chunky, not smooth.

remember the eighties and nineties? there were those tape thingees. and for most people i knew that meant that you had a pile of pirated cassettes (taped on double-deck stereos of real, bought tapes sometimes, but mostly they were from records. i certainly had a high percentage of my music on tapes horded from friends. it was (cough. and is) a good way to exponentially increase one's buying power. barry would bring in the pixies. jay would get the retro stuff. all of us would tweak out on sub pop's many offerings. don't even get me started on the mixtapes; john cusack can do a better job singing their praises.

i used to have a superchunk tape. leave it to me to not even know which one i had*. i doubt i knew anything then more than their name, and how that tape sounded. how it sounded was different. different from the ur-indie stuff we could scrabble together, like the pixies and the smiths and the vaselines. different from the scene happening around us: the green river and mudhoney, mother love bone and screaming trees, the butthole surfers and nirvana. i was maybe as snotty then as i am now, but i really didn't have the knowledge or experience to explain how superchunk was different from grunge. i couldn't articulate now how i thought it was different. it was though, and i enjoyed listening to that tape. that, and pj harvey, and seaweed and they might be giants. haha.
as with so many parts of our youths, that tape disappeared somewhere along the line and, rather than miss it, i forgot about it as new sounds greeted my young ears. explosions of screaming riot grrls and gentle strums of twee maestros vied for attention with the newly-discovered (for me) nicks cave and drake. and others, more and more, for years.
i remembered superchunk's name, and "oh, those guys.... i had that tape." couldn't remember how it sounded though.

a few years ago i was rifling through the used cd bin at a local record store and i came across a superchunk cd ("on the mouth"). i said, "oh hey, those guys," and picked it up. it sat on my shelf for a little while, and when i put it on the player, i was a little shocked at how good and how raw it sounded. i hate to admit that after that playing, it went back on the shelf as some other record (in all honestly, probably one by the mountain goats...) took over my affections with an iron grip.
then several months (okay, maybe eight or so) ago, i came across another cd ("come pick me up"), this one for a real price, and i picked it up, and both went onto rotation chez matt. it all started to come back to me, the significance of this fine exponent of rocking the fuck out without being douchebags. i started getting wistful thinking about mac playing with the bats for their stellar "spill the beans" ep; about how jon was revitalizing the otherwise two-man mountain goats with his insanely good drumming; about the whole romantic history of a great band giving birth to a truly legendary label, merge records.
it was all just to much, and i fell in love properly this time--not just a fleeting crush.

i would've been content to harbor my feelings within if a few recent reminders had not spurred me into some rusty writing: i discovered mac mccaughan's excellent "portastatic"** blog, and have been enjoying that; then came the announcement, timed perfectly to co-incide with my recent unemployment, that not only was a superchunk ep now available, but a 7" single on clear vinyl would be available for pre-order--two more temptations from the nearly irresistable merge catalogue at just the wrong time; then there was portastatic's gorgeous cover of franklin bruno's "tableaux vivant" that scott from fayettenam hooked me up with. it was all too much. i caved and ordered the ep and single--i couldn't hold out any longer, and after all, what are credit cards good for if not going into debt for what you love? amiright? (it's gonna be rough this fall when merge puts out the clean's new studio album. argh. gnashes teeth.

unfortunately the single, "crossed wires b/w blinders (fast version), and crossed wires (demo)" met the vinyl production delay indie record geeks have come to regard as a natural pitfall of their endevors. however, in a classy move, the label sent out the download coupons included with purchase early so we who bought would not lose hair waiting. they are absolute darlings down there in north carolina, i tell ya. so i've been listening to three songs all day (ok, with a little julie doiron thrown in for swoonability purposes)--actually, two versions of one song, plus the middle one. ha. nerdy? yes i am.
but holy shit, they are so good.
especially good is the third track, the demo version of "crossed wires." the single track is awesome, and kicks every ass in the room, but the intimacy and immediacy of the more-acoustic version, with stereophonicly jangling guitars perfectly setting up mac's inimitable high-pitched and plaintive drone, is nearly impossible to top in my opinion. it showcases the strength of the song, one that's capable of being rocked to the edge, but also the depth of a more "humble" treatment. that it also highlights the range of this venerable punk band is a point almost rendered redundent, but it is one i will make nonetheless. can't wait to get some income again; then i can delve deeper into the back numbers...

* upon reflection, it was most likely 1990's "superchunk"
**portastatic being mac's longstanding other project.

i dug my heels in for the winter

so i spent about an hour or so, earlier in the week, writing this really long, drawn-out post about the mountain goatsand kaki king12" black pear tree e.p. oh man, i worked on that for a wahile, checking all fucking sorts of facts and shit, and sticking in this and that hyperlink, and would you know it? this fucking platform screwed me over on it, and i seriously considered smashing the shit out of my screen, but thankfully i did not, i cannot afford to spend another 2K right now, thank you. but now, i'm logging on the write this new post and the stupid shit has changed the formatting tool selection, SO, is this in the font i prefer? who knows! is it in italics? bold-face? zapf-dingbats? how the hell would i know?
pretty damned irritating.
so, i meant to write this stuff earlier. i was all poetic before, but fuck it at this point. get on the mac train, blogger. i mean seriously. i only know two people who use PCs. one of them is very attractive. one of them, not so pretty, works for microsoft. but he runs vista on his macbook pro.
john darnielle of the mountain goats uses a mac.
and he also works with people like scott solter who "committed" bpt to tape in north carolina this summer. those who visit mr darnielle's flickr page have ben tormented with the existence of this record because of one tantalizing, teasing picture. i am not going to hyperlink to it. look it up if you want to. i am feeling nasty tonight, sorry.
so the mountain goats used to put out shitloads of stuff in small tasty packages, like eps and singles and splits and comps and all this shit. sometimes, things like jack and faye wouldn't even be released, but dammit, you knew they were out there somewhere (like online). sometimes they would ave etchings by nikki mcclure, like new asian cinema and sometimes they would be in elaborate little sacks, like on juhu beach. and then, of course, sometimes there are only 666 of them, like the ep mentioned below. black pear tree is not quite so elaborately manufactured. it has a simple, classy cover. there were some pretty swirly vinyl copies (200) distributed randomly amongst the edition, but the music is the same, and the selection of who got the swirlies was random, as i say, so it was fair. the only thing that freaked me the fuck out, was that, like satanic messiah, bpt was a tour-only type deal. fortunately, john gave some copies to various distributors, and peole like me were able to get copies (i couldn't make it to the last show here, because i am a mess--it is a long story, we ain't going there). so thank you (again) three beads of sweat. and also for the other stuff i will mention another time *cough-cough*.
oh, wait, there's music in this ep. i should mention that, right? so, it's good, i think i mentioned that already. i was not before, and am not intimately now, familiar with kaki king's oeuvre, but i checked out a video of her on letterman doing ridiculous things with (to?) a guitar, and it's fairly obvious why on the liner noted to bpt she's credited with "greater guitars," whereas jd is credited, somewhat self-dis-servingly, i will say, with "lesser guitars." king is also credited with music credits for tracks 2 and 5 (mosquito repellent and roger patterson van respectively), but the overall tone of the album is far from broken by any disparity. it sounds like king and darnielle have been a band for yonks, although, as the story goes, jd's been a fan for a while, but kk was unaware of who tmg was. lol. anyway, king does vocal service on the opening title track to darnielle's lyrics (he wrote 'em all, goats fans) and sings them as if they were her own. so if anyone ever ascribed a gender bias to tmg's lyrics that conceit could easily be overturned in this one song.
the record is pretty spare, going the opposite direction from the rockiness superchunk drummer jon wurster has lately brought to the band (king does percussion, and it's subtle and rasping)--much like the sm ep. it would maybe be ineffective, stylistically over the length of an lp, but in this form, the atitude, the sounds and the words all come together beautifully to form a very authentic and organic whole.
special shout out to supergenesis, the first track on side b. it's a miltonian tale of failure in the diabolical vein, and of the rueful lust for retribution. analogic and quietly vicious, it slides comfortably into the ranks of jd's great pissed-off-and-gonna-cut-yer-nuts-off songs. which is one of the reasons we're all here, i suppose.

i've been thinking a lot about the vinyl situation lately, by the way. especially as i've been buying a lot of vinyl. i read something recently by damon krukowski about victrolas and old wax, and it seems like that's all anyone's talking about on the mg forum, and i have mentioned its merits myself in relation to boyracer and k records and stuff. but (and this will be the focus of its own post soonish) i keep thinking, well, if you can hear the music and the music's goo, does it REALLY matter what format it's in? i mean, it's nice, and i would not part with my special records--or any album art or notes or whatever, but it seems like this schism between the vinyl-fetishists' totems on one side, and the vapid itunes download on the other, and a wide gulch between that threatens to engulf other options. that's the part that worries me. opinions on this welcome. i'll be writing more about it later.

so to sum up: black pear tree=so good. jd assures the people (many of whom are highly anxious wanting this record) that it is not meant to be unattainable, and that somehow people will be able to get hold of it. maybe not on vinyl (lol). probably not on tape thought, thank goodness (hold on, carlos! i got no hate for the cassette, but my deck ain't worked for about eleven years, and i want those damned daniel johnson tapes (not to mention tmg stuff!!!)--i just want options, alright?).
in the meantime, go download satanic messiah. don't be a baby, it sounds just fine. of course, it may sound amazing on vinyl. i wouldn't know...

update pending / relief

after drunkenly raving about tenuous nick cave/john darnielle connections last time, i finished typing (out of a sense that i needed to just stop more than anything else), and quickly became relieved that i had not followed the thread i was originally going to write about. which was, that while it was cool to be able to download (in a cool way) satanic messiah, i was angry that it was going to be nearly impossible to score the other tour only mountain goats record, the 12" six-song black pear tree e.p., by tmg and kaki king. i hadn't any tickets for the forthcoming show (the one a week ago, now) and i was all "shit, it's great to be able to download thank you mario, but our princess is in another castle, but i am an addict, and i need every goddamned bootleg version and alt-take and un-released tracks, thank you very much, and i can't have it and i wants it (sob, sob).

but then while i was getting ready to go in that direction, i hyperlinked the address for three beads of sweat and when i did that, i noticed that a.) they were still in business; and b.) they had copies of the bpt ep!!! i ordered one immediately, and, i was later to discover, none too soon. so i was one of the really lucky people to have been able to get an ep from that avenue, and i now have it in my little hands, and know two things:

1. it's really good.

2. i will blog more about it soon (as soon as i finish the illustration, probably)

so, i thought i'd mention it. also thought i'd mention what's on deck in the next month or so.

-the long-promised anacortes special (elvrum, woelv, d+, etc.)

-elf power

-vanderslice

-david kilgour

-the lucksmiths

see you soon

everyone's heart should be broken

i am aware i am segueing from my promised post yet again. sue me.

i just received an historic package in the post (well, not "just," it was more like five hours ago, but i had things to do, and i just now am sitting down to bloggify (that's like testify, only less religious malarcky, and more indie crap)).

"what, what, matt, what historic package was this," i hear you say (because i hear things).

well. let me just tell you.

i have mentioned boyracer here several times already, and here i go again. the england-to-arizona twee punk legend(s) have put out their final record, and are calling it a day. as boyracer anyway. stewart anderson has said it's time to focus on new baby and herd of cattle (hopefully in that order), and the pipe dream of being a rock star is currently untenable. he has since said there will be a new project from him and jen turrell (featuring a violin!), but after its incredibly long run, it's time to put boyracer to bed. 

to commemorate the occasion, stew and jen have released a brilliant lp on vinyl in a limited edition of 100 copies. they sold out in about a week or something.

pretty damn good. they record is too. 

or rather, it kicks you in the balls, then when you've crumpled to the ground, it cracks your skull with steel-toed doc martins, and as the brain and blood oozes out, it puts out its cigarette in the waste. in a good way, that is. exellent fucking record. punk rock in all it's speedy-drummy-squeally-grindy-guitar-attention-deficit-disorder-basslines-andspitspitspitoutthemlyrics-delivery-glory. stewart's rapid-fire whine wheedles you into thinking it's 1995 again, and jen shrieking in the background is vintage riot grrrrl.

side two starts off with a drone of some outrageously bureaucratic flavour, which yields seconds later into a grinding guitar riff which opens up one of my favorite songs on the lp, "northshire coastline", followed by the likewise excellent "a sober truth." the riot of drums and maelstrom of feedback provide a gorgeous trapeze-artist's net for anderson's high-pitched voice, and it's hard to think of any young bands today who can deliver the clashing favours of disaffection and lusty joy of what punk has to offer--certainly not the crop of teen-rebel idols. i don't watch american idol, but i've seen glimpses of it, and i have to tell you, i genuinly feel sorry for the insipid little shits who think that's what music is. maybe i'm just getting old, thinking how much better "we" had it (actually, it sucked. the music was just really good). i really don't see bands like mudhoney, seaweed, boyracer, galaxie 500, the violent femmes, the vaselines, or a hundred other bands relegated to the dustbin of indie-history (oh, you never sold a million records? mariah carey and whitney houston are obviously better artists).

it makes me want to puke. 

so does the whiskey i drank on a troubled tummy...

i could rant aimlessly, drifting from one fragment of thought to another, surfing the conciousness stream, but i want to mention the coda to the lp, and to boyracer itself, the last song on the record, "the last word."

it jells everything that brought me to boyracer in the first place (a lucksmiths cover of "i've got it (and it's not worth having"). enough punk to take the piss out of the geezers, enough melody and sentiment and smart lyrics to enamour the indie cognoscenti, beautiful guitars and clamouring drums. it's an unabashed "goodbye," an autobiographical paen to what's behind stewart, a "my way" without frank's misogynistic psychopathy, with a final flourish that could have been treacly if it wasn't so whole-heartedly good: a cameo from jen & stewart's baby tallulah, who gurgles with delight and closes this chapter on a truly great little band.

i feel really lucky to be one of the one hundred...

oh yeah, the lp was called sunlight is the best antisptic, featuring a slice of corrugated cardboard with a horse in the desert silkscreened planly in black. the track listing, record sleeve, lyrics, all are just tucked into a plastic cover with the cardboard; a simple, in-your-face d.i.y ride into the sun. and did i mention it's all sold out? what a way to go.

***

also, i just have to mention that jen also made the most gorgeous hand-decorated t-shirts. the best band shirts ever. 

Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!

oh, holy shit, i just received the pile of vinyl i ordered from p.w. elverum & sun (source of wind). shit, shit, shit, it's amazingly gorgeous and i haven't even listened to it yet... as soon as i wipe the drool from my self i'll lie down on the floor and absorb it. omnibus blog coming soon...

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...

i ♥ new music; part ii

This isn't going to be a long post, just sort of an teaser, an amuse-bouche of reviews to come. It may be a little bittersweet too...

So, I've mentioned the good people at 555records (which is to say Stewart Anderson) and Red Square (which is to say Jen Turrell)--and it could be further mentioned that both of these indie-entities are blissfully entwined by marriage--and now I'm going to mention them again. A box recently arrived on my doorstep from Arizona, and it was crammed with a butt-load of indie CDs and gorgeous coloured 7" vinyl from the aforementioned labels. I haven't even got halfway through it all yet! I'm so stoked. Not just Boyracer and Mytty Archer (Stew and Jen's "main" bands) but also Steward, Que Possum, The Bright Lights, Jean Bach, Faintest Ideas, The Cannanes, The Love Letter Band, The Tall Boy, Kyoko, The Escargo-go's, Origami, CEX and more.

I don't think I did mention that Stewart's going to semi-close up shop soon. He's got cows and a wife and a baby and a life that takes every ounce. And he hasn't much left to pursue a music career that results in 25 sold 7"s. I wrote him a note saying how much I would miss his creativity and input, but I also sent him about a hundred and fifty bucks to get all this stuff. If you're reading this, go visit Jen & Stew's sites and buy some of their immense back catalog. A lot of the stuff is out of print, and there are some real gems to be found. They are records (not just in the disc-sense!) of a DIY ethos that was once beautifully analogue, but which is being subsumed by the vastness of cyberspace. It's so worth finding, and worth holding close, and listening loud to.

Of particular note, by the way, is the Red Square "The Way Things Change" series. It's a set of compilation 7"s, in coloured vinyl, of some of the best indie bands in the last several years. You can find Dennis Driscoll, Boyracer and Architecture in Helsinki on Volume 5 (blue vinyl), Mirrah and The Cannanes on Volume 3 (yellow!!!), and the brilliant Lucksmiths on Volume 4 (green). 

I can't believe how good some of this stuff is.

Help prevent it from just disappearing into fanboy nostalgia...