Blow me!

yeah, yeah.

i was supposed to be writing about woelv, but i 'haven't absorbed that one yet.' i mean, fuck, it's really good, but it's darkly beautiful and subtle, and i just had some coffee and my leg's all twitchity and my mood is less inclined to over-analize quietude. so i'm writing about the blow instead. 

subtle too, the blow (currently, and relevant to this blog, comprised of khaela maricich (constant) and jona bechtolt (current side-man) is anything but quiet and subdued. at least on the only record* i have so far, 2006's 'paper television' (k records). kicking off with a jaunty drum sample, 'pt' is a distinctively pop-informed album, with more samples, staccato synthesizer tones, overdubs and a general sense that if one were in a sweaty club, with sexy kids writhing in drug-induced agonies, the record would feel just as natural as it did to me, sitting in my otherwise quiet studio, where i stymied my attempts to work with the record on by playing it. it grabs the attention unrelentingy with smart and deeply (and ambivalently) sensual lyrics, and in the urgency with which they are expressed. the songs struggle with the balance of sexy-cool assertiveness and a raw, heart-rending vulnerability, all the while keeping a beat that races on unrelentingly. i had to listen to it three times in a row at first. usually i only do that when john darnielle puts something new out.

musically, it's interesting to look at how the blow relates to the 'other' northwest music culture (contrasted with the macho-pathetic-druggie-flannel era of the early nineties), the more diy-informed strain that, with olympia's beat happening, among others, predated, ran concurrent to, survived and thrived past the notorious 'grunge' moment that launched an ill-prepared seattle onto the world stage (an attention that was partially responsible for a socio-econimic influx that decimated our infrastructure and anticipated the increasingly national trend towards a dissolving economic diversity). the oly' bands were loud in  a more dischordant way than the more academically punk-metal combine of bands like nirvana and mudhoney, whose thrasher heritage was evident in their long haired head-banging and rough, heroin-chic. the bands a little to the south tended to be more akin to east coast icons like the velvet underground, with minimalist tendencies and performances, but more importantly, with a focus on politics that flew in the face of their contemporaries, especially with regard to gender and sexuality. olympia was the cradle, if not the birthplace, of the riot grrrl bands, and homegrown label k records, founded by calvin johnson in 1982, tapped into the international underground tendency of bands and micro labels who were trying to truly do it themselves, and opened the door for west coast artists less interested in sales and mastering and stereo, and more focussed on their individualistic outputs. when i was in school in upstate new york in the mid-nineties, i heard more stuff from olympia than i had when i was going to high school in the early part of the decade in seattle itself. funny how that stuff happens.

khaela maricich is from seattle (queen anne, specifically) and moved around from seattle to olympia and portland, and her locality both informs the blow and is defied by it. the play between girlish rasp and the assertiveness female strength are contrasts that are characteristic of bands like sleater-kinney, bikini kill, le tigre and others. there are also echoes of miranda july, specifically the type of fluidly quotidian aesthetic she espouses in her multi-media works (it should be mentioned that maricich is also a multi-media artist), most clearly in her film 'me and you and everyone we know' (2005). maricich's lyrics are confident and desperate, with a certain gender neutrality that is also echoed in her androgynous physical appearance. 

i'm droning on.

khaela maricich makes juicy-sexy-poppy-scary-goddamniwannacry-goddamniwannafuck-jump!-jump!-lie-in-a-ball-on-the-floor love songs. sometimes they are in french.

i'm totally crushing on this record.

****

*when i say record, i do mean it. i've been getting on a selective vinyl kick lately (yeah, yeah, the hipsters have been espousing vinyl for decades (see: 'high fidelity' (the movie, not the book)), but i'm talking about something simpler, i suppose, that when i can, i prefer some bands on the medium of a scratchy vinyl record. everyone knows that vinyl carries a certain tonal richness that is difficult to reproduce on digital media (especially my least favorite, the mp3 format), but i would like to just say i'm not a snob about it. i just prefer the copy of 'strangeways here we come' that i bought with my newspaper route money (no fucking joke) in 1991 to the copy of it i have on cd. i always listened to side 2 first when i listened to that record (which was a lot), and it always sounds wrong to hear it right! then of course there's bands that i've written here about like the cannanes and boyracer and all that, whose output just sounds better when it's fucked up (i don't actually own a decent turntable--just a shitty record/tape stereo from the mid-eighties--and the tape deck hasn't worked since 1997).  recently got some beat happening on vinyl from k records, and listened to it for the first time on its natural environment, and that was kind of cool, kind of comforting (remember, not so much cd sales for indie acts in the eighties). anyway, to sum up: not a snob, but certainly appreciative of the options available...