Music

Records

Music Reviews - The Technology Issue








LADY SOVEREIGN
Jigsaw
Midget/EMI
I never really got into the grime scene, mostly because when grime was all the rage I was still a little too enamored with the badassness of rap, and compared to my American gangsta-rapper heroes, these guys all seemed like John Cleese. So I listened to this album with some trepidation. But shit, it’s all right! I mean, if you’re rolling around in a ’lac, trying to scare old people, maybe you wanna stick to Clipse (she does heavily sample the Cure, after all), but this is a clever and catchy piece of work. Her hard, kinda awkward voice fits the poppy synth beats well, especially when she talks about goofy topics like student-union bars and eating ice cream during sex. Maybe she is like John Cleese, actually.

GUY TWITCHY


MR. LIF
I Heard It Today
Bloodbot Tactical Enterprises
So I hate the government as much as the next boring, college-educated white guy who is forced to wait tables at the Olive Garden to pay rent, but no matter how shitty things get, I could never be as mad as Mr. Lif. Dude is pissed. The beats are head-nodding enough to get a smiley face, but he comes off as the Anti-Flag of hip-hop (read: slightly overbearing and annoying). He might be a little too conscious. Lif, my man, have a beer, you’re gonna give yourself an ulcer. Plus, you look like Jar Jar Binks.

CHRISTIAN STORM


DOOM
Born Like This
Lex
Doom is like the Max Ernst of hip-hop. Surrealist and progressive, but yet still not quite brilliant enough to transcend his own weirdness. Maybe it’s the dumb mask dude wears on his grill (what, are you in Slipknot?), but he always sounds muffled and he flows with the same relentless, spittle-spraying cadence on every song, whether he’s name-checking “tough actin’ Tinactin” or “Cornish hens.” The whole thing sounds like a stream-of-consciousness poem by a coked-up English major. Somebody just send me the instrumentals, please.

MF TONEZ


THE FLY GIRLZ
Da Bratz From Da Ville
True Panther Sounds
Aw, cute. A couple of experimental-music weirdos (guy from Excepter, guy from Zs) who live in Brooklyn decided to give back to the community by producing tracks for an adorable gaggle of rapping 13-year-old girls from the Brownsville projects. The result is simultaneously endearing and bizarre—the girls are doing their fun and lively playground-style chants but then the beats are all echoey and ominous, like they’re rhyming over old Suicide albums. I guess that’s what they were going for, the melding of cultures and whatnot. What’s next—abandoned shelter cats meowing over Sunn O)))? I would like to hear that, actually.

KEIFER MANALGO



STINKING LIZAVETA
Sacrifice and Bliss
At a Loss
I usually side with the underdog if the product is worthy, but the utter pointlessness of this lifeless instrumental prog metal in 2009 disallows such charity. This band has been farting out tepid rewrites of Black Flag’s The Process of Weeding Out EP since 1994. There’s a reason said EP remains a Flag punch line, which should give you an idea of the mediocrity level being dealt out in spades here. It’s sad when a band’s only fans are people that run tiny labels, especially when this fact is glaringly apparent to everyone BUT the musicians themselves. This album is boring metal, boring prog, and boring noodling all boiled down to everything sucking for the sake of sucking.

ANDREW EARLES


AMON AMARTH
Once Sent From the Golden Hall
Metal Blade
When I listen to this record I imagine myself having robot enhancements. I have a Gatling gun built into my chest and my fingers are hypodermic needles filled with bleach. I am running around killing people. Also my penis is a knife. Oh, and my balls? Little teeny bombs. If you are the kind of guy who only listens to heavy metal and already has the other records that this band made, then buy this one too. If not, this is not the record to get so you can try to figure out if you might finally like heavy metal. That record is At the Gates’ Slaughter of the Soul.

NICK GAZIN

DUKES OF THE STRATOSPHEAR
25 O’Clock/
Psonic Psunspot
Ape House
Kids these days have no clue how hard it used to be to nerd out over the 60s. Thirty years ago, if you wanted to wear one of those frilly mod shirts and make your own version of the Chocolate Watchband without getting stomped by a pack of 12-year-old skinheads, you had to invent a fake psych band and pretend you found their old records tucked away in somebody’s attic. That’s what XTC did when the urge to write songs about villainous clock-smashers and opening a can of human beans became overwhelming. They even managed to keep the fact that it was them a secret for 20 years. They were basically the Anne Frank of fanciful clavier tunes, but now that the cat’s out of the bag, we are going to stomp the ever-loving shit out of them. Am I right, people?

COCK SPARRER


FRUSTRATIONS
Glowing Red Pill
X!
These guys have a track on the New Sounds of Detroit comp (see review next page), but you should check them out on their own if you’ve been itching in your pants for the days when scary AmRep bands and Drive Like Jehu types ruled the land. Also see Tyvek for the days when nerdy multi-racial spastics ruled the land and Human Eye for the days when indecipherable distorted messes ruled the land. Man, that’s a lot of rulers. What is this shit, Poland? Yep.

POLISH GUY


THE DATSUNS
Headstunts
Cooking Vinyl
In 2002, the Datsuns wanted to sound like AC/DC and ZZ Top. Now they apparently want to sound like a neutered Black Sabbath played by high-school-age Kiwis who really want to be British, all of which is basically tolerable but exhaustively unimportant.

BLACK NASTY


CRYSTAL ANTLERS
Tentacles
Touch & Go

GRAF ORLOCK
Destination Time Today
Level Plane
Give it up. Graf Orlock is the future of music in this household. By default of being a spazzy grindcore band (as opposed to a chuggy grindcore band like Bolt Thrower) that actually rocks, with amazing riffs, melody, screaming that’s not hokey, and the occasionally amazing guitar solo (if you listen close enough), they beat out 97 percent of what’s peddled to gullible ears these days. And if that wasn’t enough, these guys broadcast (literally… check the samples on this album—Shooter!) a special stripe of nonironic film love that I can cozy up to. To clarify: Something tells me that any one of the four members of this band can go on a nice and suitably humorous anti-mumblecore tirade. Count me in!

ANDREW EARLES


CLOCKCLEANER
Skinheaded Lady 7-inch
Stained Circles
There are three things that will automatically make a song amazing no matter how terrible it really is: 1) being about a type of person (see “Uptown Girl”), 2) putting super-echoey vocals over a Cramps-sounding swamp beat, and 3) that keyboard effect that’s like “byewbyew byewbyewbyew.” Honestly, that sound alone could probably turn the pappiest Lilith Fair ballad into Zeppelin, but when it comes together with the first two elements in a song that’s already pretty great, get ready to scream yourself into a coma.

TERRY SUNCH


ISIS
Wavering Radiant
Ipecac
A couple of albums ago, when Isis started sounding like Tool, they at least held on to a good amount of heaviness to keep things marginally interesting. But that’s a little unfair—who am I to say that some folks won’t enjoy bellowing metalcore vocals on top of THE FUCKING ALAN PARSONS PROJECT? It’s funny, I’ll give it that. Tinkling along with some circa-’96 Tortoise-style rooftop indie-jazz fusion only to have what sounds like vocal samples from Neurosis’s Pain of Mind come out of nowhere, blowing everything into the hilarity zone? Don’t let ’em tell you Isis lacks a sense of humor.

ANDREW EARLES


CONDO FUCKS
Fuckbook
Matador
The quotey-fingers “mystery” of who the Condo Fucks are was finally put to bed last year when the plump and aging members of Yo La Tengo took the stage and slouched through a bunch of Troggs and Flamin’ Groovies covers without bothering to learn any of the cool guitar parts. But the actual mystery of who the hell would want to relive that awful concert experience at home persists to this very day. The only way this CD could be any more worthless is if it was able to eat my prized cassette copy of Paul Stanley stage banter.

PITTSBURGH CANYOUHEARME


V/A
Shiftless Decay: New Sounds of Detroit
X!
While the city of Detroit is busy reprising its role in RoboCop, all the gawky white kids from the suburbs have evidently teamed up with all the cool black kids to hang out in the rubble and start a bunch of bands that sound like Government Issue and Suburban Lawns and sometimes even, like, a really fuzzy AM-radio version of GISM. Judging by the photos on the back of this comp, marauders have already made off with all the scenefolk’s women, but that’s fine with me—nothing wrong with a bunch of guys getting together and reveling in their unabashed guyhood in a city with 50 percent literacy. Shit, I haven’t been this excited about a place turning into hell on Earth since I invaded Baghdad.

THE US ARMY

Looks like it’s time to update our official list of words that can never be used in a band name ever again. So move over, “black,” step aside, “wolf,” and see ya later, “all animal references,” because “crystal” and “antlers” are the newest annoying band words in town. New rule: From now on, in order to maintain some iota of originality, bands should only be named alphanumeric strings of six to eight characters, like passwords. OK? Good. PS: I did not enjoy listening to this hectic and dramatic band.

CHAD TOONEY





BILL CALLAHAN
Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle
Drag City
Out of the three monolithic Drag City guys from the past almost-two decades (Oldham, Berman, and Callahan), I like this guy best. A) He’s the best looking, and B) his voice may not be “good,” but it’s so soothing. He sounds wise and not that pretentious. I like all the songs on here except for “Rococo” because I don’t like the girl singer and I also think the word “rococo” is dumb. I interviewed Bill Callahan once about ten years ago and acted like a stupid bitch, for which I now sort of apologize. I was young. Also I feel like noting that Drag City does this funny thing now with their promo CDs where they overdub a little clown-horn “honk honk!” onto each song every few minutes to prevent leaks or whatever. It makes me laugh every time I hear it.

ARK


JOKER’S DAUGHTER
The Last Laugh
Team Love
This girl annoyed Danger Mouse via email until he agreed to produce her record. You can tell she’s all spaced-out and living in some strange folk-pop-artiste fantasy castle, but Conor Oberst got her working with dudes from Neutral Milk Hotel and Sparklehorse to bring her back to planet Earth, and by God, it really works.

BLACK NASTY


GEORGIANA STARLINGTON
S/T 7-inch
Army of Bad Luck
By my tally, there has not been a husband-and-wife team in music that didn’t make me want to bury a claw hammer in my scalp since at least Dead Moon. These guys, however, seem less of the “passive-aggressive notes on the fridge” kind of couple and more of the “drink each other under the table before getting into a public screaming match that somehow turns into sex” variety. On top of that, their music sounds like that country-surf stuff Lee Hazlewood was doing with Frank Sinatra’s daughter in the 60s, but without all the cutesy filler songs or mustaches. PS: If you splurge now, you can still probably get the “hardcover” version of this record, which is sandwiched between two blocks of fancy screenprinted wood and sealed with a latch. It’s the kind of 7-inch you could totally get married in.

ABNER MACCAW




CAMERA OBSCURA
My Maudlin Career
4AD
About two years ago, I was obsessed with the song “Hey Lloyd, I’m Ready to Be Heartbroken” from Camera Obscura’s last album. This time around I’m torn between the first two songs, “French Navy” and “The Sweetest Thing.” I’ve been listening to them on repeat for days. I think this album is better than their last one (and I liked the last one a lot). The music is huge and violin-laden, and Traceyanne Campbell’s voice almost reminds me of the great Harriet Wheeler—almost. Just occasional inflections. I bet she could pull a Jenny Lewis and take a few voice lessons and then suddenly bust out with a crazy vibrato on her next album. Please do that!

MEG SNEED


THE THERMALS
Now We Can See
Kill Rock Stars
A skinny guy with a funny name in a tiny t-shirt from Portland with an annoying voice and imprecise DIY ethics. It’s a bit too perfect as a caricature of American indie rock, don’t you think? But I get it! They’re a Trojan horse from corporate America—a marketing ploy! Their next record will probably sell us chewing gum. There’s no other explanation for living up to every Pitchfork cliché imaginable. They even got the light-skinned black girl with horn-rimmed glasses and a patch of bleached hair! A dead giveaway that this was thought up by a 50-year-old marketing exec about five years behind the curve. I’m onto you the Thermals aka Wrigley.

GREG LEWIS


CASIOTONE FOR THE PAINFULLY ALONE
Vs. Children
Tomlab
It’s going to be Demerol Drip for the Painfully in Traction if I ever meet this asshole face-to-face. Ladies, is this really what you want in a man? Someone who might have an extra Tampax in a pinch? I know that’s a low blow, but I just can’t get behind this pussification of the American male, much less when it’s as creatively bankrupt as this tired post-emo, nerd-chic bullshit (572nd time that’s come around the bend… congrats!!). This guy may be over the age of 24 by now, but his fans and this emotional abortion that he calls “music” are two reasons I rarely trust anyone under that age. Who can listen to this and have any faith in the future of “underground” music? And yes, I am publicly challenging this man-wafer to a fight.

ANDREW EARLES


V/A -
Cuniglius Records March 2009 Sampler
Cuniglius
Wow, Patrick Hambrecht of Flaming Fire is on fire! He sent us this awesome sampler of the gabillion albums he’s putting out on his new record label. And it’s in a hand-drawn cardboard sleeve suitable for framing. AND he included a note explaining that he’s not mass-producing CDs anymore because handmade stuff sells better and most people just want MP3s anyway. So that means you can get all these albums on iTunes, but if you do order a CD from him, he will custom-make one for you and it will look great! We think this is a genius plan. The roster of acts is also pretty impressive. There’s Patrick’s own 3,000,000 Rejected Operas album; his warped electro-country band, AAAA Locksmiths & the Bail Bonds; Ambergris (band of cartoonist Matthew Thurber); Black Strap Molasses Family (bluegrass featuring Dame Darcy on singing saw); Jared Whitham (freaked-out singing man); and finally Space Nutz! (self-explanatory). Phew. I think Patrick just inserted many a record-label dick into the dirt. Kudos.

MAY KRELLEN


WEAVE
Weave!
Manimal
Just because these people have the wherewithal to start 97 good bands and a whole new label (they’re all part of LA’s wet-dick, totally mental, psychedelic-goth family tree and this is one of many side orders) doesn’t mean the people involved aren’t total fuckups. I tried and tried to interview these dingbats and they said stupid, boring things, drunk-dialed me without even being belligerent, and/or never got back to me. You know that when a whole group of humans really piss you off and you still like what they’re doing, it’s fucking excellent.

TARTANA BILLOWS


PTERODACTYL
Worldwild
Brah
I figured that with a name like Pterodactyl the music would be all like “CRAW CRAW!” but instead it’s all “Deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle” with some of these modern arty hardcore drummings and synth “VoooOOOOOOoooom” sounds. I would describe this to others as a gay Lightning Bolt.

PATTY O’FURNITURE


2 years ago

Comments