- buy valium onli in Firewater, The Golden Hour Hi webmaster!
- Borch in Death Magnetic is pulling Life Or Death For Metallica Oh Burton, Where Art Thou?
- Voltaire in Pitchfork Leaks Some of the 2008 Lineup I was hating on Animal Collective before it was “hip” to hate on Animal Collective. Hell, before it was hip to LIKE Animal...
When I think of DFA records, I immediately associate the label with people dancing,
drinking, and essentially acting like retards with poor decision-making skills. Not that those are bad things. At all. I don’t need my music to be all deep and emotional or whatever. Sometimes (often) I just want to dance and not think about, well, anything at all. DFA fulfills this need, and I consider the label to be almost entirely responsible for this whole indie-dance-punk-revolution thing that has happened in recent years. DFA bands like LCD Soundsystem and the Rapture (to name the well-known) exemplify the label’s philosophy – the music is all about having fun, and that’s cool with me, because fun is like, totally enjoyable. Doesn’t everyone want Daft Punk to play at their house? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Anyway, I say all of this simply to point out that New Zealand’s Shocking Pinks is not a typical DFA band. Sure, the beat is still there. Sometimes. But mostly it’s just one guy (Nick Harte) making a lo-fi racket with all of my favorite instruments and singing glum, earnest lyrics about how he feels. And it’s not even annoying.
Quite the contrary.
Perhaps the only DFA-esque quality to the 17-track record is the percussion, which is
front and center on most of the tracks. As the ex-drummer for the Brunettes, it makes sense that Harte would use rhythm and the drums to carry his music. “Smokescreen” is probably the closest Shocking Pinks gets to the rowdy and frivolous; the track is pure dance-punk, DFA-style. The loud and lyricless “Cutout” also brings the dancefloor to mind.
However, tracks like “End of the World,” which is the obvious standout on the record, are of an entirely different stock. The drums are still lively, but all I hear is the saddest synth in the world and Harte’s scruffy, gloomy voice. “I Want U Back” is so reminiscent of Psycholand-era the Jesus and Mary Chain that it’s hard to tell whether it’s a blatant rip-off or just an homage, but either way, it’s my favorite track on the album. And “Emily,” with it’s drumkit racket and synths, may be a song about jealousy, but jealousy has never been so fun.
Because the album is essentially a compilation of two previous Shocking Pinks records (released in 2005 on New Zealand’s Flying Nun label), it makes sense that the sound is sort of all over the place. On one track Harte will be all haze and drone, the next he’ll sound like early-era New Order, then back to the standard dance-punk of DFA, then he’ll make all sorts of lo-fi electric guitar noise, and then back again. What is constant is Harte’s attention to lyrics and the emotion behind them. Just think of Shocking Pinks as the sensitive kid brother in the DFA family. Sometimes it’s ok to have feelings, even when you’re dancing.
Release Date:
Label: DFA Records
Rating: 7.5/10
Ryan Adams is considered by many to be the king of alternative country. He
rose from the ashes of his ground breaking band Whiskeytown to become one of America’s most infamous troubadours. In a world where songwriters such as Rhett Miller, Jeff Tweedy, and Jay Farrar were his contemporaries, Adams managed still to craft a unique and genuine voice. His earliest solo records were continuations of the earnest, desperate songwriting he had crafted as the leader of Whiskeytown. Suicide Handbook came about in 2001, a sort of side project to his own solo career, when the singer was finally beginning to peak. And while it looks as though his label Lost Highway intends to include this in some kind of career spanning box set, they kept it on the shelves for a long time.
This is my first exposure to Suicide Handbook, even though it’s been available as a bootleg for quite some time. And after listening through both discs twice now, I can honestly say this is the moment when Ryan Adams jumped the shark. Adams claims that this collection of songs was his way of coping with a terrible breakup. Well, judging from the sound of it, he couldn’t have cared about the girl very much. The same hipster cowboy quality of Adams’ songwriting is evident in these recordings, but it’s easy to miss, considering how utterly forgettable each song here is. There are moments, like on the song Cracks in a Photograph (“…tell her Elvis is cool, but the Rolling Stones will sweep her away”) where that poetry almost reaches through the miasma and grips the listener, but the easy listening pace and damnable similarity of the songs always ruins those chances. I’ve had my heart broken before, and the pain and anger and confusion I felt gave birth to beautiful, passionate art. I poured all that betrayal, all that doubt, all that desperation into my brain and let it spill out all over everything creative I touched. Suicide Handbook doesn’t sound like the testament of a man who’s just had his heart broken, it sounds like the testament of a man who just found out the dry cleaner couldn’t get that mustard stain out of his favorite shirt.
When given a serious listen, Suicide Handbook sounds more like James Taylor than Gram Parsons, more like the Eagles than the Flying Burrito Brothers. The record never takes the kid gloves off, never cries and screams and pounds the walls in anger, never goes on a bender to wake up two days later in a stranger’s bed with the name of broken love still on its lips. It just coasts, the way someone might do in a relationship that’s comfortable, but by no means passionate.
But that’s not the album’s only transgression. Suicide Handbook marks the moment when Ryan Adams began to become so self-involved that he couldn’t see when to just stop. Now his albums feel a lot more like watching your favorite movie ruined by a terrible “director’s cut” than a revelation of great songwriting and honest, passionate music. At the time, maybe he felt this was too deeply personal to be released, or maybe he was still capable of deciding when something wasn’t as good as it could be. I’ve thought in recent years that if he would just have held back some of his songs, not been so overzealous with the releases, that he could have crafted some beautiful albums. Suicide Handbook, with a proper editorial hand, could have been one of those albums. Instead, it was a harbinger of things to come. Let’s hope that Easy Tiger, Adams latest record, will mark a return to his old form.
It’s fitting that Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers final album in the Tent Trilogy (Believe, Pandelirium, Swampblood ), and likely their last on North Carolina label Yep Roc, explores the theme of death in the crazy world that is the American South. It is also fitting that Swampblood marks a return to the dirty Southern blues rock that was this band’s hallmark sound back before they ever left Bloodshot Records. Turning to the comfortable and familiar is something we all do when faced with the finality of death, and the Shack Shakers are no different.
Colonel J.D. Wilkes’ brand of “bump in the night” songwriting gives justice to the South in a way that few other songwriters can. With his songs, Wilkes explores the dark, but he does it with a romantic bend, showing us the things about the dark that we love to hate, and indeed, the things we hate to love. He realizes, as so many good writers have, that it’s only when we’re lost in the dark that we truly meet ourselves. The Colonel doesn’t just write songs, he takes you on a Wonka like tour of the truth, pulling back the curtain to show us how we can be in the throes of religious fervor, sideshow terror, and finally, death.
Swampblood is as much a celebration of influences though, as it is a document of the dreams and the reality that populated the South of Wilkes’ childhood. The runaway train that is guitarist David Lee is finally free here to run right off the tracks, destroying everything in his path, urged on through it all by the frenetic hillbilly drumming of Brett Whitacre. And the whole album is brought back to the light, anchored in reality by the consistent play of bassist Mark Roberston. The music thunders along, the album itself clocking in at just over thirty-two minutes, referencing Hank Williams (Hellwater), CCR (Swampblood) and the ghosts of old bluesmen with distant eyes and haunted strings (The Deadenin’).
Swampblood takes the listener through a day in a Southern Gothic nightmare world, forcing the ears and the eyes open, not allowing them to ignore what they are experiencing. Then the sun rises on a new day (Bright Sunny South) reminding us that light will eventually shine in even the darkest of places. The Tent Trilogy is about a man facing the truth of a life down South, learning to love the twisting and the snarling things, and embracing the life-affirming joy of terror. This album marks the funeral and subsequent wake for that man, so the only question before the Shack Shakers and Colonel Wilkes now is, “What does the afterlife hold?”
Well, if the name of the band doesn’t make you want to give it a spin, you’ve got no damn sense of humor. Strap on your seatbelt and roll down the window of your Ford Escort. It’s 85 degrees outside with little or no humidity. You’re driving down a random highway that has a letter for a name, like “E” or “XX”. Crank up your tape-player-with-a-tape-adapter-connected-to-a-portable-CD-player as loud as it’ll go without hurting your factory speakers. Alabama Thunderpussy is about to rock your beer-logged ass off!
It is absolutely impossible to dislike the licks these guys throw at you. Like the engine of a ’75 Mustang firing its pistons, the beginning of the opening track, “The Cleansing,” fuels your palate for the roaring burst of metal stringed sensationalism blowing out of the speakers at the next turn! The rest of the road is a bumpy one, but the ever-present taste of alcohol on your breath makes you keep on driving.
If you want a more realistic idea of what the Thunderpussy tastes like, I’d say it’s like listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd–only angry as hell and modernized–with more metal to their sound. Think of the sweet taste of Southern rock dipped in heavy seasoning and topped with rock-metal vocals, and all that crap.
Now, regardless of the sheer brilliance and completely befitting role in the songs, the vocal styles for this album are new to long time fans of the ‘Pussy.’ Newcomer Kyle Thomas bares his tonsils on Open Fire, but with whiskey-ridden vigor. His wails and screeches are enough to make you want to pop open a bottled frosty with your thumb just to look cool but still feel like a dip-shit. Thomas’s words tell an even better story than his voice does. Amidst tales of arrest and drunken swinging matches there lie actual words of wisdom. Take the closing act of the album, “Greed,” for example. The lyrics poetically tell the tale of how we as a society constantly want more and more of what we don’t have. Typically, as all of us know, that’s money…and sex…and the occasional new car. As said (or rather angrily shouted in a melodic way) by Thomas, “some things just aren’t quite what they seem.” Good mother of everything that is holy, that is something I need to remember!
Alright, if you’re just not in the mood to hear heavy yet frolicking licks constantly for a full hour, be not afraid. Once in a half-empty beer bottle, a slow solo wafts across Open Fire’s soundscape. Some of them are slow, most of them are not, but all of them possess serious callous-filled talent. Guitarists Ryan Lake and Eric Larson know what they are doing; it’s obvious from the first pluck.
If you want to put your ears to the test without forking over 15 bucks for the whole album (recommended), take a listen to the dancing-on-the-bar-tastic third track “Words Of the Dying Man.” If you’re in the mood for words of wisdom as well as a good head-thump, check out the next track, the heavily introspective “The Beggar.”
I particularly recommend listening to the album’s 6th track, “Whiskey War,” while drinking heavily. It goes with a fifth of Jim Beam much like cigarettes go with cold Budweiser. However, if you’re one of the types of drunks that gets a real kick out of becoming violent, DON’T…listen to it drunk…still listen to it, by all means…just not whilst drinking.
Open Fire is just a fun album to damage your ears with, plain and simple. I can’t exactly say “it rocks” without making it sound like I’m being completely serious. It’s just that I can’t think of a better way to sum it up. It just does exactly what it is meant to do, it…rocks!
Applying to a Big, Ugly, Loud, Laborious Shit-Hot Industry Trade Show (or B.U.L.L.S.H.I.T.S.) like South By Southwest or this month’s CMJ New Music Marathon is a tricky proposition for a small-time independent rock band with little to no label support–ironic, since these festivals were originally started, allegedly, to showcase new, up-and-coming, undiscovered talent. Well, i’m not shattering anyone’s preconceived notions by pointing out that this hasn’t been true in awhile; after all, who are Spoon, Xiu Xiu or M.I.A. hoping to be discovered by at this point? So, sorry to say it, small-timers, but there usually is no room at the party for your stupid little band.
Still, every year, legions of hopefuls apply to hope beyond hope (that’s a lot of hope, y’all) that the genius of their unique take on Hot Topic-accessorized mallpunk or NPR-approved accordion-and-banjo driven crapass Americana “alt-country” will tickle the right ear at CMJ, and will be magically extended the Golden Ticket to Manhattan or Brooklyn. And how will they apply? These days, through SonicBids, the online Electronic
Press Kit (EPK) networking service that “has become one of the fastest-growing music communities on the web trusted by over 70,000 artists and over 6,000 festivals, music conferences, and clubs from over 100 countries” (or so says their website). For only $35 every six months, you and your band can enjoy access to quick and easy application processes for each of those festivals, all of which will charge you entry fees on top of the SonicBids subscription price! That’s right–SonicBids affords you the opportunity for quick and efficient application to and rejection from SXSW, CMJ, Milwaukee’s Summerfest, and many others!
Now, before you think i’m being unduly harsh on the bands that subscribe to SonicBids and use it to place themselves on their knees, mouths open and gag reflexes at the ready, at the gross, veiny cocks of hundreds of aforementioned B.U.L.L.S.H.I.T.S., it’s time for full disclosure–we’re one of those bands too. Or, at least, i am. The SonicBids subscription comes out of my pocket because i think it’s sort of ridiculous to ask the band to shoulder something that stupid. So, why do i do it? More full disclosure–it’s worked for us. Our SonicBids application secured us a slot at the 2005 CMJ New Music Marathon, playing Chinatown’s 169 Bar at 1:30 in the morning on the last night of the festival in front of 18 appreciative(?) concert-goers…15 of whom we knew personally. But, um, hey, exposure! Right? Eh? Eh?
Sigh. I kid, though; the entire experience was actually pretty fun and i’m glad we did it. But any notion that playing a CMJ showcase did anything whatsoever for our “career” (ha) is naive at best, delusional at worst. Still, this did not discourage me from humbly submitting the band to the mercy of the CMJ selection committee once more this year.
Unfortunately, little did i know that the recording of our next full-length would eventually get delayed until October–this weekend, in fact–when i applied. Since we’re all saddled with those albatrosses known as day jobs, taking days off for recording and a road trip to New York in the same month wasn’t going to happen, so i wasn’t very disappointed when we finally got our rejection notice (although, wow, having played before doesn’t guarantee you a future slot, eh? Good to know). What i wasn’t expecting, though, were 15 replies to the rejection notice, each from a different rejected band, each hitting “reply to all” to emphasize the fact that CMJ forgot to blind carbon copy the email addresses of 671 rejected applicants.
Uh, oops.
Flushing together a confounding mix of metal, prog, salsa, and you-name-it is not the recipe for distinctness a lot of bands expect it to be. “We don’t really sound like anything else out there,” is, 9 times out of 10, a blatant lie from bands who cite belligerently divergent influences; a harbinger of indecisiveness more than breadth.
No so with Ideamen. Far better than jerking themselves off with what they have Frankenstein’d from across the rock spectrum, each song is another, “Why didn’t I think of that first?” moment for songwriters listening in. Catchy as hell too, even when they’re shredding balloons with a wood chipper. ‘Know the Dance’, for example, makes you wonder why salsa and shred-metal haven’t been partnered before as a matter of course.
The Ideamen ep Progress, from the folks that also brought you Soulvasq and the Gwen Mitchell Experiment, collects five tracks too accessible to go unnoticed, and too urgent to be disregarded. The juxtaposition of styles and frequent dynamic shifts court being a little too abrupt, but maintain a giddy arc that neither burns slow, nor too hot. The Chicago-based quintet could have made simpler songs to effectively convey its lyrical message, but the energy of Dave Solar’s vocals (surpassed only by his rubbery, comfortably awkward stage presence), and the piano and synth-heavy arrangements do the perfect job of conveying the feeling of watching priests and politicians hurl poo at each other. ‘Cavity’ is especially effective at creating a cartoony space that’s far from goofy, and mixing kazoos and stoner-rock riffs don’t sully the keen lyrics, but give phrases like, “You’re either with us or against us,” the appropriate absurdity they deserve for being spoken earnestly by humorless pundits.
A few jaded listeners might not like how accessible AND good are Ideamen, because a band with such a penchant for the complex should be spending their time bending minds and to hell with tapping toes, right? Well, who better to rattle a few cages than an aggressive dance band from somewhere between hell and Wally World?
Ideamen plays the Double Door on Wednesday, October 3, doors open at 8 PM.
