1992: Polvo - Cor-Crane Secret
Before I even begin, I have to get a massive “hells yeah” out of my system: for the first time in over 10 years, the perpetually underrated Chapel Hill guitar anti-gods of Polvo are recording a new album. Fellow fans of their wobbly-stringed, going-nowhere-fast guitar riffs and opium-den-East meets hot-boxed-West aesthetic, rejoice with me. Admittedly, my expectations are high. Perhaps unfairly so, especially if you consider the fact that every album since their debut, Cor-Crane Secret, has represented a transformative shift in their sound, for better or for worse. Sure, we want to hear what Polvo is capable of coming up with in 2009. But let’s be honest -- if the band were to go back to the rawer, more experimental side they explored on their debut, I doubt anyone would be particularly disappointed.
Cor-Crane Secret is filled with ideas. We hear guitars played like sitars (“Ox Scapula”), rubber bands (“Bend or Break”), and theremins (“The Curtain Remembers”). Metal, hardcore, and Nirvana are fractured and bent into more sinewy versions of themselves on “Sense of It.” Two songs later, “Channel Changer” takes the almost unavoidably twee elements of glockenspiel and Superchunk-style noodling and turns them into something undeniably discordant and manic. The slinkiest Kim Gordon talk-sing songs in the Sonic Youth library are channeled on “In the Hand, In the Sieve,” and yes, about a million other influences and concepts are stress-tested through the band's strained amplifiers. Perhaps the most unexpected part of it all, however, is that all of these seemingly incongruent elements form something remarkably coherent. You have to listen through the feedback and skronk to get to it, but it’s there.
All things considered, it’s easy to see why some of the band’s more dissonant tendencies may have been off-putting in 1992. But it’s that same adventurousness that keeps Cor-Crane Secret fresh. After all, noise-rock is cool again -- the art-damaged variety even cooler. The sonic climate is perfect for Polvo’s specific brand of mismatched tunings and zig-zagging hooks. Whether or not their next album will adhere to the sound for which they’re known and loved has yet to be seen. But truth be told, if all they did was go back to the basics of Cor-Crane Secret, they’d still be years ahead of most rock music coming out today.
1. Vibracobra
2. Kalgon
3. Bend Or Break
4. Can I Ride
5. Sense Of It
6. Ox Scapula
7. Channel Changer
8. In The Hand, In The Sieve
9. The Curtain Remembers
10. Well Is Deep
11. Duped
The Factory - Path Through The Forest
I’m sitting here, staring at my MacBook, trying to find the right word to describe how Path Through The Forest -- the recent Guerssen reissue from obscure 60s Freakbeat-era band The Factory -- sounds to me. Sonically, it’s psych-tinged garage. At the time of its release, it was considered subversive and, dare I say, “trippy.” From a critical standpoint, it’s underrated. But for me? The word that I keep coming back to, strangely enough, is “scholarly.” Okay, if you didn’t already hate me for my blatant Apple product placement, you probably do now. Please, allow me to explain myself.
Path Through The Forest is not a proper album. It’s a collection of seven songs (three originals, three covers, and one alternate take) pieced together from the original sound engineer’s archives. As such, the overall feel is not that of a cohesive work, but of a historical document -- a set of lost outtakes and artifacts from an era only remembered by those already astutely in-the-know. It’s a recording meant to be studied or deconstructed as much as it’s meant to be enjoyed.
Given that fact, it’s no surprise the songs collected here vary in sound and quality from track-to-track. The band’s first single, the original edit of “Path Through The Forest,” could be the best psych track of the 60s that you never heard. Its B-side, a cover of Paul Revere and the Raiders' “Gone,” is good enough, too, drenching the original tune in acid-inspired studio effects without drowning it completely. Similar treatment is given to versions of Fairport Convention’s “Mr. Lacey” and Family’s “Second Generation Woman,” although with less arresting results.
That said, it’s the originals that provide the real interest in this collection. “Try a Little Sunshine” meets the 60s psych-band quota for compositions on the subject of LSD. Sure, it seems a bit cliché now, but it stands up to the tried and true hazy standards of the time all the same. Meanwhile, the song’s B-side, “Red Chalk,” proves to be both the greatest surprise and one of the album’s highlights. It’s their most stripped-down tune, recalling the Byrds at times and proving that The Factory’s dynamics extended beyond their captivating studio prowess.
Perhaps the most interesting track in the collection is its closer, a previously unreleased low-fidelity cut of “Path Through The Forest,” remixed using a destroyed acetate of additional sound effects the band had originally intended to appear on the song. It’s certainly not the best-sounding thing on the album, but the addition of these layers provides a fascinating transformation and shows how truly ahead of their time they were (even if their record company didn’t want anyone to know it). Listening to it now, you realize Path Through The Forest could have been the blueprint for any number of psychedelia-influenced bands, from Jefferson Airplane to The Jesus and Mary Chain to Spacemen 3 and onwards. It all feels a bit like looking at the Venus de Milo -- even though the classic aesthetics feel dated, and the specimen itself is partially destroyed, you’re glad it’s there for the world to experience, if only to help us understand everything that came after.
Simply put, the release of Path Through The Forest is a labor of love compiled by a few dedicated musicologists for an audience of like-minded listeners. If you’re not already interested in psychedelia, garage, or freakbeat music of the 60s and 70s, listening to this isn’t going to do much to change your mind. But for those who are -- whether you're a hardcore completist wanting to flesh out your collection, casual enthusiast looking to recreate a scene from a Richard Linklater film on a sunny afternoon, or part of the larger majority who probably fall somewhere in between, Path Through The Forest provides a worthy and engaging retrospective of yet another unappreciated group of the psychedelic era.
1. Path Through The Forest (original version)
2. Gone
3. Mr. Lacey
4. Try A Little Sunshine
5. Red Chalk Hill
6. Second Generation Woman
7. Path Through The Forest (previously unreleased version)
Strange - Souvenir Album
The story of Strange is a cool one, albeit not that unique: a rotating lineup of high school friends from Olympia, Washington -- some musically trained, others so enamored by West Coast bands like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, that they learned their instruments via “on-site” training. Let’s face it: it's endlessly fun touring the high school garages of the 20th century, regardless of how the music holds up. It’s often easy to overlook technical proficiency -- and to a leaser extent creativity -- when youthful exuberance is pouring out of a recording. In the best case scenario, these limitations can lend themselves to something not only different from their influences, but something entirely unique unto itself. Since youthful naivety is the crux of Strange's sound, Souvenir Album, though far from essential listening, still has its merits, full of subtle beauty that percolates with repeated listens. Besides, if anyone’s to blame for mediocrity, the ball lies squarely in Shadoks’ court -- they’ve slipped a little with their quality control over the past year. Don’t hold it against the high school kids for not thinking how their music would fare this many years later.
The album itself is culled together from various mid-70s live performances. Organized in a haphazard, piecemeal manner, Souvenir Album’s disjointed trajectory is in large part what makes it interesting. While not as extreme or deliberate as the ever-fractured Faust Tapes, its editing approach (though seemingly naïve) is pretty odd. Segments from extended jams fade in and out, more significant than interludes, while leaving room for more fleshed-out songs to blossom in between. Lo-fi intermingles with hi-fi, and an occasional sound collage or off-kilter (and probably unintentional) production trick makes you wonder what the fuck Strange were thinking.
Their best and most structured moments are loaded with soft rock introspection. Although citing Yes, Zappa, and other art-prog influence in the liner notes, it’s rarely reflected in their music. Coming closer to an early-70s, Laurel Canyon-inspired folk rock, Strange strive for something more mature than their youthful years. While I envision young adults of the time pilfering from The Stooges and Zeppelin, Strange hardly sound enamored with those vehicles for rebellion. Their heaviest, most prog-driven song, “The Ballad of Hollis Spaceman,” although loaded with odd changes and fuzzed-out guitar solos, sounds more akin to Jefferson Airplane than anyone else. It’s also these attempts at heavier rock that keep Souvenir Album from being a total success. They show Strange still searching for their identity. But soft pop was clearly their strong suit, their subtle, piano-driven melancholy sounding like a younger, less experienced sibling of Bill Fay. There’s a formative quality to the whole thing, and I assume that had they developed more on another album, they would have eventually reached Fay's songwriting caliber. Lyrically, Souvenir Album reads like a smarter rendition of high school journal entries -- full of self-loathing, pseudo-introspection, and general discontent, yet somehow wise in its years.
It’s amazing that this music exists at all. Admittedly, I’m kind of a sucker for artifact records that were destined to never be heard. Standout songs like “Segment From Mushroom Wednesday/Lies By Poetic License” and “The Last Song” are quite powerful and make Souvenir Album worth the listen, despite its spotty flow. Originally released in a run of 100, Souvenir Album was “released” just as the band called it quits. It combines the good, the bad, and the ugly that private-press aficionados eat up, but it's probably not worth the time for the more peripheral 70s rock enthusiast.
1. Segment From Barapp
2. Somebody
3. The Ballad of Hollis Spaceman
4. Four Eyes
5. Segment from Barapp
6. A Faced Dream/Segment From On Winning The War
7. Rick’s Song
8. Segment From Mushroom Wednesday/Lies By Poetic Justice
9. Twelve Boats
10. The Last Song
Eugenius - Oomalama
If you happened to be reading a music magazine late in 1991, chances are you would have encountered an interview with either a post-Nevermind Nirvana or a post-Bandwagonesque Teenage Fanclub. (Possibly both.) And chances would also have been good that in the interview, they would have heaped praise upon a Scottish band going by the name of Captain America. Yes, like the superhero. Enough like the superhero, in fact, that legal action was threatened, and so it was that the new band of Eugene Kelly, late of The Vaselines, would be renamed Eugenius.
With a reunited Vaselines currently touring and the collection Enter the Vaselines newly released by Sub Pop, Eugenius might be overlooked in the larger context of Kelly’s songwriting. But the ways in which Kelly (credited with writing 11 of the 14 songs on Oomalama) brings blissed-out pop of an entirely different sort to fruition here is both rewarding and insidiously catchy.
As the live recordings on Enter the Vaselines make clear, Kelly’s previous band combined sunshine imagery with a gleefully smutty lyrical sensibility -- just cue up “Rory Rides Me Raw” for the apex of this juxtaposition. Oomalama pivots on the same contrast, bringing the childlike wonder of pop music together with a reluctant weariness. It’s the sound of someone leaving a busied youth behind and learning to understand downtime, writing reflective pop songs about, essentially, being reflective. At the same time, there’s also the matter of the front and back covers (which feature lovingly arranged dioramas of children’s toys) and the tips-of-the-hat to superhero comic books, both in the group’s original name and in the fact that one song bears the title “Flame On.”
Oomalama opens with the title track’s unfettered bliss, led in by a stomping drumbeat and fuzzed-out guitars. One could argue that the album is bookended by tributes to a pair of early Stateside Vaselines supporters, with its opener evoking a cuddlier version of Mudhoney. The word “oomalala” is repeated over and over next to barely decipherable lyrics about boys and girls, summoning the kind of euphoria the faux-meditative title can only allude. The segue from its manic rush to the defined notes that open “Breakfast” is dramatic: a blurred night out tumbling into a morning miraculously free from hangover, but contemplative nonetheless. “Cool September morn/ I was reborn/ The sun gate crashed through my front door,” Kelly sings, and for the first two stanzas he details absence, until the chorus, regretful without apologies: “Sometimes I can’t help falling down,” repeated four times, each version meaning something different.
"Oomalama" and "Breakfast" set the tone for the rest of the album: exuberant melodies coexisting with lyrics bewildered by their own disillusionment. “Jesus, take my life from me,” Kelly sings on “Down on Me,” and the sentiment remains even amidst the roar of drums and the chorus of tuned-in harmonies. What separates the album as a whole from more boilerplate power-pop is a tendency to zig-zag, both in its flow from song to song and in the sidearm progressions within the songs themselves. Kelly’s voice is more charming than strong, but it nonetheless anchors a series of inherently comfortable harmonies. And the track order seems designed less to evoke a consistent rise and fall and more to summon up a jumble of emotions, from elation to depression to resignation.
Oomalama closes with a violin-driven cover of Beat Happening’s “Indian Summer.” “Just a boy playing possum,” Kelly sings, his tone implying that it’s been years since he was that boy. And again, the lyrics return to one line: “We go our separate ways.” Although the song isn’t Eugenius’s own, they settle into its rolling beat evenly, channeling its bittersweet nostalgia and, perhaps, using it to demarcate their own beginnings.
1. Oomalama
2. Breakfast
3. One's Too Many
4. Bed-In
5. Hot Dog
6. Down on Me
7. Flame On
8. Here I Go
9. I'm the Sun
10. Buttermilk
11. Bye Bye
12. Wow!
13. Wannabee
14. Indian Summer
39 Clocks - Zoned: Recordings 1987-1980... Rewind
Even knowing German won't get you much closer to understanding who 39 Clocks were. On the surface, they seem to be another arty punk group with a direct lineage from the Velvets, Suicide, No Wave, Godz, and any other canonical prankster-rock acts that are held in esteem. Yet for some reason, 39 Clocks don’t have any of the notoriety or familiarity of their contemporaries (or antecedents), even with all the appropriate trappings and characteristics of a good-old fashioned fucking-shit-up punk rock act. They came of age in the early-'80s, and their album Subnarcotic actually made some German charts, sharing space with Hüsker Dü, The Smiths, Scritti Politti, Violent Femmes, and The Jesus and Mary Chain.
There was the requisite lack of respect for authority, with tales of the members smashing windows in the streets and busting chairs at shows. There was heavy drug use. There were aliases -- the two guitarists and primary members went by CH-39 and JG-39, which is somehow derived from LSD-25. They supposedly did a show in Hannover where they played the circular saw and vacuum cleaner instead of guitars. One reviewer recalls seeing them play under the name Blitzkrieg. Their aloof non-caring attitude stood out, as did their lack of talent, thin bodies, pale skin, and black outfits.
39 Clocks ultimately fit somewhere amidst the many acts that have become revered for their crappiness. They certainly aren’t super-melodic, and the recordings on Zoned won’t get extra stars for their guitar perfection. “Rainy Night Insanities” drones on for seven minutes with a lazy, tense cuckoo-clock-beat and some insane ramblings, but it doesn’t go anywhere that you haven’t already visited with The Velvet Underground. “Dom (Electricity Elects the Rain)” starts with a Suicide organ riff and then churns along like another John Cale-styled ditty. An errant feedback noise provides some edge over Dada rants, and around 3:50 we are degenerating into pure guitar noise. Contrast that with “Psycho Beat,” which is more straightforward but still full of echoing vocals and dark tones, and you get a feel for how far 39 Clocks went. “Shake the Hippie” is possibly the happiest-sounding track on the album, yet it still feels like Budweiser and Bran Flakes in the afternoon. In contrast, “Twisted & Shouts” is as Dada and nihilistic an oldies ‘cover’ as I have ever imagined.
What makes 39 Clocks special, or at least interesting enough to warrant a seven-year retrospective done in reverse (starting with '87 and going back to '80), is that they probably should have gotten more attention, but instead reside comfortably in the utility closet of the unfurnished basement of the rock underground. That might appeal to your quest to know about some band no one else knows about. I don’t think 39 Clocks will blow any minds, but they do deserve some attention, if for no other reason than their frequently amazing song titles. “Radical Student Mob in Satin Boots.” “Art Minus Idiots.” “Rainy Night Insanities.” “New Crime Appeal.” “Shake the Hippie.” I think they had the right idea.
1. My Tears Will Drown The World
2. You Can't Count the Bombs (It's Zero)
3. Fast Cars
4. PLO
5. Rainy Night Insanities
6. Past Tense Hope & Fears On 42nd Street
7. Dom (Electricity Elects the Rain)
8. Heat of Violence
9. New Crime Appeal
10. Aspetando Godo
11. A Look Into You
12. 39 Explosion Heats
13. Psycho Beat
14. Test the Beat
15. 78 Soldier Dead
16. Shake the Hippie
17. Twisted & Shouts
18. DNS
Black Eyes - Black Eyes
Dismissing Dischord Records when you approach adulthood is nearly as much a rite of passage as embracing Dischord in high school. Of course, neither reaction gives the actual music a fair shake. The scene’s insularity is double edged, compelling some to absolute loyalty and alienating the rest. And yet, in 2002, Black Eyes’ eponymous debut seemed wide-reaching and prescient, and that was before the staggering influence of their name became clear (Black? Check. Eyes? Mate.) To this day, I find myself telling fans of noise/punk/art Band X to look up Black Eyes, not contemptuously, oh no, but maybe knowingly. This impulse of mine isn’t limited to Black Eyes: I recently implied in an interview with Gang Gang Dance that they were influenced by Dischord's Q and Not U -- I have no idea why -- to which they responded that they'd never heard Q and Not U. This little exchange gave me an idea of how deeply Dischord had penetrated my consciousness. I wondered if my critical objectivity was damaged, my perspective hopelessly skewed from an adolescence of intense fandom. It seemed like a good time to revisit, at least.
Well, Black Eyes opener “Someone has his Finger Broken” sounds more or less like it always did: brutal, empowered, and self-aware 21st-century punk. Biting but catchy "woo—ooh—oohs," sung/chanted by singer/bassist Hugh McElroy, bookend its subterranean simmer. The ‘Eyes wisely wait to unleash banshee Daniel Martin-McCormick on to the world until the second track, “A Pack of Wolves.” A “WTF/Oh Shit” moment rolled into one ensues, as he wails like a manic eunuch being castrated on the spot, and Black Eyes are transformed from another self-serious DC band into some seriously outré shit. The opening of “Yes, I Confess” is the first of several passages on the record where the band lets some air into their sound, predicting their second and final record, Cough. I might add that their ritualistic, rhythmicentric, two-drum approach anticipated this decade’s infatuation with that naughty six-letter word (I completely agree with Jacob here: let’s stick to “neo-savage” or possibly “ third world chic”).
The years since I last listened to this record have afforded me a bit of perspective. For instance, the propulsive rhythm section, spazz-jazz guitar, and hysterical vocals sound like James Chance and the Contortions if they were sent to boot camp to wipe that art-kid sneer off their collective face. Similarly, several of the tracks have bass and drum turnarounds worthy of the best !!!, but are used to such different effect that it seems completely incidental. Free jazz, dub, neo-savage (that’s right) are all tangible, but the resulting synthesis is unmistakably DC punk. An austere and righteous zeal lies behind every shriek, squall, and skronk on Black Eyes.
One band they bore a more than a superficial resemblance to were The Blood Brothers. Both bands played post-hardcore v.2000 to young crowds, but their lyrical affinities are even more notable and possibly indicative of a larger epochal psychic temperament. Intonations of lurking psychosexual violence rest beside semi-opaque political and social protest. The moral allegories avoid Manichean simplicity chiefly through Daniel’s performative vocals; when he screams “10,000 million boys screaming for their sisters/ and their mothers… they all want to fuck their mothers,” he is in the throes of the lust and violent abandon that disturb him so. Occasionally schlocky (“A pack of wolves (werewolves!)”), its comicy sensationalism works in tandem with its dramatic seriousness to convey the confused and bitter outrage that punk has always been about, in a language punk had never quite used before.
Black Eyes were the kind of band that you wait for in community center basements week after week, and the lucky east-coaster who received the band's gospel will bear witness to how they were The Best Live Show Ever. Their album seems lightly produced, like they hit ‘record’ expecting that Thing They Had to translate untamed. It does, mostly. Some of their more awkward and confrontational aspects lie intact, and let's just say they have a negative influence on repeat listenability. On “Speaking in Tongues,” Daniel, well, speaks in tongues. He takes a brief vocal solo, sounding like (unintentionally, one must presume) Adam Horovitz testing the limits of obnoxiousness.
Often, records by short-lived punk bands are enjoyed in a nigh-voyeuristic manner: the more embarrassingly earnest, the more palpably outdated, the more fascinating. The moment here that speaks over any insider accounts of drums-in-the-audience chaos, or conversely over any retrospective fetishism, is “Deformative,” a short little ditty about loss of innocence via the Catholic priesthood built on a minimalistic three-note bass line. So timely as to be absolutely timeless, this capsule of screaming boys in basements is also is an eternal howl for our nation's psychic ills, and coming of age to inherit those ills. That sort of thing doesn’t really go out of style.
1. Someone Has His Fingers Broken
2. A Pack of Wolves
3. Yes, I Confess
4. On the Sacred Side
5. Nine
6. Speaking in Tongues
7. Deformative
8. King's Dominion
9. Day Turns Art
10. Letter to Raoul Peck
