Revisiting Rollerskate Skinny

When Paul McCartney's younger brother broke into show business later in the 60s, he did so as "Mike McGear." After Kevin Shields' band My Bloody Valentine broke into the British charts two decades on, little brother Jimi stuck with his surname. But in the intimate Dublin rock scene, the association with MBV dogged him and his mates, who in 1992 formed Rollerskate Skinny, They languished less lauded than Mike McGear's The Scaffold, who at least had their one-off novelty hit.

Named after Holden Caulfield's praise of a girl who was "rollerskate skinny" in The Catcher in the Rye, the quartet brought an ambition rivaling the Beatles to their two albums. All Music Guide's Tim DiGravina compared their pair of full-length albums to a combination of Beatles melodies, MBV feedback and experimental song structures akin to The La's, Killing Joke, Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev and Echo and the Bunnymen, Rollerskate Skinny captured the neo-psychedelic, post-punk and indie guitar moods of their contemporaries. But the four men rejected easy choruses and catchy repetition.

Instead, Shoulder Voices, co-produced by Guy Fixsen (who engineered MBV on Loveless) featured odd pop filtered through chiming miasma and clattering dynamics. Alternating delicate tunes with aggressive roars, Rollerskate Skinny refused to play along with their peers, who often toned down their idiosyncrasy to get aired on stations beyond the college radio, critically admired, fringes of that era's alt-rock. While spot-the-influences tempts critics, this band sneaks around any fence-me-in.

A few albums rush out of the starting gate and then settle down halfway down the track, ambling into the finish line fifty-odd minutes later, hardly recognizable as whatever or whomever had started them off. This pattern distinguishes both recordings. Beggars Banquet distributed this band's 1993 debut. 

Its first five songs rattle along with threats and chants. Jimi Shields integrates the traditional Irish bodhrán drum into "Lúnasa," which mixes in the ominous percussive beat under a tribal melody. Recalling an earlier, inventive and overlooked Dublin ensemble, The Virgin Prunes (there the relation is to U2 rather than MBV in civic genealogy), that song conveys an intelligent nod to the island's folk roots, enriching the noise rather than smoothing it out. "Bring on Stigmata" finds Shields' vocals echoing and wailing as keyboards churn, credited to Shields and Ken Griffin. Meanwhile, Ger Griffin (no relation) supports with unpredictable guitar. Stevie Murray's bass thunders under "Bow Hitch-Hiker," the last combative contribution among the eleven songs. For, after the first side's sonic attack, the second side settles into pleasantry, akin more to later Mercury Rev or Flaming Lips. As with those bands, this music provides decent pop-rock, but it's no match for those outfits' once-amplified, addled first few albums. Luckily, Dave Fridmann, producer and tamer of both those American bands, was not on hand to dampen down whatever Rollerskate Skinny had turned up to 11, at least for a while.

Apparently, the constant references in coverage of the band to brother Kevin led Jimi to quit before 1996. That year's follow-up Horsedrawn Wishes found the band reduced by one, relying on session drummers. A leaner Rollerskate Skinny thickens the layers of instrumentation, creating even denser and more challenging harmonics. The band's confidence shows. With co-producer Aidan Foley, they reached a clever apex in exploiting well whatever Warner Brothers had shelled out for studio costs. 

Perversely or intentionally, the band also delivers album two on the same template as the first. Until the end of the seventh entry, the three musicians, now all playing what the liner notes reveal as the guitars and keyboards (which Jimi had mastered on Shoulder Voices), shine. "Speed to My Side" is the tune AMG reviewed as marrying Beatles shimmer to MBV shudder. It saunters like opera, rising and falling. These skewed songs float and dip, cresting and dipping over waves of volume as texture. Rollerskate Skinny stack up the voices and pile on the momentum, if for half the tracks each outing.

"Man Under Glass" has the members vowing their hate of the sun, or maybe the Son. This bobs over a mad flurry of mechanical tinkering, over rhythms capable of crushing the wary or inspiring the saintly. The music swerves and spins. The bands listed above may offer rough similarities, but the determination to resist the usual rock styles makes them again akin more to humbler if sassier misfits such as The Virgin Prunes. In a city where U2 reigned, it must have been a daunting challenge to go against the flow and to insist, as Rollerskate Skinny does twice for a stretch each album, on audacity.

Why each album glides after soaring may not need any answer more profound than rest after exertion. Their energy dissipates gradually, as sides two bring a listener back to firm ground. But the best moments remain in the unsettling, giddy, surprising and woozy rides that precede the landings. 

The members went on after the band's demise following their second album to the usual side projects. Dave Fridmann inevitably weighed in as co-producer of Jimi Shields' Lotus Crown. Their Chokin' on the Jokes (1997) resembles Fridmann's main bands, but it also tilts upon a shoegazing foundation on which Jimi builds up engaging and offbeat songs. It also suggests that Ken Griffin may have been Rollerskate Skinny's mastermind, rather than Shields. For Dead City Sunbeams, the project of Griffin's alter ego Kid Silver, managed on JetSet to rouse critical applause just before the millennium.

Ken then created a collaboration with Aspera, Philadelphia neo-psych veterans, as Favourite Sons. They released a few Iggy meets The Strokes or Echo-plus-The Church records, after all moving to Brooklyn. Finally, The Radio (2004) generated Ger Griffin's dream-pop back in Rollerskate Skinny's hometown. It's a shame that streaming services do not enable audiences over two decades later to enjoy all of Rollerskate Skinny. For now, Lotus Crown and Shoulder Voices survive as bits and bytes.
(Spectrum Culture in re-edited form as part of its Revisit/ Rediscover music feature series 6-6-17)

White Fence's "Live in San Francisco": Music Review

This one-man, four-track, bedroom studio musician faces a challenge. Transferring the intimacy of his warped, intricately textured and lo-fi recordings, taken from five albums, to a tiny San Francisco stage poses difficulties. Tim Presley's White Fence succeeds. These folksy, jangling and rambling ditties transform through a vibrant, versatile band, if only for two nights at the end of March 2013.

At the club Amnesia, caught on a multi-track Tascam 388 by four engineers, Live In San Francisco introduced a series of concerts captured by Thee Oh See's John Dwyer, for his Castle Face label. Dwyer's own band with frequent collaborator Ty Segall has proven compatible with Presley's neo-psychedelic, early Seventies-inspired and Anglophile sounds. Presley's voice will remain an acquired taste, but those who favor Robyn Hitchcock's homage to Syd Barrett, or George Harrison and Ray Davies' earnest, hushed warbles will find Presley's updates on their British style familiar and fun.

For all his quirks on tape, Presley live exudes a detached air. Judging from these results, he might have begun the concerts with trepidation. This album opens as he scolds the audience, followed by some noodling. However, discipline kicks in. The combination of "Swagger Vets and Double Moon" with "Mr. Adams/Who Feels Right" aspires to late-Sixties pop combined with Captain Beefheart's manic arrangements. The line-up allows Presley's compositions to air out from their compressed DIY origins. In this fresh atmosphere, these melodies bloom brighter and their harmonies resound happier.

The best song comes third, not last. "Baxter Corner" may be credited to a notoriously steep street of San Franciscan grade that traps transmissions and terrifies drivers relying on GPS apps and not a topological map of the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, where Presley now resides. Tripling its original running time, this deft workout jolts, shudders and erupts into fiery riffs. Sean Presley and Jack Adams earn credit for their supplement to Presley's lead guitar. These three lock in to bear down.

"The Pool" blends the queasy melodies of The Soft Boys with a chord progression from The Doors. It's more awkward than the previous tracks. This mid-set shifts into a folksy singer-songwriter mode, as Presley's delivery writhes around skewed lyrics. After the freed propulsion of the see-saw rhythms of "Harness," it's back to the spindly "Lizards First." Slide guitar enlivens this originally wobbly tune. As often here, this version strengthens the Tinkertoy scaffolding of Presley's at-home song structures.

Back when Presley fronted Darker My Love, that band found some of its musicians recruited suddenly from opening for The Fall in 2006 to serving as their line-up, at least for one album. On "Chairs in the Dark," Presley's bark recalls that of Mark E. Smith. That singer must have recognized congenially eccentric talent when summoning DML to fill in on his Reformation Post TLC for 2007.

"Tame" begins as if another mid-tempo jangle, before battering down the house. Nick Murray's cymbals break through, even if Presley's moaning vocals overstay their welcome. Just as Hitchcock relied on Barrett to excess, so Presley stands accused of too closely imitating his English forebears.

But both Hitchcock and Barrett valued power within a cutting chord. One elevates "Pink Gorilla." Guitars snap and catchy notes stick in one of Presley's most accessible creations, testimony to his gift.

The careening "Enthusiasm" blurs past smoothly, despite Presley's increasing mannerisms as his affected voice carries the final songs. "Be Right Too" and the closer "Breathe Again" nod to John Lennon's "I Am the Walrus" days, and their daze conjures up a key influence on Darker My Love.

Jared Everett's bass measures these beats while the band wraps up their gigs smartly. Their leader has progressed from hardcore with The Nerve Agents through DML's soaring Beatlesque post-punk to White Fence's memorable take on cult-artist art-rock after the British Invasion. Since this album appeared, two White Fence efforts completed their discography. Today, with partner Cate Le Bon, Tim Presley dismantles the guitar-based rock of this heyday. He pursues an experimental, twinkly and bent approach to songs, having left behind these instrumental constructions of rock as we know it.
(Spectrum Culture 11/28/16)

John Andrew Fredrick's "The King of Good Intentions II": Book Review

 
A fresh novel about the travails of a struggling musician on L.A.'s indie-rock fringe, this sequel to The King of Good Intentions continues the story of John and his jangle-pop band, The Weird Sisters. Likely at least semi-autobiographical, narrated after all by John with frequent asides to us, this takes up the tale on the 5th of April, 1994, the day Kurt Cobain died. While only Raleigh, the new drummer, feels bereft by this news as the band ends its West Coast tour in their woebegone van, John, and his fellow Sisters girlfriend Jenny and bassist Rob, convey their own emotions, as they contend with the usual litany of woes on a tiny record label's budget, and their dreary day jobs. It's similar to the late-career Spinal Tap playing puppet shows and pizza parlors, sans wigs or bombast.

They realise the long odds, for 'there are zillions of Nigel Tufnels out there, in Technicolor verisimilitude, readying their teapot tempests, viewing their at once shrunken and little self-important lives through metaphorical shrink wrap.' Frederick, who teaches college English while fronting for decades The Black Watch, connects commentary with comedy, erudition to emotion. He takes more chances in this second novel, too. Consider, in extended set-pieces of a dozen or twenty pages, the maximalist style and elevated diction which Alexander Theroux's books exemplify. 'Eudaemonic snowman', 'plethoric poses', 'untinctured marzipan', and 'orgulous orbit' speckle a ramble on musicians' follies. Dr Johnson and The Rambler, besides, earn name-checks, alongside Bloom and Hobbes, Hamlet and Macbeth, Plato and Chaucer, Karen Horney and Jean Renoir. Not your usual rocker's lament from the road. Ten pages on terrible tours entertain; so do those on a break-up, travails of record-label workers, and a diversion starting on L.A.'s woeful buses and ending in death.

Fredrick stumbles here, however, when cliches about Westside mini-moguls and riffs on a bigoted ex-pat posse of Brits in Santa Monica and a visit to randy Jewish doctor fall flat. 'Sony Bono' is a great typo, but too many others mar the prose's flow. All the same, for 450 pages, this roars along, in overdrive for the frenzied satire, downshifting for clever flirtation or existential lament. You feel the 'ass death' of sitting in the van, you smell the farts. In the middle of a Central California highway stop, the prose bursts into 'what atrocious colloquies one has to have in bands'. The Sisters contend with musical marginalisation, a post-Kurt grunge mood. Their miniscule fan base of twee chicks and twinkly critics remains so, and their psychedelic-fuzz, lyrically literate CD languishes undistributed.

But these, fans or not, delight. Bob Chalet of Bob Chalet Records, truculent publicist Sylvia Doum, Brit bar bore Barnacle Bob, Jen's father the whingeing Ogre, the fanzine scribe Flake with 'skin like the inside of a candy bar wrapper' move the story along, even if John in his frustration with the mechanics of fiction relegates plots to cemeteries. For this picaresque tale recalls its 18th-century predecessors, the London scribblers of the demi-monde. Fredrick integrates his academic training in this period with dissecting late 20th-century foibles, and his scholarly bent enriches this narrative.

The results, which begin and end in medias res (for this saga will turn a trilogy, we are told early on), capture John's tetchy voice, a winning if often whining one. It can be bright, as with romance, or dim, as when a nervous breakdown invokes 'The Waste Land, stripped of...nothing.' While admittedly 'long on material for jeremiads like this', it deftly conjures up Ulysses and The Great Gatsby as it ends. And with the promise of The Hollow Crown, we will welcome the conclusion of the Weird Sisters' spells.
(Slugger O'Toole with an additional paragraph; as is above to Amazon British + US 12-11-15)

Opal's "Happy Nightmare Baby": Music Review

For over three decades, David Roback crafts neo-psychedelia with a punch, and a sensuous sprawl. Best known for leading Mazzy Star, he co-founded Los Angeles' Rain Parade. They combined indie- punk spirit with the haze of the Byrds and the Doors. Their initial recordings stayed quiet, however, preferring atmospheric yearning over amplified confrontation. After Roback was kicked out of that band, he started Clay Allison in 1983. After a couple of singles, that ensemble changed their name to the more evocative Opal. This was well-chosen, as the jeweled shimmer of that gemstone can reveal transparency or remain opaque. Similarly, the band's sound invited intimacy or turned away from it.

{Happy Nightmare Baby} stands out for its contributions by bassist Kendra Smith. Leaving the band she had co-founded in 1981 with Steve Wynn as The Dream Syndicate, another influential Paisley Underground L.A.-based ensemble, she joined Clay Allison. They recorded a strong first single, "Fell From the Sun," later covered by The Pale Saints. With Keith Mitchell on drums, Roback's new band progressed from a folk-blues blend into a more spacious, looser musical path into eerie introspection.

That's why some of the best songs on their first and only full-length album (SST, 1987) surprise. More assertive, more unhinged, its varied tracks appeal to the upended sensibility that Opal favored as they became confident rather than hesitant. "Rocket Machine" begins with swaggering vocals, crunchy guitar and staggered keyboards. On first hearing this, I swore it was a T-Rex cover. Roback and Smith, who together write two-thirds of these nine tracks, opt for a sinister swirl. One of the standout tracks, its ambitious arrangement succeeds. Taking its time to roam, it deepens its ambiance.

"Magick Power" repeats the title phrase and the riff, as it bores down. Roback's production scatters bits of the guitars, drums, and organ into the background. He keeps the center focused on the clash of percussion and the unruffled chant of Smith. This tension enriches the track, keeping it unpredictable.

"Relevation" features the rambling, slightly country-and-western lope that both Rain Parade and Mazzy Star sustained. It rolls along as one of its shortest songs. Lighter in tone, it ambles smoothly.

"A Falling Star" returns to the glam rock template. Smith's detached vocal challenges the hearer. She waits, speaking between effects-laden guitar, and over Keith Mitchell's tapped percussion. It's over barely after it began. This segues into "She's A Diamond." Anticipating the attitude of Mazzy's Star's vocalist, sultry Hope Sandoval, Smith's delivery again states her confident disdain, this time of a rival for love. Roback chose both his vocalists well; he seems to prefer female singers who hint of danger.

Some of this album recalls the bluesy style of Opal's previous pair of E.P.s. These, collected as {Early Recordings}, explored folksier directions. Mazzy Star took up these often, especially in its latest incarnation, on 2013's eloquent and mature reunion album {Seasons of Your Joy}. These sounds, in rawer form, can be found in Opal's own integration of glam and psychedelia, blues and country, hard rock and spacier excursions. Some may find {Happy Nightmare Baby} tedious if taken in all at once. It suits a reflective or melancholy state of mind, but this beckons as a dark backdrop for altered states.

"Supernova" compresses the insistent, Eastern-tinged guitar and keyboards coupling into a more grating, aggressive tune. Smith's vocals integrate her calm tone into the grittier, more unsettled melody. Roback's arrangement emphasizes a droning background, against a harsher guitar attack. Well-sequenced, this pairing with "Siamese Trap" and its clanging chords and keyboards harmonize. The closing track, "Soul Giver," reprised from an E.P., mixes the organ and guitar, percussion and vocals, into an imperious anthem. These three songs stir the abrasive into the smooth. They invite seduction, yet remain forbidding. Opal's co-leaders write songs that can stretch out and let the groove unfold and wander. Not as catchy as the shorter tunes, they insist on repetition and textured layering.

Still, the concise combination of tunefulness and mystery energizes the title track. Imagine Nico fronting The Doors. Ray Manzarek's keyboard style gains a homage on this song, although I cannot identify whether Suki Ewers or William Cooper plays (both went on to work with Mazzy Star; Aaron Sherer is also credited here, if tersely, and I assume he contributes tabla and/or drums). Both Mazzy Star and Opal stress in photos and presentation only the lead guitarist and the female singer. But both bands benefit from their overshadowed backing musicians. The spare liner notes on their records discourage the acclaim the whole band merits for their subtle or forceful moments enhancing Roback.

The guitarist remains as the only constant in his lineups. Smith left the band during a tour opening for the Jesus and Mary Chain. Sandoval, who accompanied Opal, took over as singer, before the band changed its name once again to become Mazzy Star. That band became much more famous than any of the Paisley Underground. Still, Smith and her colleagues deserve respect for their talents, as this album proves. Smith's sole solo album, cleverly titled {Five Ways of Disappearing} (4 AD, 1995) is worth seeking out for its own enervated appeal. By the 1990s, she was said to be living in a cave in Northern California, raising goats in Humboldt County and playing the pump organ, far off the grid. (2-16-15 to Spectrum Culture)

Pale Saints' "The Comforts of Madness": Music Review

The songs race along early on, in and out of the industrial moods and tape sounds. “Sea of Sounds” might have inspired Ride, with a melancholy voice floating over a stately wash of sonic textures. Masters’ gentle delivery plays off the brooding arrangement and highlights its somber mood. Speeding up, “True Coming Dream” leaps out of its quiet beginnings, rushing across another combustive combination as bass, guitar and drums click into a volatile churning machine.

I have never heard any group with a similar propulsion. Oddly, “Little Hammer” does not pound, but gently brushes the percussion. Foreshadowing the pop direction the band would take on its next albums, it’s like a halftime rest before “Insubstantial,” which erupts out of a soft start into what the band does best: the soft-loud dynamics that the Pixies and Nirvana popularized for alternative rock. While those bands featured singer-songwriters who were charismatic personalities that cultivated an audience, Masters and crew let their songs do the talking.

The squalls which begin and end tracks highlight what makes each song different, and connects them through Naysmith’s feedback, effects and distortion. These segues upset the art-rock ambiance and keep the tone from becoming too twee or too amplified. This foundation helps statelier songs like “A Deep Sleep for Steven” progress with dignity before the perfectly pitched “Language of Flowers,” which hints at the band’s affection for Echo and the Bunnymen.

Pale Saints smartly cover the subject of a previous Revisit. Their version of Los Angeles outfit Opal’s “Fell from the Sun” boosts the volume and the pace, while keeping the ambling arrangement of the original underneath the loudness.

Opal’s successor Mazzy Star had a minor hit with Peter Blegvad’s “Blue Flower,” and the Saints soon covered it in turn. Pale Saints combined the hazy folk ambiance of Opal and Velvet Underground-inspired bands of the early ‘90s, with a harsher, more experimental tinge that stood out from the likes of 4AD peers such as Lush. Meriel Barham, who was Lush’s original vocalist, is credited as backup musician and singer on the Pale Saints’ debut, but the role of singer-songwriter-vocalist remains in Masters’ control, which boosted its impact and bolstered its range.

The elegant, mid-tempo “Sight of You” is a fan favorite that allows Masters’ choirboy vocal to linger in a cathedral-like setting of airy, soaring instruments. It segues neatly into a last fling with the mechanical drumming that Cooper offers, under Master’s steady bass and Naysmith’s flailing guitar riffs, jerking into slashing chords. “Time Thief” ends with a high-pitched gnarl that would get howls out of Andrew, the Airedale Terrier I had at the time.

The Comforts of Madness made it to number 40 on the British charts in 1990. Barham joined the band full time, and with Gil Norton’s more accessible production, subsequently dominated their sound; and the band lost their edge. Even if In Ribbons (1992) features some of their best songs, their pop turn led to Masters’ departure, and the group stalled after the forgettable Slow Buildings (1994). They eventually collapsed back to the duo of Naysmith and Cooper, who worked together on various projects, while Barham produces electronic music under the name Kuchen.

Pale Saints’ quirky legacy rests in their debut. As with many bands that joined a love of trippier music with post-punk, they did not last long. But The Comforts of Madness is the work of an uncommercial band that could make forty minutes zoom by and reward repeated plays. My dog and I never got tired of it. (Spectrum Culture 5-27-15)

Brian Jonestown Massacre's "Methodrone": Music Review

 Although over 40 different members passed through The Brian Jonestown Massacre, the core of the band remains singer-guitarist Anton Newcombe, who started the band in San Francisco 25 years ago. They debuted with Spacegirl and Other Favorites, a lo-fi LP limited to 500 copies, but for most longtime fans, Methrodrone was the first time we heard BJM. Originally released on Bomp in 1995, the album’s 70 minutes blend drones with shoegaze. It’s not a combination they would return to until Who Killed Sgt. Pepper? (2010), but it endures as my favorite record from their lengthy discography.

The band had not yet entered their Rolling Stones phase, but their second-hand psychedelia is already dead-on. The hazy production obscures the ambiance, but still brightness penetrates. Its tracks often compared to Loop, My Bloody Valentine, and Jesus and Mary Chain, the album opens with “Evergreen,” backed by lazy female vocals. But “Wisdom” better expresses the band’s alternating chime and crush, gentle but insistent. Wrapped around a compact hook, it burrows into the listener’s mind. The noisier “Crushed” enters a spacy disorientation over circular guitars credited to Jeffrey Davies and (perhaps) Dean Taylor in an unstable lineup from BJM’s birth.

“That Girl Suicide” clatters along despite its title, pinpointing the time when the British Invasion and its American imitators blurred into acid-rock. The jangle of The Byrds meets the miasma of mid-decade Beatles, with slashes of punk guitar cutting into the dreamy, airborne melody.

Newcombe’s wistful, slight delivery echoes over the layered production and jet-take off dynamics.
Over a distant organ, Newcombe confesses his failures on “Wasted,” which, despite what you might read online, is not a Black Flag cover. “Everyone Says” integrates a woman’s chanted “tell her it’s long ago” under his own voice, as the rhythm section rises. Bassists Matt Hollywood and Rick Maymi contribute solid work to Methodrone. While Newcombe has always taken the spotlight, his many bandmates deserve recognition for their skills at mixing influences from 50 years ago into new tunes.

A few songs drag the album down. “Short Wave” finds Newcombe with a poor British accent over attenuated guitars that recall My Bloody Valentine. “She Made Me” follows with fewer vocals but a similar feel, while “Records” is no more than throwaway feedback and studio noodling. “I Love You” provides a moody if unoriginal ballad to change the pace before the gloomy atmosphere of “End of the Day.”

A bit of Bo Diddley crossed with the 13th Floor Elevators snaps “Hyperventilation” into shape. Rooted more in a groove, this nearly 10 ten minute track could have been a Spacemen 3 cover. Like much of this album’s second half, patience rewards the listener. While some editing might have quickened the pace, that is not Brian Jonestown Massacre’s intent. They make music to crash to, if not (I hope) for “sniffin’ glue” as the lyrics assert. But the clever album title holds up as a signal of its intent.

“Outback” hints at the East in its eerily processed guitar loops. Its four minutes shows the power of drones that BJM harnessed in the studio. This precedes the sluggish raga-rock distorted and elongated into repetitive patterns in “She’s Gone.” These two songs, which closed the original 1995 CD, reveal the band’s interest in textures, creating a sinuous overlay that highlights the band’s circa 1965 interests.

A bonus track added to the 2007 reissue continues this direction. “In India You” mingles percussion washes and plucked strings over Newcombe’s soft voice before guitars crash into the melancholy air. An unlisted track pays tribute to George Harrison’s lyrical concerns and vocal style as more Indian inspiration.

The final four songs on the expanded Methodrone chart the band’s Eastbound expedition from ‘60s London and postpunk heirs to neo-psychedelia. The band became more famous for Newcombe’s antics as seen in the 2004 documentary Dig!. But this early record attests to their songwriting craft and their love of the ‘60s. (Spectrum Culture 7-8-15).

"10 000 Russos": Music Review

This Portuguese trio continues the promise of Fuzz Club labelmates Sonic Jesus. Like their Neither Virtue Nor Anger earlier this year, the Russo's self-titled second album packs a one-two punch. First, guitar-driven drones wallop you. Joy Division's metallic grind, post-punk's relentless beat, and distorted or detached vocals buried in the mix convey texture among torment. Naming the first track after early drummer Karl Burns of The Fall is fitting. Even if this song recalls the Wooden Shijps repetition more than that Manchester ensemble, the next track, "USVSUS" offers a Mark E. Smith-like voice ghosting the fringes of this echoed plunge. It begins with a catchy martial beat, and then kicks in gear harder through the effects pedals. It turns brittle. Heavier, it thrusts itself into Suicide territory, keyboards like sirens. Perky drums from vocalist João Pimenta dominate, over the forceful duo of Pedro Pestana on guitar and André Couto on bass, for an impressive arrangement.

"Baden Baden Baden" and "Barreiro" sustain the intensity. The first complements Joy Division floating into space rock. The second chants over a rapid whoosh, as if heirs to Hawkwind. Finally, the cleverly named paired medley of "Shtakhanovets" and "Kalume" stir tribal beats and hints of Eastern influences. The later moments conjure up the percussive drones of The Black Angels' early days, or the formative ones of P.i.L, when both of those outfits dared to be different. Let's hope 10 000 Russos remain inventive, for this points to a bright, or as the band may prefer to color it, a dark doom future.
(Amazon US 6-24-15)

Sonic Jesus' "Neither Virtue nor Anger": Music Review

Imagine a double album full of some of your favorite bands from the past fifty years. The first disc revives the metallic depths of early Joy Division in their post-punk phase. A few songs soften a bit, as with the Velvets. But most churn on, relentless, with a drony guitar wash, thundering drums, a Krautrock icy blast on bass and electronics, and appropriately gloomy vocals. The homage this British band pays to its forebears is honest, They are neither derivative nor repetitive. The fresh punch of the music leaps out, the pulse that pushes it forward, into our brains and our hearts. The post-punk tension that links the Velvets to the early 80s is here. So are Spacemen 3, Loop, and Hawkwind, filtered into a catchy set of downbeats, somber as they may be. This also reminds me of peers, Farflung.

On the second disc, the tribal vibe dominates. The first singles and albums of The Black Angels found this place, where the heartland of Native America meets the dessicated psychedelia of Austin, Texas. So, the songs here follow this groove. More percussive if as distorted as those on the post-punk first disc, the second disc drifts from Northern Europe's chill into Eastern and indigenous moods. But the band keeps its cohesion, stretching out into long pieces on both discs, to explore dank inner realms.

It's rare for me to give full stars to a new band, and a first album. Yet this fulfills the promise of maturity, difficult for some musicians who capture the essence of past bands' triumphs, yet who manage to meld the sounds they love into a new mold. Sonic Jesus brings this off by allowing the space of two discs to delve into their more jittery early-80s and the more lysergic late-60s directions of their forebears. It's a clever combination, and for all the dark corners they explore, an inviting place. (Amazon US 5-20-15; edited @ Spectrum Culture 7-4-15 for Best of 2015 Music, so far)

Joanna Freer's "Thomas Pynchon and American Counterculture": Book Review

When the Sixties began, Thomas Pynchon had just graduated from Cornell. At twenty-two, ideally placed to comment upon and participate in the changes ahead, Pynchon, in Joanna Freer's analysis of most of his fiction, emerges as an engaged if critical participant in the counterculture, rather than a disengaged, apolitical post-modernist. Freer's study places Pynchon within an anti-capitalist, anti-structural framework, which requires readers to contend with whatever opinions or motivations his characters express, for the lack of closure in his sly, challenging, allusive novels demands ambivalence rather than rigidity.

Freer argues that this openness to suggestion distinguishes Pynchon. "His refusal to endorse any single viewpoint without qualifications" invites readers into open-ended plots, an anarchic approach and rigorous attention to details which may, or may not, explain many recondite allusions. This complexity reveals central themes of anti-authoritarianism, "escape and escapism, altruistic love, community, political violence, consciousness expansion, and the role of the rational intellect." These dynamics, over five chapters focusing on specific novels as well as short stories and Pynchon's 1966 New York Times essay about the Watts Riots, incorporate left-wing values as they shift from the Beats, New Left protest, psychological and anarchist influences, Black Panther separatist "revolutionary suicide," Marxist dialectics and second-wave feminism.  Freer charts how Pynchon evolves in his work, embracing family, growing more humorous and even sentimental as the decades move on and his worldview becomes more mature. 

Applying anthropologist Victor Turner's concepts of liminality and communitas to transcend ordinary structures and to create new models for transformational living, Freer investigates Pynchon's first novel V. (1963) and his second, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966). Turner emphasized the crossing of liminal borders or thresholds into transitional or unsettled states of change, and advocated communitas as created by those within these new zones of transformation. Political fulfillment, however, may not occur. Pynchon moves past the Beat aesthetic early on in his writings, as he searches for the "elusive ultimacy" in less stereotyped instances. He rejects an apolitical aesthetic and progresses towards New Left ideals. 

This quest embraces the rejection of conventional politics and social norms. It proposes what Freer terms "anti-structure" but it tangles the seeker in the futility of revolt in Gravity's Rainbow (1973). Typically for Pynchon, stories fail to find resolution. Doubt permeates idealists and radicals as revolution recedes.

In passage within Gravity’s Rainbow, Pynchon reverses a gay rights graffito, which occurs within the book during an uprising in Weimar Germany, so that it reads: "An army of lovers can be beaten." Freer considers, as a corrective to Marx's dogmatic disregard for colonial suffering, Rosa Luxemburg's "positive energy" as well as 1960s New Left contexts advocating collective organization on behalf of social change and individual fulfillment. Pynchon dramatizes in this novel a communist faction which idolizes “Red Rosa.” Freed claims that Pynchon gives these revolutionaries more favorable treatment than what he calls the “sly old racist,” Marx himself .

Freer asserts that in Pynchon’s work that these ideas expand as the psychedelic movement encourages liberation through LSD. This potential, debated as Mucho Maas and his wife Oedipa articulate the drug's pros and cons in The Crying of Lot 49, morphs into that novel's portrayal of Dr. Hilarius, who Freer interprets as a representation of Timothy Leary. That doctor's campaign to escape capitalist oppression, and mainstream logic, posited consciousness-raising by psychedelic means. In turn, the sprawling, thousand-page epic Against the Day (2006) dramatizes a multilevel, unstable array of realities, as the historical and the imaginary, the spiritual and the geographical reflect and refract. Freer shows how Pynchon's writing practice mirrors a quantum model of uncertain possibilities of perception and verification. It urges readers toward self-awareness, anarchist approaches, elliptical plots and narratives which refuse easy explanation or firm resolution.

A theme of Pynchon’s that Freer explicates is how the drawbacks of violent resistance to capitalism as imposed by corporations and governments warn radicals against revolt. In Gravity's Rainbow, Southeast African natives move to Germany to form a subversive cadre of rocket technicians, the Schwarzkommando. Freer interprets this faction as the epitome of the dangers of Black Panther Huey Newton's doctrine of "revolutionary suicide" as martyrs to a possibly futile and certainly self-destructive cause.  To Freer, Pynchon is showing the danger in idolizing weapons and the temptation of reveling in violent solutions to injustice. Freer uses passages from this dense novel to assert how Pynchon treats violence as a last resort, and how revolutionaries fall prey to media attention as they wander from their initial idealism. This "counterculture cautionary tale" treats racial or ideological separatism as invitations to defeat rather than victory against the powers that be. 

Another theme of Pynchon’s that Freer explicates is how systematic oppression sparks feminism in the 1960s. The Crying of Lot 49 compares women's liberation with that of the New Left, as the arguably narrower emancipation of females contrasts or competes with the wider social aims of unified struggle. This tension enters Against the Day as Pynchon's persistent fetishization of nubile and compliant women continues to arouse distaste among many literary critics of his fiction, which they say refuses to adjust to the changes in attitudes to women over the past half-century. Vineland (1990), a Northern Californian paean to the lost values of the 1960s, tends to treat its women with less sophistication than its men (even if both lean towards caricature). Furthermore, Freer juxtaposes Pynchon's treatment of women in The Crying of Lot 49 with Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique Freer suggests that Pynchon may even remain more hesitant to promote radical change by women breaking away from conformity. He may favor stronger rather than weaker domestic bonds. Between the 1966 and the 1996 novels, Freer charts change, albeit gradual, as Pynchon concludes Against the Day by affirming family and home.  

This study remains accessible, even if geared toward the academic audience which includes Freer and the many critics she cites. At her best, she corrects reductive dismissals of Pynchon's limitations by elucidating his political sophistication, and she strives for fairness when gleaning the positive as well as the negative in his dramatization of feminist and separatist attempts to counter the capitalist and militarist hegemony. 

More attention to the admittedly less weighty treatment of the counterculture's fate in Inherent Vice (2009), set in pivotal 1970, would have enriched Freer's contents considerably. Because the 18^th century is less relevant, the late-eighteenth-century setting of Mason & Dixon (1996) earns less attention. Unfortunately, Bleeding Edge (2013), about 9/11, the Net, and its nest of conspiracies, may have appeared too late for Freer's book, which was printed only twelve months after its publication. Overall, Freer stays focused, and given the difficulty of these source texts, she keeps her reader in mind, explaining contexts and narrative twists. 

Ultimately, Freer finds Pynchon moving from early satire into fictions riffing on Turner's communitas model. Alternative structures -  more grassroots and non-coercive -  supplant the norm. These thwart any power held too firmly by any one group. Freer notes how many facets of Pynchon's vision attest to personal improvement and social creativity as keys to effective political action. On smaller and larger levels, the clash of "inspirational and enraging, enigmatic and demanding" messages in Pynchon's fiction confronts readers. Refusing complacency, his counterculture novels encourage in the communities interpreting his fiction at PynchonWiki to join together to interpret his complex representations and alterations of reality, whatever that term means. (1/15/15 Spectrum Culture.)

The Fall's "Live: UUROP VIII-XII Places in Sun & Winter, Son": Music Review

After thirty studio records, these tally only about a third of the total releases from Mark E. Smith and whomever he has hired and fired since 1976, when he founded this ornery, restless art-punk/ post-punk outfit. The rest of The Fall’s discography consists of compilations and live albums, many of dodgy quality, many issued without Smith’s consent. So, this new live album, credited for its curatorship to Smith himself, implies a firm direction taken by Smith. 

Furthermore, this twelfth live album documents the longest stint by a Fall line-up ever. Drawn mainly from the past four studio albums by the band--Imperial Wax Solvent, Your Future Our Clutter, Ersatz GB, Re-Mit--Live: UUROP VIII-XII Places in Sun & Winter, Son lacks the scrawled album liner notes or art (except under the CD itself in the tray) of many Fall records. Perhaps the rip-offs or homages by Pavement and recently Parquet Courts have led Smith to streamline his albums visually and musically.

Without any guidance, the listener has only the title to suggest European origins and seasonal variation for when these twelve live tracks appeared. The stark typography and cover art strip down the graphic presentation. So do many of the songs, as the latest iteration of the band favors a gritty, arid approach.

Starting with a chiming “Wings (With Bells),” this venerable, allusive 1982 track from Perverted by Language repeats the dense, historical erudition of the original, enriched by, of course, bells. Smith sounds happy to be on stage, too, even if many of these tracks cut off any connection with the audience. Its prevalent ambiance reveals a boxier, muddier feel to the sound than the shinier studio versions for the inclusion. The album sounds better, arguably, than many live Fall records, but fans have come to expect that the band tends to issue even “official” live releases with lo-fi or compromised audio fidelity.

After all, The Fall remain iconoclasts. “Auto 2014 Chip Replace” feels jaunty and experimental, integrating as its title suggests bleeps and jolts, with squeals as backing vocals from Smith’s wife, Elena Poulou on keyboards. As on studio versions from this line-up, her contributions mix in blips and squawks, but the toy-like nature of her instrument somehow melds well with her lurching bandmates. 

So does another song that staggers about, the demented “Amorator” with its marital intimacy and squabbling, enhanced by Poulou’s Greek-accented backing vocals as good-natured barbs or taunts. Many Fall albums lately (as in the past twenty-five years?) falter a few songs in.  As delighted as Smith boasts at the beginning of “Jetplane”, the song hits turbulence rather than cloudless sky. However suitably shambolic the title of “Irish” may be, this reviewer of such lineage dutifully notes it falters, too.

Three songs here average seven minutes.  “Jetplane” is 3:45 but feels seven. Peter Greenway’s clattering guitar fights against the murk of the sprawling “Cowboy George” and sometimes succeeds. The Fall conjure up the spirit of the Velvet Underground, when Nico and John Cale contended with Lou Reed. Similar competitive tension, fueling a more eclectic song structure and sonic blend, may wear out a listener resigned to a bleary soundboard tape to discern whatever lyrical wit or scorn Smith mumbles. Or, it may reward a patient fan, for those who follow The Fall know, decades in on the long march, what to expect from Smith and his crew, who sign on for a treacherous voyage under a stern, sly taskmaster.

Desiccated, “Chino” warps a Western tune, showing Smith’s incorporation of country and rockabilly influences into the electronic scene energizing so much of European music during The Fall’s parallel career. It can make for a tiresome companion, but after a long, bleak sonic trek, a mirage appears. “Sir William Wray” as a bow to guitar hero Link Wray crackles with welcome life. It brings static; it revives. 

The pairing of “Fifty Year Old Man” and “Wolf Kidult Man” play off Smith’s middle-aged (he turned half a century old in 2007) rants, delivered in trademark groans and moans. They again sustain what his audience by now expects, as if a Beckett protagonist before the limelight, full of learned asides and staccato bursts of grumbling. The quality of these recordings, as before, may test any listener less loyal.

The one song from the period immediately prior to the formation of this line-up, “Reformation,” rallies the pace. Co-written with bassist Rob Barbato of Darker My Love (and along with bandmate Tim Presley, a pick-up member for The Fall for one CD), this track stands out. It blends in the krautrock and assaultive psychedelic tendencies of Darker My Love, locked into Smith and The Fall’s repetitive groove. At last, Keiron Melling’s drums and David Spurr’s bass push along Greenway’s guitar, and all works well.

Closing with “What About Us,” the call-and-response of Smith and Poulou on the original version gets muffled here, but it’s fun to hear her spit and yelp above the shadowed live version. Fun may not be the first word associated with The Fall, but those who have accumulated, as I have, the many recordings and reiterations of this unpredictable band under its unwaveringly resolute leader will find this an appropriate testament to the band’s most durable lineup yet. But that may all change tomorrow. (As above to Spectrum Culture, 10-27-14; in shorter altered form Amazon US 11-12-14)

The Proper Ornaments' "Wooden Head": Music Review

After meeting in a London vintage shoe shop, Argentinian Max Claps and Veronica Falls' Andrew Hoare formed this duo, appropriately signed to Slumberland. That label name never sounded more apt for a release from these two guitarists as The Proper Ornaments. Their debut, "Wooden Head," features fourteen measured, woozy, and catchy songs. Modestly but insistently, they burrow in.

The opener has stuck in my head for days after I first heard it. "Gone" mumbles its lament, over stumbling guitars and a shuffling beat. Vocals recall the British neo-psychedelic sounds of thirty years ago, and like much of this album, these short songs stay faithful to predecessors, if august ones. The Jesus and Mary Chain, sans feedback, provides a fitting reference for this first, unsteady song.

"Sun" rises slowly, as its Beatlesque drums and thick melody turn to the take that like-minded revivalists Darker My Love took on their first two albums. Swirling voices, a wash of cymbals, and strums over steady percussion. It ends suddenly, with a hint of menace after a magical mystery tour.

For "Ruby," the guitars turn gentler. A pastoral mood carries this along, unassumingly. By this time, a boost is needed to spark the track sequence. The Byrdsian guitars and foggy production of "Now I Understand" could have come off of "Younger Than Yesterday" and this blend of simple arrangements with chiming chords works well to highlight the pair's knack for pleasant folk-rock.

It's back to the Beatles, perhaps filtered through a L.A. Paisley Underground band such as Rain Parade, for "Don't You Want to Know" with its keyboard backing and forceful if understated drums.

Despite a title of "Magazine," I hear hints of The Kinks, cleverly crossed with the Beatles-period of the Byrds. However, a strength of this album is that such patterns entice rather than dissuade a listener. As a fan of every band I've listed in this review, I admire the craft this record incorporates.

Another twist of band references floats "Stereolab"; here we hear that band in the propulsive keyboards and layered pulses of the guitars. But there is also a nod to New Zealand indie rock on the Flying Nun label in the expansive instrumental approach. It's too brief a song, but it feels very epic.

A brasher delivery for "Step into the Cold" follows, a well-chosen jolt to sustain the spacier ambiance of the predecessor with a churning guitar arrangement again suited to aficionados of 1980s college rock. Hearing this, The Clean or The Chills hover at the edges, under the confident, intricate attack. Appropriately, a dominant influence on so many revivalists, The Velvet Underground, surfaces at its end in the twinned or overlain guitars and this song ends on a familiar, welcome note of repetition.

By now, "Tire Me Out" may sound an admission of weariness. It deftly simmers many of the sounds mentioned above. Yet it keeps a stripped-down, homespun sound with its backing track, as if a demo tape from an obscure if talented Down Under band circa 1982. For me, that's high praise.

The smokier mood of "Always There" creates a huskier atmosphere. It has a slight Ennio Morricone ambiance. For me, it seems inspired more by Chris Isaak than the more effusive musical forebears. However, it offers some variety for those who may like this sultrier, less effervescent or lysergic tone.

Yes, "Summer's Gone" does sound like another Jesus and Mary Chain downbeat ditty, in title and delivery. It borrows from the mid-period Velvets a contemplative attitude. It feels more reverential than revivalist. This may or may not recommend it to you, but again, the decision by The Proper Ornaments to divert itself from fourteen songs determined to repeat past masters merits due respect.

And, "What Am I to Do" reminds me of "Dear Prudence" as it begins with a slow jangled progression of guitars over a clicking percussion track. In its severe, sedated state, it summons up well sleepiness.

If you ever wondered what simmering the J+MC with the Beatles might produce, cue up "You Shouldn't Have Gone" for a fine example of what melancholic voices and processed effects produce. Boyhood fans in the 1960s turned 1970s musicians to make records in the 1980s in turn. These then spawned the creators of congenial sounds, five decades on. This song is a fine tribute to the pioneers of the psychedelic-pop and indie-rock movements which stretch by now back an entire half-century.

British accents on "You'll See" one last time pay homage to this legacy. For all its polite bows to those who came before, "Wooden Head" rewards in reminding us of the songwriting strengths within comforting three-minute songs. May this record keep playing on repeat for you, as it has for me. (7-31-14 in edited, shorter form, to Spectrum Culture)