blown a big ass storm into my general vicinity, so here I sit waiting for the beginning of the World Series. To be honest, the anticipation is akin to the mosquito-covered tootsies depicted above my worrisome words. However, I walked into my backyard and blankly stared at my ghetto garden as the rain nourished the weeds and I thought of this song. This is kind of ill-fitting since it romanticizes death and his subsequent burial so he can commune with roots and maggots. Dude even goes so far as to devote lyrics to his conversations with muddy critters that pick and poke at his own personal compost pile. It’s a fitting tune for this Halloween as it literally explores the old-fashioned ditty where the “worms crawl in , the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle in your snout.” Well, my father was known to take liberties with his vocal interpretations of children’s song, so I may be speaking to an empty room.

Anyhow, “Garden Song” possesses such a morbid grace. Fay eloquently waxes about the beauty of nature and the cyclical nature of our existence using a simple garden as an obvious, but effective metaphor for hippie ideals where yesterday’s ashes blossom another day. It is a song about sad conclusions and how they ultimately lead to rebirth. Fay celebrates surrender because he knows that this can only lead to a new battle tomorrow.Ha! I guess that is the reason I am anxiously awaiting the start of Phillies game in hope of late night redemption.

Go-Betweens-16 Lovers Lane

The Go-Betweens

16 Lovers Lane (1988 Beggars Banquet)

http://www.mediafire.com/?ohye22y1vn5

Believe it or not, this red-blooded American once identified so closely with the sexless indifference of Morrissey that it resembled some wayward strain of Stockholm Syndrome. This is sad and ironic since my high school existence was most assuredly sexless, but jam-packed with nothing but lust and longing. Even during those low points where I found misguided parallels with these paeans to abstinence and restraint, there was something empty about this perpetual cock blocking because all I really wanted to do was race down the street and make awkward conversation with any and all females who would tolerate my formative flirting. All of this seems ridiculous now, but there was a purity to those moments when love was a blank canvas yet to be stained by a single stroke. However, those squeaky clean moments pale in comparison to the richness of a wrinkled and stained life where one can reflect upon the hullabaloo that was their life and the lessons learned in the process.

Therefore, I now harbor an unadulterated love for a similar minded group of misanthropes and romantics that fixate on the bruises and stains instead of Morrissey’s porcelain and pale. The Go-Betweens bored me to tears in my 20s as their dour, slow-motion ruminations on mortality and regret seemed too monochrome for my florescent fantasies of bob hairdos and sassy lasses. Let’s just say that my winding road is littered with potholes and the Go-Betweens weather-beaten tales now ring so true that I feel naive for ever thinking that a homoerotic “come hither” like the Smiths’ “Hand in Glove” could ever be my anthem for an afternoon.

16 Lover Lane, their sixth album, isn’t even my favorite, but it the one I revisit most since it best captures the knot in your stomach one gets when in the midst of a difficult decision. Its protagonists roll the dice and either revel in ecstatic summits or tumble down into depression as a result. In short, it is an album about fucking up and making up. This duality seems apt since the band’s musical and lyrical identity was also split between two distinct forces, Robert Forster and Grant McClennan. Yeah, their respective songs were both pretty bleak, but McClellan always seemed to aim for a much lighter shade of gray. Both sing about spilled mik, but McClennan wipes it up while Forster shrugs and walks away in resignation.

Just see how each tackles heartbreak. “Dive for Your Memory” turns rejection into an ode to building new homes on old rubble. It reminisces on history, then uses it as fodder for new campaigns. However, the lyrical flipside can be found in “Clouds” which gets beaten and lays on the canvas feeling sorry for itself. Where Morrissey openly pined in isolation, Forster and McClennan fought, fucked and loved and sat down to tell you that life is goddamn gorgeous, not a piddling chore. It might piss on your leg on occasion and cause you to wear pajamas for 48 hours from time to time, but it was ultimately a lovely tumble that left you dizzy and smitten.

I swear I will be back soon

Sorry for the silence. In the past month, I have traveled to Sweden, purchased a home and begun another year of teaching high school. Needless to say, I have been very overwhelmed by beet salads, drywall and chattering children. Therefore, I am not gone, just regaining my sanity for another round of posts in the coming weeks. Oh yeah, I spotted this little dude on the streets of Stockholm. He was a crusty motherfucker to be sure.

Iran-The Moon Boys

Iran

The Moon Boys(Tumult 2003)

http://www.mediafire.com/?xfzgntxay4m

I was sorely disappointed by Iran’s latest album, Dissolver, because it stripped away all of the scuzz and feedback that mated so perfectly with their wayward way with a simple melody. Yeah, its “progression” probably had a lot to do with the addition of TV on the Radio’s Kyp Malone to the band, but their newfound clarity always aims for the bullseye where Aaron Aite used to revel in mistakes and missteps. By no means is Dissolver a bad album, but count me in the minority who find Aites’ embrace of chaos more appealing than his attempts at an orderly pop song. Then again, six years have passed since The Moon Boys was released and god knows that time has a funny way of adjusting the way you view the world. Therefore, let us take a few moments to pay tribute to an album that may be one of the best albums Siltbreeze, Xpressway, Shrimper or Catsup Plate never released. Yes, these are obscure benchmarks, but it was rare that any of these labels released a perfect marriage of noise to pop even though I wanted so hard to believe that it was so. Yes, the Dead C, V-3, Yips, Amps for Christ and other disparate souls have come damn close to this holy union, but I always reach for this album over anything in their discographies.

The synthesis of noise and pop is hardly an underground concept. God knows that the Jesus & Mary Chain made some moolah with their own jigsaw of Phil Spector and white noise and the whole shoegaze scene was based upon sensual coos and a lusher brand of feedback and squall, but The Moon Boys stands out because there is a sprawl to their compositions that seems epic comparison to the aforementioned bands’ succinct slices of sweet and sour. Sonic Youth’s “Hyperstation” from their Daydream Nation seems like the most accurate touchstone for Iran’s music circa The Moon Boys. I remember listening to “Hyperstation” at 3am as a teenager and imagining if there was another band that could conjure the same loose, late-night vibe where a psych-pop song sounds as if it was heard via a faraway AM station many states away from your destination. This album does that for me throughout its entirety. Then again, I am a former insomniac who used to listen to the scratchiest transmissions instead of counting sleep or drinking warm milk, so my bias is evident.

The imperfections are what make The Moon Boys so gripping. Don’t be fooled that melodies worthy of Brian Wilson lurk beneath the muck because these tunes tend to stretch out in sometimes difficult directions. What does stick out is Aaron Aites’ guitar work as he somehow straddles the line between outright sabotage and grubby melody. No song really even stands out here as the overall effect of it as an album is what gets me every single time. I approach it as a long rambling epic where slow, atonal riffs last for days only to be replaced by some of the most simple and sweet notes that shake all of the pieces back into proper balance. Iran always stride close to the edge only to reconfigure themselves as something so sentimental and tender that you almost forget you were listening to a staccato riff seconds before. The Moon Boys is admittedly a bit of a mess, but I hear something new each time I try to reassemble the pieces.

The Bats-Compiletely Bats

The Bats

Compileletely Bats(Flying Nun 1990)

http://www.mediafire.com/?yijyouzkdog

It may be sweltering here in Philadelphia, but I’m an organized soul who likes to get a head start on the next season, especially when it’s autumn, my favorite time of the year. Throughout the years, there are only a handful of bands who somehow capture my admittedly biased view of that time where life slows down and the leaves take their sweet old time on their way from the treetops to the concrete below them. Yes, summer is a time for exploration and adventure down country back roads and travels to farflung locales, but autumn is when you take your sweet time and patiently watch another year come to close and reassess your priorities for next year while taking inventory of the present one. It’s a time for meditation and speculation about what went right and what went terribly wrong before another year gets brutally latched upon your sum total. For some reason, the Bats, along with fellow Kiwis, the  Chills, Verlaines, Magick Heads and Peter Jefferies capture this sense of ennui so perfectly that I start listening to them in earnest a couple months before they are best suited to my mood. Then again, I am an impatient soul, so it is only fitting that I pay tribute to autumn in August.

On the surface, Compiletely Bats, a collection of their first three eps, is an odd choice to associate with autumn, but they are forever intertwined with it because their songs are so optimistic on the surface, but scratch a little deeper and you see swaths of melancholy, self-doubt and introspection. In short, these are the the qualities that I associate with a time where the party slowly comes to a close and you are left questioning and applauding the past while generating a plan for the murky future.

The best example of this can be found in the opener “Made Up in Blue” which may be the apex of New Zealand pop, but the lyrics paint such a contradictory image to the chipper strums and jangles. It’s an ode to indecision and worry as its protagonist questions his social circle, direction and the advice of others as he bemoans the dead weight that surrounds him. It sums up that moment when you doubt a big decision, ponder the consequences and benefits and take a leap into the new.

In between are tales of faded glory, grasping at straws and tragic nostalgia, all of which highlight their focus on the grey and beige in our lives, but its closing number provided a perfect bookend to it superficially sunny opener. “Offside” closes out the compilation on a pitch perfect note as it eloquently depicts the onset of winter and its resultant stagnation. It details a fight against depression when your friends are hibernating, trees are bare and optimism is a rare commodity as vocalist Robert Scott embraces the bottom of the barrel only to discover that there is nothing there but darkness. Instead of wallowing in woe, Scott decides that the best path is introspection and meditation and he ultimately he decides the best path is a long walk where he embraces the scenery and decides that innocence and new beginnings are just around the corner. Just like most Bats songs, it sums up the moment before you hit rock bottom when you realize things aren’t quite so bad as your neurotic mind makes them out to be.

That’s why the Bats embody autumn. Their songs are about scenes of darkness and despair where the storm clouds break and meager rays of sunlight break through the murk and provide hope in barren times.

Glass Candy-Beatbox

Glass Candy

Beatbox(Italians Do it Better 2007)

http://www.mediafire.com/?02y9fmh6iwb

Man, it took awhile to swallow my pride and earnestly accept the fact that Glass Candy were no longer the pretentious art-punk mess that released a series of occasionally great, but mostly horrid series of singles and albums. There always was something intriguing about them in theory, but the reality was that you had a fetching vocalist and interesting guitarist who listened to a few too many no-wave albums and decided to meld them with Blondie’s Parallel Lines. It was a mess, albeit one which kind of made you wonder what could be if this unlikely synthesis could be pulled off. It’s probably for the best that they decided to soldier onwards in a different direction and aim for a surprisingly successful marriage of Italo disco, Kraftwerk, new wave, John Carpenter soundtracks and and the hypnotic, but elegant repetition of Cluster. Yeah, the Cluster comparison is a stretch, but I’ll be damned if Beatbox doesn’t put me near that same head nodding zone as their more energetic orbits. On one hand, it’s just as disposable as any number of early 80s one-hit wonders, but Johnny Jewel’s instrumentation is a subtle, but unsettling take on early 80s disco that provides a perfect stage for vocalist Ida No’s blank vocals.

It’s fitting that I first heard Beatbox after listening to their labelmates Chromatics via their Night Drive album. Night Drive is an even more narcoleptic take on Italo Disco and krautrock as it relies mostly on longer instrumental passages and even sleepier vocals. What crossed the t’s and dotted the i’s between the two bands was the involvement of Johnny Jewel who has a innate knack for repetitive, hypnotic foundations for a suitably unemotional vocalist. The result is two bands adept at perfecting the synthesis of “ice queen” and a subdued, yet sensual wash of synthesizers.

Despite its occasional bouts of exuberance, Beatbox is an album suited for late night drives after the party ended long after common sense should have ended it. It conjures images of 3am sojourns down lonely highways when you fixate on the road ahead and ponder your existence. It’s a siren song to inaction, not dancing even when Jewel picks up the pace. Even then, it’s a disco in the center of a K-hole where all tones are grey and drab no matter how hard the band tries to pick up the pace. Beatbox is a danceable intertia at its most lively; a soundtrack to a party on its last legs at its most mellow.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds-The Good Son

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

The Good Son(Mute 1990)

http://www.mediafire.com/?lz5jkfvjo6e

I may be in the minority, but I never really bought Nick Cave as a primal, misanthropic entity attuned to the darkest impulses of mankind. Outside of the “Mercy Seat” which still gives me fucking chills, his solo work seemed most poetic when he spun heartfelt yarns about love and its inevitable absence. Sure. the Birthday Party were a singleminded bunch whose music was honestly unsettling and full of the kind of aggression that made you question whether it was mere persona or psychopath. However, he wisely chose a gentler vocabulary and pursued a subtler, but no less effective form of drama. Yeah, he occasionally fostered the occasional shitstorm worthy of the Birthday Party, but he really found his voice interpreting the songs of his heroes on Kicking at the Pricks. Now, that album really grabbed me because I never really saw him as much more than an artist that one listened to when in a pissed, morbid or oddball mood but there are moments of pristine beauty on it as he does what few pull off, which is to make a well-known standard entirely your own. I dunno…there was something tender, yet antagonistic about his take on the familiar that made it seem new. Its followup. Tender Prey, was pretty impressive, but I wanted him to slow things down and take his time with a song, so his subsequent release, The Good Son, was music to these biased ears.

By no means do I recommend The Good Son as a classic or even an entirely successful album since a few songs delve into superficial schtick instead of bloody-hearted pleading and frayed nerves. It’s sometimes hard to embrace a Nick Cave album in its entirety because his embrace of gospel and R&B is kind of ham-fisted as most European efforts tend to play out in their lovable, but shallow manner. Man, that sounds a bit harsh, but if I want clapping and gospel sing-a-longs, there are so many better outlets than Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in this wonderful world.

However, my passion for The Good Son possibly revolves around one single song. I think “Ship Song” is so fucking eloquent and symbolic of the tricky nature of loving someone who may ultimately burn you to the ground. In some ways, it may be one of my favorite metaphors in some ways. He portrays himself as an island while his lover is a ship who burns all bridges down in order to get sole access to her muse. The whole song is about how a love seems perfect in theory, but is destined to fail by their own hands. It is an ode to passion and the infantile decisions it sometimes inspires, but is also a paean to how alive these impulses make us feel. It is self-destructive, utterly romantic and a reflection of past mistakes that could possibly be made right in future relationships. For these reasons, this song is pure perfection as parable and song because it is universal just like the beloved standards he took the time to cover. He finally nailed the perfect blend of schmaltz, empathy, pain and composition required of a song that will stand the test of time.

The rest of The Good Son is no slouch either. Most of it is kind of boozy and drunken in a peculiarly restrain manner. He pursues a lovelorn and regretful mood throughout the album and the result is a pervasive theme of poor decision making and its consequences. It doesn’t hurt that the instrumentation allows the Bad Seeds to explore a more lush side of their musicianship. It’s a gorgeous album with just the right amount of occasional ugliness to make you wince as you slug it all down your gullet.

Abner Jay-Swaunee River and Cocaine Blues

Abner Jay

Swaunee River and Cocaine Blues(1967)

http://www.mediafire.com/?1y3gyytmyw2

There is something about the way Abner Jay tells a tale. You wish that each song lasted an eternity because he has that rare gift of a true storyteller that is able to spin a yarn into a scarf that seemingly runs on for miles and miles. Yeah, they end around the three-minute mark, but Swaunee River and Cocaine Blues’ songs kind of run together into one long cautionary tale about the perils of love, substance abuse and the consequences of poor decision making. What makes Abner Jay utterly transcendent is his loose, rambling guitar licks that approach mantra status as the combo of instrument and voice hypnotize you and suck you into his narratives. I know the ending of each tale, but listen to each repeatedly because Abner Jay is an entertaining motherfucker who plays the holy hell out of a guitar and is one of the few artists who can make a song literally come alive for you late at night when you want to bathe in your own imperfections. These are tales of souls who make the same mistakes over and over again, but never lack the stubbornness to try to make things right no matter how many times shit goes down the wrong chute.

The ramshackle charm of Abner’s music is only highlighted by the fact that he was literally a one-man band. Playing guitar, harmonica, banjo and bass drum, his music is surprisingly mesmerizing and complex despite being looser than a necktie after a long day of drinking at a wedding. He learned much of his repertoire from his grandfather who was a slave in Georgia. Abner was one of the last souls trafficking in minstrel music, but his performances aren’t offensive, but sincere odes to the past and its accumulated storybook of mythology while adding his own spin on what his elders taught him. Even his take on “Ol’ Man River” takes new life in his hand as he wrings every ounce of frustration, pain and weariness from its lyrics and instrumentation.

The song which originally introduced me to the world of Abner Jay was “Cocaine Blues” after hearing Tim Hardin’s  take on “Cocaine Bill.” I think I googled Hardin only to discover the world of Abner Jay and I haven’t looked back since. His “Cocaine Blues” may be the most effective ode to drug abuse while serving as its most chilling warning. A simple, bluesy lick eats its own tail throughout its seven minutes while Abner Jay champions its effectiveness while decrying how it has possessed his heart and soul. You know how many blues songs talk of the devil’s influence. Well, Jay’s “Cocaine Blues” replaces Satan with Cocaine to chilling effect while romanticizing its influence and relating that it is the real deal, not the wash of psychedelics readily available in the 60s. He is part salesman, part drug counselor as he tells of its peaks and valleys and what a misguided soul will do to get a fix. The song isn’t about judgement for misdeeds, but a depiction of what addiction will make a man do and think about at his lowest moments. It’s a love song and death ballad all at once. For that reason, it sticks in my craw each time it is heard in this neck of the woods.

Hackamore Brick-One Kiss Leads to Another

Hackamore Brick

One Kiss Leads to Another (Kama Sutra 1971)

http://www.divshare.com/download/7901875-416

This album stands firmly at the  intersection of all that I love about the music of the early 70s. Most folks seem to peg it as a scruffier descendent of the Velvet Underground’s Loaded, which is kind of fitting since most folks don’t even pay proper tribute to it in the VU pantheon. I kind of like that it is regarded as a lesser cousin to watered down stock. However, we all know that pedigrees don’t mean shit, so we gotta embrace what we encounter on its own merits. To be honest, I do hear echoes of Loaded, but only in the fact that that both are loosely played, kind of stoned and slightly ragged takes on what happens after the afterglow of Woodstock fades, but you still like to play folk, blues and good time rock n’ roll in an earnest fashion. There isn’t an ounce of pretension to One Kiss Leads to Another. Yeah, it’s kind of obvious they like Lou Reed like any other maladjusted longhair, but there is something sweet and sentimental about their take that lacks the overbearing artifice he engineered for himself. Add a love of the 70s am smoothness of early Bread, Poco or even a blue collar version of Colin Blunstone and you kind of have an idea of what planet these guys were transmitting from in 1971.

Yeah, I’m kind contradicting myself by immediately grasping at the VU straw, but the opener “Reachin” immediately conjures the same wistful hoodoo of “Ride Into the Sun” or “I Found a Reason” as vocalist Chick Newman sings of reaching for the last moments of sunshine as the day slowly turns dark as night. It’s supposedly a metaphor for the Vietnam War and its devastating effect upon the idealism and “can do” spirit of America. It is an ode to the fallen soldiers that had their optimism crushed by the the brutality of war. On a larger scale, it deals with a larger issue of the loss of innocence and how can anyone resist a hardening heart when the world is such a fucked terrain. Idealism gets squashed so easily and he wants to know why. You ask yourself the same damn thing after hearing it.

Now where they deviate from the VU blueprint is on the closer “Zip Gun Woman” which could almost pass as a late 70s punk tune if it wasn’t punctuated by a psychedelic organ boogaloo straight out of a live Santana or Yes album. It’s such an angry, frustrated number that lacks the musical vocabulary to qualify as proto-punk, but the piss and vinegar marks it as a definite precursor weighed down by a hippie palette. “I Watched You Rhumba” is another walkabout round the Loaded influence as it swings more than their heroes ever could due to their art-school trappings. It’s a simpleminded ode to yearning and lust that taps into the primal desires one has when they see the object of their affection for the first time. Nothing fancy, just a slightly horny ode to watching a lover rhumba on the dancefloor as you thank your lucky stars that you mustered the courage to ever speak to her.

Is One Kiss Leads to Another groundbreaking or influential? No, it isn’t anything more than a well-played rock album that invites repeated listens because it traffics in the time honored subjects of lust, betrayal, good tunes and a frothy brew in a way that makes them feel like AM staples even though Hackamore Brick never got a whiff of radio airplay.

Ego Summit-The Room Isn’t Big Enough

Ego Summit

The Room Isn’t Big Enough(Old Age No Age 1997)

http://www.mediafire.com/?h3dy2gmpjde

Many of my formative years were spent in a sleepy college town near Pittsburgh. It was during this time that my older and wiser friends instilled a deep love for the musics of both Pittsburgh and its close neighbor, the state of Ohio. It was a hard sell to a young man who used to look to Melody Maker and the NME for musical discoveries, but it wasn’t long before they had me thinking that the Bassholes, Speaking Canaries, Guided by Voices, V-3, Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, Don Caballero, Karl Hendricks Trio, etc. were the bee’s knees and that my prior loves were a bunch of flimsy powder puffs. To be honest, there was a grit and ramshackle charm to all of the aforementioned bands that opened my ears to musics far less polished than my dainty ears were accustomed. I guess one could make the argument that other midwestern cities harbored bands who excelled in the art of the artless, unpretentious pop genius, albeit in a mangled form. It may be a broad and possibly offensive generalization, but the similarities are not surprising since these musicians were probably bored by the same things, listened to to similar records and rounded up fellow weirdos to pass the time making music. I rarely, if ever hear modern music that sounds like anything from this era because its best bands were products of a certain time and place that is hard to imitate or improve upon.

Despite my gushing like a Twilight fan, I am far from an expert on the backroads of both locales. Therefore, It took me more than ten years to discover what may be the best American rock albums of the 90s. Man, even I think I am being a bit hyperbolic as I type those words, but I have listened to this record dozens of times in the past year and it is such a bitter, misanthropic listen that it kind of sticks to you like tar after a few listens. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t a lot of really vulnerable man feelings being expressed here. A lot of material deals with fucked protagonists trying to make sense of love, disappointment and their direction in life, but maybe that is because Jim Shepherd of V-3 is involved. That man always knew how to make the ugliest sentiments somehow sound uplifting in a damaged way that made you wonder if you related a bit too much to his worldview. 

Now, what in the hell does Ego Summit have to do with Pittsburgh? Well, absolutely nothing, but I’m always looking for a way to piggyback my own backstory into these piddling reviews. However, Ego Summit were as close to a supergroup that Ohio could muster in the mid 90s. I am biased in this praise since Don Howland(Bassholes), Jim Shephard(V-3) and Ron House(Great Plains, Thomas Jefferson Slave Apts) were three of my favorite songwriters at various points in my life. They were joined by fellow stalwarts Mike Rep and Tommy Jay and their one and only album, The Room Isn’t Big Enough, somehow accommodates their divergent styles and tastes into something that is cohesive despite sounding as if the wheels may pop off at any moment. 

The opener “Beyond the Laws” epitomizes why I love this album so. The opening riff is one part Stones boogie, one part extended psychedelic jam before Ron House goes off about some nihilistic vision quest where he is going to go beyond the laws of man and hope that someone reels him back in before he goes too far. If that wasn’t morbid enough, Jim Shepard’s “Illogical” follows it up with a confused anthem that kind of breaks my heart despite its anthemic qualities. It is ultimately about a man who finds the entire world around him to be illogical and all too easy to throw away. It is even sadder when put in context of his suicide in 1999. The rest of The Room Isn’t Big Enough lets in little sunlight as subsequent tracks champion the numbing of all feelings and emotion, the futile nature of domesticity and loathing of the American dream. These are sincere expressions of disillusionment with life, country and lasting relationships with all women. The malaise and deep dissatisfaction with life in a decaying city located in a fucked up country permeates each song and it kind of drags you down into the mire. When listening to Ego Summit, I guess you either thank your lucky stars that life hasn’t crushed you in such a manner or embrace their misanthropic musings as gospel from those who got stepped on just like you.