May 2009

Live in a DiveThe incestual issues that obscure any sort of proper kraut rock discography are explicated through the life of a super group dubbed Harmonia. Made up of different combinations of musicians from Neu! as well as Cluster and ever Brian Eno for a brief time, the group, over it's three proper studio discs, set out a blue print as specific as any other ensemble from the period.

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ArtificeThe British music scene of the '60s had as many stars as over here in the States. Each group had some unique flavor while still borrowing liberally from American blooze and RnB. No matter, the music worked. And even if the early '60s only yielded some sugary love songs, the latter portion of the decade was rife with hits. Unfortunately, some of these chart toppers are all but forgotten today. Regardless of their current standing in the history of pop music here or in the UK, Slade - or on their first album Ambrose Slade - was able to rave up simple blues, get into spacey Pink Floyd territory and even cover a song by Zappa.

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DefektiveFirst off, ever since interviewing the (International) Noise Conspiracy earlier this year, I've become pretty wary of Swedes - or anyone from a country whose population overwhelming has blond hair and in Detroit could pass for a gaggle of models. Apart from that, pseudo revolutionary commie speak seems pretty pervasive over there. And in an atmosphere of nonsensical, ill conceived governmental works the mush that passes for brains - in t(i)NC at least - seems be result in grand notions of musical purpose. And unfortunately, not just played out garage rock is affected by this - it's droney pretndo experimental rock as well.

The American based Important Records traffics in the general territory of purposefully obtuse rock musics. And to include the Skull Defekts isn't all too shocking. It makes sense actually. Unfortunately, apart from the Vanishing Voice disc from a few years back, I can't say that I've enjoyed any of the label's releases all too much.

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Not StiffThere's more than one confusing aspect to Repeat When Necessary - the 1979 album from Welsh singer and guitarist Dave Edmunds. First, the fact that this disc is from one of the Love Sculpture dudes, who were responsible for some bluesy, pysch touched moments, but has nothing to do with that music seems weird. Secondly, the album is on Led Zepplin's Swan Song imprint while the music doesn't seem even tangentially related to the soopa group's muzak. Next, is the fact that not only does the album look like a power pop disc, it features Nick Lowe on bass and begins with an Elvis Costello song seems to refute the fact that there isn't all to big a correlation between this disc and that movement.

Apart from all of those things, it's still a pretty good listen.

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Better Art MusicOutlaw, outsider, downer sludgy schlock has a very specific collector base. And it's for that reason that new discs from the recorded past of America keep popping up. Much in the same way folks travel around collecting historic artifacts for pleasure, or their own vaults, some one kindly preserved enough material from a gentleman named Nicodemus that we, today, still have some tunes to listen to - thankfully.

Detroit has graced gleeful geeks with showers of music from soul to funk to garage and punk. And somewhere in the middle is Nicodemus. A raunchy, face tattoo sporting, gnarly, long haired biker outlaw who has recorded under his name for roughly forty years - and is somehow still going - has as interesting a past as anyone else.

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Tea for WeirdosAs the trappings that adorn Animal Collective's music have shifted, its songs still function as a momentary peak into what the dudes are up to. The straight forward lyrics of "My Girls," from the group's newest disc, Merriweather Post Pavilion, provide listeners with little reason for conjecture. The repeated chorus of, With a little girl, and by my spouse I only want a proper house seems as explicit as "Single Girl, Married Girl" from the Carter Family in which disparate life styles get a quick going over. Of course these lyrics might just be the opinion of Avey Tare. But longing for pedestrian domesticity, as related by Deakin most unequivocally figured in a late 2007 Montreal Mirror piece, dissuaded him from appearing on this newest album and subsequent touring.

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Lady SoulCurrently, Aretha Franklin is afforded as much due deference as any other American performer of music. It'd be difficult to count how many Presidents have either honored or asked her to perform. That by itself is probably enough to figure a career as a success. If not, though, the political and cultural cache that Franklin touts surpasses most folks in the entertainment industry.

While a great deal of her recording career was given over to reworking popular songs, the selections that Franklin filled her albums with had some sort of affect on the greater culture. Even the songs that were written specifically for her have become anthems to portions of the not just the American record buying public, but international fans. She is generally recognized as the leading voice in soul music from the '60s and even if that wasn't the case a string of albums from the latter portion of the decade and the early '70s could make the argument for her.

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Self TitledSolo artists are funny for a number of reasons. One, as a solo performer, an individual has to think that their personage is entertaining enough on its own to entrance an audience via recordings or in a live setting. But the other reason is that, by and large, solo artists make use of a wide variety of guests to flesh out recordings.

In the case of Leon Russell, he was able to wrangle most of the Rolling Stones - minus Keith Richards - a Beatle, Eric Clapton and Joe Cocker for assistance on his eponymous debut album. Of course, Russell came about befriending these folks in a very specific manner - he played on their records or toured with their bands.

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The AlbumThe experimentation of A Ghost is Born seems gone, but also the county folkisms of Being There has disappeared. And if you remove those two aspects from Wilco, what's left?

Having been birthed from the demise of Uncle Tupelo and its sometimes traditional take on American, Wilco began in much the same manner - if not for a dash more of that old rock and roll flavor. But since the group's 1995 album A.M., it seems as if there has been a lack of consistency from this Chicago group.

In part one could place the onus of this problem on the shoulders of Jeff Tweedy and whatever personal problems he's encountered in the last fifteen to twenty years. But that would be unfair. Tweedy's a human being - even if he's one of the most well respected rock dudes still writing songs.

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The Freak of Araby is out now. Get it.

HogsTo a certain extent, Cream was the British reaction to Hendrix, who himself needed to escape the States in order to create his ultimate musical statements. While the playing of the Experience was obviously tied to Americana, the combo can't be seen as a British rendering of blues. Hendrix - raised in the Northwest - was as tied to the cultural trappings of America's cities as any other guitarist.

Clapton, obviously, was fully formed by the time that the Experience began releasing material. The Yarbirds served him as a boot camp for blues guitarists as he aimed to move beyond straight coping other's load. But in this, it can be said that Clapton still had some stuff to work through.  Cream was formed as a super group, in part, because no one in that trio could carry a band themselves. Hendrix, by contrast, was really able to do anything that he wanted to musically in any setting.

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FooledThe world is over loaded with garage related bands. Some stay a bit closer to punk territory than others, while some work to get into surf or pop territory. And really, it doesn't matter what slant these individual groups end up putting on their songs as long as it has some sort of balls. It doesn't need to be Motorhead, but I think there're probably more effete indie bands than anything else in the world right now. So, there's probably some happy medium somewhere.

Setting oneself apart from the drove of bands in these all too interrelated genres is more difficult, most likely, than you might believe. And for whatever reason the self titled disc from Ty Segal really stuck out from last years glut of releases. I can't say that it was prominently featured on any year end doozies, but it shoulda been.

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A FireSometimes music doesn't sound like it's from a time or place, but the notes that end up lighting up your lobes seem to mean something very dear. Not dear, like your mammy would call you, but important. I suppose that important is completely arbitrary as well - I kinda think Obama being elected is less remarkable than most others....but I work out of a room that's roughly 8x10, so I wouldn't listen to me either.

After coming across Blue Cheer, re-indulging in early Black Sabbath, figuring out who High Rise was and interviewing the Wooden Shjips, it seems that I've somehow missed a good bit of what makes the stoner/pysch/punk/drug rock genre float. Monoshock.

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Invisible CitiesFor some inexplicable reason Fela Kuti and the all too unrecognized genre of Afrobeat has been given a second life. The early 2000s saw the re-issues for Fela begin and the conclusion was a CD/DVD set that include a pretty fascinating look into what his daily life was like. But with these re-releases, an even more important event occurred. White dudes started playing afrobeat. Of course, funk and jazz bands have been integrated for a pretty long time at this point and the world probably has a few too many white blues scholars, but this new interest in the genre has spurred on countless releases.

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Dayton SoundsAfter downloading an album called Of Parts Unknown from a Dayton band called Dementia Precox over at Mutant Sounds, I decided to only use it as a frame for telling a story. But before we get into that, a quick rap about the disc:

These guys could be considered a primitive industrial band - which is either a misnomer or just two conflicting ideas. But most of what makes up this disc is a series of percussive and noisey back drops with occasional yelling atop of it all. It's not unlistenable, but I would be at a loss for a reason to toss it on the old turntable - that is, if I owned a copy. But this is a forerunner of some genre that a few devout fanboys are gonna be interested in.

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More Stephen McBean. This time as Pink Mountaintops.

Strange, Strange, StrangeIt's funny to read other folks write about garage bands. I enjoy reading that the 'revival' is still going on. Admittedly, there was a pretend fervor about the genre a few years back - but really, 2001 seems like a pretty long ways back for this 'revival' I keep hearing about to be persisting at this late date. Maybe I'm wrong and the third wave of ska isn't over either. It's possible.

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The Living Dead YearsThe east coast scene during the psych hey day counted a wholly different crowd and overall vibe from the sunshiny, beautiful people that founded the west coast deal down in Los Angeles or up in the Haight. There are so many variables - overwhelmingly blatant as well as pretty imperceptible - between the lifestyles on either coast that the kind of chasm between the two scenes isn't really surprising. The Dead versus the Velvets seems like as good a dichotomy as any other to explicate this. Where the Velvets were as image conscious as the Dead, it seemed like theater - dark and brooding like. And even if there were some musical similarities, it's more than safe to say that the dudes that made up the Velvets weren't too into the Dead and their weird hippy enclave. The Dead did get darker as their career continued - but they never wrote songs about lovers accidentally stabbing each other in the head.

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Musical DiasporaIt's another in the seemingly endless barrage of lost "gems" being resurrected in this digital, file sharing age! As much as collectors like to believe that sharing these discs is a service - and it is in some ways - it kinda seems like a refutation of Darwinian evolution. If a band is around for a time and actually gets to make an album, but then seemingly falls off of the face of the earth, it seems as if that should be the ultimate fate of said group. Endlessly uploading any middle of the road rock album from '67-'78 only services one's ego in that whatever nerd does the work can claim some sort of ultimate, supreme supremacy. But, oh yea. Thanks for the uploading Tobruk.

With all of that moaning at the onset of this, one would be pretty swift to guess that I don't find this album, Ad Lib, all too remarkable. Let it be said, though, that I've not recorded an album, so I'm not an authentic narrator for this journey

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Just part of the reason why Germans make good music...

FailThe first come back album from the New York Dolls was so ugly on the outside that I didn't really give the music any chance. That being said, Cause I Sez So is equally disgusting. But I really wanted to give the music a fair shake. And I did - until I got to the end of the disc. But let's do this sequentially.

The title track begins the album and comes off sounding like a Guns 'n Roses cover band. A good one, but that doesn't make the '80s inspired guitar solos sound any better. Of course without the Dolls, there wouldn't have been any hair metal nonsense to refer to here. So in addition to helping create the codified world of punk, David Johanssonn can be seen as a forbearer of dudes with spandex rocking technically difficult solos in front of thousands of people. Great.

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Diane Izzo's latest album, Age of Honey is a must have to round out your 2009 summer playlist. Sensual, raw, languid and evocative- this collection of songs drawls and undulates with warm imagery and relaxed soul. Recorded over a year in Chicago, Izzo's homebase of many years before her eventual move to the northern mountains of New Mexico, Age of Honey takes inspiration from the natural world, voicing the solace and escape she finds therein.

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