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)

The Black Watch's "The Gospel According to John": Music Review

Active since the mid-80s, The Black Watch blends the British and New Zealand indie-pop moods of wistful reverie with the frenetic reactions of The Cure, House of Love, and Echo and the Bunnymen. As with many of its peers, this ensemble continues with its lead singer-songwriter guiding a changing lineup. Tallying as full-length recording fifteen, spanning thirty years of its discography, John Andrew Fredrick and band return with one of the best albums from this reliably satisfying outfit.

Recent releases from The Black Watch tended to linger over delicate moods. These highlighted Fredrick's introspective lyrics. Given his career as an English professor specializing in literature of at least two centuries ago, these meet exacting standards. Now, the archly and typically playfully titled The Gospel According to John preaches assertive vocals over intense guitars. Reminiscent of post-punk sounds in Liverpool and Down Under, these well-sequenced eight tracks dash past vividly.

Brian Jonestown Massacre's Rob Campanella favors a punchy, propulsive production. "Whence" blasts the disc open, glides into acoustic cruise control, and then reverts to the heights. "Way Strange World" prefers a funky nod to recent Brooklyn-based "alternative" moves, combined with an Ian McCulloch-style croon. This ambiance sustains "The All-Right Side of Just O.K" as a blurrier take on this type. "Story" slows only to kick in similarly. A subdued "Jealousy" soothes mid-stream. Whether one delights in Southern Californian Fredrick's preference for British-accented articulation or not, the results will please listeners who admire the legacy of intelligent, textured, and convincing song craft.

The final stage of this sleek record accelerates. "Orange Kicks" plays a precise spoken-word delivery off of riffs which manage to sidestep themselves without tripping up. A hushed and brusque downbeat as "Oscillator Redux" ushers in the whirling sprawl of the orbiting "Satellite." It closes this accomplished effort with a spinning declaration of yearning, over winningly chiming propulsion. (PopMatters 5/8/17; Amazon US 5/12/17)

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)

Prolapse's "The Italian Flag": Music Review

Archeology students plus experimental drama practitioners rarely tend to form a band. In Leicester back in 1991, six young people did. Prolapse means "to fall out of." This suits the shambolic style of a group inevitably compared to The Fall. As with its unpredictable presence Mark E. Smith, so here with "Scottish" Mick Derrick. Hirsute and lumbering, he towered over co-vocalist Linda Steelyard. The two tangled on stage, he mumbling and raving in a thick, impenetrable accent. She parried his physical and verbal abuse with her defiant English lilt, and often got the better of him in their tussles.

This relationship, enacted on records throughout the '90s, fronted a post-punk and shoegazer blend of harsh and gentle textures. Prolapse's musicians fought back with their instruments against the vocal tag-team. The band's thundering rhythms and slashing guitars alternate with tipsy saunters. These efforts generated few sales compared with the critical acclaim Prolapse garnered, so revisiting The Italian Flag may entice indie-rock fans two decades on, raised on Wire, PiL and The Gang of Four. 

Three eclectic EPs appeared during 1993 and 1994, unheard by this reviewer, but some of their songs repeated on their first full-length, Pointless Walks to Dismal Places. Accurately titled, tracks such as "Hungarian Suicide Song" and "Headless in a Beat Motel" clanged out a dour mood. The latter song, however, sparked brief energy on a largely listless and downbeat collection of dirges. Signs of sonic resuscitation were sustained in "Tina, This is Matthew Stone," an enactment of kitchen sink strife. It's the kind of manic performance where one expects to have that proverbial sink thrown in.

Prolapse perked up for Backsaturday in 1995. Although laid down in two days, these tunes rattled about more melodically. Their rattle and roll resembles a truckload of instruments careening about. "TCR" highlighted the band's lead track, with a knack for a catchy beat. It eased the trepidation for listeners who may have stayed clear of the band's rowdy concerts, played out as if cage matches.

The thirteen songs on The Italian Flag benefit from enhanced production. Thanks to Julian Cope's guitarist, Donald Ross Skinner, adding keyboards as well as studio expertise, Prolapse return for album three as far more assured. Finally, an entire Prolapse album stays sharp. "Deanshanger" and "Cacaphony #A" highlight David Jeffreys and Patrick Marsden. They hammer out the loud and soft tones needed to complement the tension between Mick Derrick and Linda Steelyard. Churning chords sway about and spin. This guitar duo clamp down and pound in the messages buried in the dense mix.

Unlike Prolapse's previous albums, this one features a lyric sheet. Although its CD booklet renders the typeface nearly unreadable, the clever arrangement of two pages with Mick's words separated from Linda's repeats their call -and-response, phased arrangements. The middle of the album rises to happier moments. "Autocade," "Tunguska" and "Flat Velocity Curve" incorporate chiming keyboards (thanks to Skinner). "Visa for Violet and Van" emphasizes "Geordie" Mick Harrison on bass and Tim Pattison on drums as they interlock. Throughout, tunes remain punchy and compact, freed from the gloomy detours which slowed down many previous recordings. Finally, glimpses of beauty emerge.

"Bruxelles" finds the two singers trading off a litany of nouns. Most are everyday items. But only one gets repeated by both voices in turn: "money." This could have been a Samuel Beckett short piece.

The final entry, "Three Wooden Heads," leaves Linda Steelyard in a schoolyard sing-song mode. She trills a refrain from an old chant, while the distorted harmonies from the band conjure up a rustic and morbid past. An extended take on such an eerie lullaby morphed into Prolapse's final album in 1999. Again well-named, Ghosts of Dead Aeroplanes stirs electronic layers into a guitar-bass-drums foundation. It builds upon the promise of The Italian Flag. These albums, presenting the fruition of Prolapse as a formidable and memorable creation, attest to this ensemble's angular, if ardent, stance. (Spectrum Culture 3/22/17)

Heatmiser's "Mic City Sons": Music Review

 

Like Faces and Rod Stewart or Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry, Heatmiser and Elliott Smith faced a quandary. When a talented singer-songwriter fronts a band with equally compelling musicians, how does he balance his burgeoning solo career with the demands of his formidable bandmates? Does he save his best songs for his own albums? Does he break with those who helped make his reputation, or can he work with them on his own albums under his own name?
 

After releases on the Los Angeles-based indie label Frontier, Portland-based Heatmiser had progressed since forming in 1991. Dead Air and the EP Yellow #5 blended grittier, downbeat songs from singer-songwriter-guitarist Neil Gust with his Hampshire College classmate Smith's delicate, downbeat songs. These tended towards introspection, as well as gloom and suspicion, so Heatmiser created a tense mood. Gust's lyrics skirted around tawdry gay sex in nasty places, while Smith's narratives plumbed addiction and depression. The band’s early records wallowed in post-grunge gloom.

While another Portland band, Pond (a deft, overlooked trio), was signed by Sub Pop in the post-Nirvana frenzy, Heatmiser remained in the margins. Its second full-length, Cop and Speeder, revved up the momentum, delivering the band's finest songs to date, pummeling and careening as Tony Lash's forceful drums locked in with thrusting bass from Sam Coomes. 

Tensions surfaced when Virgin signed the band to a major label. Smith's success on the low-fi Roman Candle and self-titled second solo album sparked jealousy between Smith and Gust. Smith resented being in a “loud rock band” and the band broke up around the release of its third album, Mic City Sons, which ended up getting distributed by indie subsidiary Caroline Records.

When I first heard this album 20 years ago, I knew more about Heatmiser than Elliott Smith. Mic City Sons opens with the kind of winning pop Smith went on to pursue alongside his darker tendencies. "Get Lucky" pitches its arena-rock singalong chorus and cocky riff at the mainstream, yet Smith's characteristic melancholy remains as he promises, "We're taking you to pieces." "Plainclothes Man" follows in more subdued style, and lives up or down to its everyday title.

On this album, Gust is relegated to a lesser role compared to Smith's ambitious filigrees and baroque style, as his Beatles influence began to dominate his persona. But, as a Heatmiser fan more than a Smith fan, I speak for the minority view. Gust digs deeper into the corrosion coating his mood. In "Low Flying Jets," his guitar trebled and echoed rings more memorably than the dirge-like pace of the song, but "Rest My Face Against the Wall" dourly conjures up the act exchanged between men in a dour, dismal place. His voice, like Smith, speaks from pain. 

Matching this tone, "The Fix is In" takes us into Smith's struggles with drugs. Like his solo work at the time, Lash's measured percussion and processed guitars create a somber atmosphere. Here, Smith’s AOR leanings contend with gloom. Gust perks up for the rawer punk-pop of "Eagle Eye" and "Cruel Reminder," whose choruses over reverbed guitars recall the band’s less-heralded work on Frontier Records.

Smith's simple "You Gotta Move" is followed by a Gust track sometimes mistaken for Smith. "Pop in G" inspires the album’s title after a city of microbrews and their drinkers: "{Mic city sons seem to dumb everything down}."  The album sags by "Blue Highway," with Gust coming in second to Smith for narrative appeal but it closes with two strong features for Smith.  “See You Later” and “Half Right," a hidden track that shows off the indie-rock sensitivity that would make his breakthrough. 

After Heatmiser, Gust formed the band No. 2. Oddly, its two albums opted for a softer touch more akin to a grumpy Smith instead of the amplification that better suited Gust’s voice and stories. Lash moved on to the band Sunset Valley before entering production work for noted Northwestern bands, including the Coomes –led Quasi (with Sleater-Kinney’s Janet Weiss). Smith burst into fame and an uneasy entry into late-'90s troubadour prominence before going out like a roman candle. While most listeners may listen to Heatmiser primarily for its tragic co-founder, a closer listen should earn more props for his accomplished bandmates. (Spectrum Culture 2- 24-16 as part of the Holy Hell! --- Turns Twenty retrospective of albums recollected.) 

The Fall: "Wise Ol' Man": Music Review

As a faithful fan of the Fall, my shelves fill with their records. Over thirty albums in the studio, and triple that with compilations, concerts and ephemera, this prolific band has long left behind its limited punk or post-punk labels. Yet they continue to remain punk in the truest sense. For Mark E. Smith and whomever he recruits into the line-up produce music that sounds truest to themselves, and no other band. Few musicians or vocalists who started in 1976 can surprise or entertain us so today. The Fall's repetition sustains their prickly music, and their latest, and by now longest-lasting, version of the band has tightened its delivery. This combines discipline with chaos, and it buzzes, clangs, and rambles on, to irritate or inspire. Other British bands totter along on the reunion circuit, churning out their hits, but The Fall look forward, and even the one song remade here from their full-length debut, Live at the Witch Trials gains verve from its fresh restoration, merged with one of their newest songs.

The Wise Ol' Man e.p. introduces two songs along with remixes and alternate takes of others from Sub-Lingual Tablet. Smith's voice warbles his credentials on the opening title track as the sagacious frontman, over a forceful guitar riff from Peter Greenway. This song fits neatly into the band's sound for the last few years, where the instruments collide with the mutters and mumbles of Smith, who challenges and subverts any definition of what constitutes a singer. Smith does what he wants. 

Similarly, "All Leave Cancelled" bursts out, with production from Smith which plunges the listener into a maelstrom. While this may not be the best place for newcomers to The Fall to enter, for veteran  audiences, this satisfies better than some of the post-millennial period. Then, too many songs went on far too long, and felt like the tape kept rolling and the musicians kept doodling or dawdling. 

"Dedication not Medication" remixes that track from the last studio album. It and the instrumental of the e.p.'s title track move along fine, but for me they do not open up the energy or experimentation of the first two tracks. Another remake, of "Venice With Girls" from that album, adds swagger to that tune, and as it opened Sub-Lingual Tablet, on what is here deemed "side two," the band appears to realize its catchy presence and lyrical fun. "Face Book Troll" shows off another great title, and presumably a target of Smith's considerable wrath. It's enriched by the interplay of Elena Poulou's whirling keyboards with Smith's rants, backed by Dave Spurr's bass and Keiron Melling's drums. This segues into "No Xmas For John Quay" from their 1979 debut LP.  Hearing the latest ensemble tackle the shambolic, sneering ditty from Live at the Witch Trials proves a delight. The continuity between a Smith barely out of his teens and the grizzled man pushing 60 now reveals a twisted talent.

Closing this brief recording, "All Leave Cancelled (X)" continues the in-studio trend to take apart Fall songs and kick around the pieces before putting them back on tape. Commendably, Smith and company revel in what may seem to the unconvinced a mess, but to the committed, another success. I look forward to more such revelations from a band whom one can never consign to nostalgia. (Amazon US 2-24-16 + 2-23-16 to Spectrum Culture)