Imaginational Anthems IV

And why not, one more from Metro Pulse.

Various Artists

Imaginational Anthem IV: New Possibilities (Tompkins Square)

The fourth volume in Tompkins Square’s Imaginational Anthem series showcasing contemporary acoustic guitarists bears the subtitle New Possibilities. It’s an allusion to one of John Fahey’s most famous albums, though no one really needs to be reminded how heavily the late guitarist’s influence looms over the current generation of fingerpickers. It works as a title, though, because most of the 10 artists represented here are newer names on the scene, and though these guys (and it is mostly guys who are compelled to play this stuff) are well-versed in the traditions of the past, most of these selections look forward as much as back.

Chris Forsyth underscores the nervous agitation of his acoustic playing with a calm ambient electric hum on the aptly named “Paranoid Cat”; Nashvillian William Tyler, who performed at this year’s Big Ears festival as Paper Hats, turns in a gorgeous, tricky tune that hints at the blues; Nick Jonah Davis displays a flair for both minimalism and Spanish guitar; Pat O’Connell’s “Song for Eugene” is a charming piece of ragtime that ends abruptly as it’s just getting going, adding a strange note of self-conscious artificiality to the otherwise neo-primitive proceedings; Band of Horses guitarist Tyler Ramsey’s “Our Home Beyond the River” is perhaps the least formally challenging piece, but is still as lovely sounding as it’s title suggests; Micah Blue Smaldone plays a languid country blues that’s perhaps the most Fahey-derivative thing on the album. The album closes with two highlights, 20-year old self-taught Aaron Sheppard’s dexterous run through “We Meet,” and a jaunty, Davey Graham-influenced Celtic piece from U.K. player C Joynes.

New Possibilities ends up hosting a wide variety of styles, and the guitarists all exhibit excellent technique without being precious, their playing emotive but not sentimental.

Antony and the Johnsons - Swanlights

From Metro Pulse!

Antony and the Johnsons

Swanlights (Secretly Canadian)

With his third album, 2009’s The Crying Light, Antony abandoned the already slight rock influences that popped up on his breakthrough album, I Am a Bird Now, and even removed most of the pop from his chamber pop. The result was a work of refined ambience and subtle complexity that could seem stunning if you gave it your full attention, stuffy if you weren’t in the mood. Though Swanlights exhibits a similar austerity, there are moments that hark back to Antony’s cabaret and theater beginnings. With their orchestral swells, busy piano runs, and dramatic vocals, “Ghost” and “Salt Silver Oxygen” seem well-suited for a musical theater production, while a carnival organ runs through the jaunty, sing-songy “I’m in Love.” The obvious single, “Thank You for Your Love,” gets things swinging for a couple of minutes with horns and a backbeat borrowed from Stax, but for the most part the songs ride a slow tempo set by a piano and accompanied by a string section.

This increased refinery might put off listeners who were first drawn in to Antony’s world by the elegant but quirky “For Today I Am a Boy” or the sleazy swagger of “Fistful of Love.” At times the music runs the risk of being like wallpaper, and the floral kind at that. Fortunately, Antony’s voice will always be the star of the show, the anchor of the songs in the arrangements and the mix. His effortless, androgynous tenor oozes emotion, usually tending to the torchier side of things, and his control of it is awe-inspiring.

There is one blatant misstep on the album. Bjork is allowed the lead on “Fletta,” appearing near the end of the album, while Antony is relegated to a background singer. Normally I’m a Bjork apologist, but her vocal is out of place here, its pungency a rude intrusion on what had been a pleasant enough experience, like someone slipping a sardine into your milkshake. Skip it and you’re that much nearer to album-closer “Christina’s Farm”—an exquisite piano ballad with a grand orchestral build toward the end, it’s a prime showcase for Antony’s vocal and lyrical talents. And while it lacks the panache of some of his more dramatic material, it could well end up being one of his greatest songs.

Neil Young's "Borrowed Tune"

I don't always post my Metro Pulse reviews, mainly because I tend to be displeased with them after they're published. Liek I've left something out or didn't follow a thought far enough. I think it's the restrictive word count, compared to the long leash I'm given at Tiny Mix Tapes. And as my own editor, I was pretty much off the chain at Knoxville Voice. What can I say, I'm a windbag.

Anyway, this is something I actually liked, and I was glad to be asked to participate in MP's Neil Young appreciation.

Neil Young's "Borrowed Tune"

The discussion of “authenticity” in music is a losing game, but Neil Young’s album Tonight’s the Night certainly sounds like a genuine expression of guilt, regret, anger, and misery, punctuated by the occasional good time. The death- and drug-obsessed sessions led to a batch of unlikely beautiful songs, and “Borrowed Tune” stands out as a teachable moment in the vagaries of the Neil Young aesthetic. It’s Neil alone with harmonica and piano, his voice tired and shaky after too many sleepless nights and pharmaceuticals. The lyrics sound made up on the spot, the piano playing is rudimentary and the harmonica grates. When he cops to taking the tune he’s playing from the Rolling Stones (it’s “Lady Jane”) because he’s too wasted to write his own, he pulls off the not easy task of being both as self-reflexively meta and uncomfortably confessional as can be. It’s a stark song, existential to the bone: “I hope that it matters/I’m having my doubts” goes the refrain. As “woe is me” songs go, it’s too genuinely pitiful to identify with or sing along with, yet it still registers as brilliant pop music. He apparently doesn’t perform this song live much, and who can blame him?

Dwarr - Animals

My God, what a cover. From Tiny Mix Tapes.

What sort of intended audience could Duane Warr have had in mind when he self-released Animals on records back in 1986? In today’s market of countless small labels, mp3 hosts, and self-released CD-Rs, quirky lo-fi albums that don’t fit comfortably into their genre are churned out daily. But 25 years ago, this druggy, cryptic missive from Columbia, South Carolina must have sounded like some truly out shit to whatever ears it might have reached. The music isn’t quite as loco as the Planet of the Apes meets Cannibal Holocaust meets Thundarr the Barbarian cover art would have you believe, but Warr was definitely far beyond driven as he hammered out these tracks, playing every instrument except drums.

The most obvious and deep influence is Sabbath, at its plodding heaviest. It can hardly be a criticism that “Ghost Lovers” is practically a rewrite of “Electric Funeral,” since bands like Electric Wizard and Sleep did the exact same thing with that classic Sabbath template to far more (relative) acclaim and glory nearly a decade later. In the mid-80s, Sabbath wasn’t exactly the hippest metal band, but this southern factory worker seemed to want to reclaim their sound as a bulwark against the watered-down metal that was pouring forth from radio and MTV. “Ah, get the hell off the radio,” Warr growls at the start of “Are You Real,” presumably to the hair metal hordes, before launching into some epic Iommi-esque riffage. To most ears, he would have seemed hopelessly behind the times, the metal equivalent of a moldy fig. His soloing was peculiar, too, most reminiscent of Greg Ginn when Ginn would freak out with those irrational, anti-math rock solos on those great, late period metal-soaked Black Flag records. A couple of instrumentals here resemble a less funky version of Ginn’s trio Gone. And though there’s no way of knowing if Neil Hagerty heard this record way back when (though the fact that his label Drag City is reissuing this makes you wonder), Warr’s playing at times sounds eerily close to some of Hagerty’s on Royal Trux’s 1997 album Sweet Sixteen. (Compare the guitar tone and soloing on Dwarr’s “Lonely Space Traveler” and “Cannabinol: The Function” to Trux’s “Morphic Resident” and “Golden Rules.”)

Drag City has not only deemed Animals worthy of reissue, but a “Hard Rock Masterpiece.” And while that’s going waaaaay too far, the timing of the release is fortuitous. If this had been released 10 years or so ago, we may have heard it as a lone nut harbinger of doom metal. But oddly enough, the tin-can, murky production and oddly placed, weird keyboard and bell tones will sound perfectly natural to ears accustomed to hypnagogic pop frequencies; “That Deadly Night” may in fact be the first hypnagogic metal track.

Despite this, it would be disingenuous to say that Warr was ahead of his time. Though the heavy end of Sabbath that Dwarr was borrowing would become popular with the doom movement, there were still plenty of heads in basements and garages across America playing these seductively simplistic, hypnotic riffs while stoned out of their gourds. And it’s likely lo-fi because Warr couldn’t afford to make it sound any better, not because he was a black metal visionary. So rather than being a document of an overlooked genius/pioneer, Animals ultimately sounds like the record of a talented, highly-motivated, highly antisocial guy who loved metal but also had some unusual musical ideas of his own. Which is to say it’s highly recommended, because that’s more than a lot of metal bands can say these days.

Moogfest

Review here.

Sun City Girls - Funeral Mariachi

From Tiny Mix Tapes.

Sun City Girls Funeral Mariachi

When first putting the needle down on Funeral Maricahi, I expected to be in for the kind of crazy, unpredictable aural adventure that only Sun City Girls deliver. Having released over 70 recordings of adventurous and at times bewildering material fusing rock and various ethnic styles with an often aggressive avant-garde edge, odds were good their final studio album would be as wild as ever.

Opening track “Ben’s Radio” certainly met these expectations, a tempo-shifting exploration of Eastern and African styles, accompanied by raucous group vocals. Reminiscent of the Radio series of dial-turning field recordings issued by SCG guitarist Alan Bishop’s label Sublime Frequencies, the song is slightly disorienting with its abrupt changes. The following track, “The Imam,” continues in this vein, beginning with a shrill horn blaring intermittently amidst rapid-fire acoustic guitar playing. But a shift in tone occurs mid-song, the music settling down into a calm rhythm as Alan begins singing in a keening, Arabesque wail. Following such a spiky beginning, the vocal is disarming in its unmannered allure, and the remainder of the album continues in a similarly subdued, lyrical manner. It’s a totally unexpected approach for the band to take for their final release, and all the more powerful and affecting for it.

Not that Sun City Girls haven’t played it straight before. Although known as incorrigible pranksters and wise-asses, there’s never been any doubt to the seriousness and proficiency of their musicianship. For 27 years, brothers Alan and Rick Bishop played alongside drummer Charles Gocher to create some of the most complex, challenging American music of the last three decades. By stubbornness and/or good luck, they remained a true underground institution at a time when even the most careerist-defying bands would eventually find some form of forced exposure that would attract a wider audience. They never had designs on anything resembling fame, though, and their lunatic take on a hodgepodge of musical styles combined with a confrontational stage presence often obscured what great musicians they were, assuring they’d remain a curio to most. Gocher’s death from cancer in February 2007 led the Bishops to formally declare the end of SCG, though a deep archive of live recordings will probably ensure future releases for a good long while.

Gocher’s illness may explain the more gentle tone of Funeral Mariachi, which was recorded shortly before his death and has an unusually high amount of straightforward tunes for the band. The ever-present African and Arabic influences are filtered through a mellow folk sensibility, and songs such as “This Is My Name” and “El Solo” reveal a seductiveness rarely displayed by the band. Many songs are driven by Richard’s lovely piano playing, and with its high-pitched vocal, “Vine Street Piano” sounds not unlike, believe it or not, Sigur Rós. The second half of the album is dominated by an Ennio Morricone influence, “Blue West” and “Mineral Wells” sounding as though they were lifted straight from a 60s Spaghetti Western soundtrack. SCG offer their own twisted take on the Western ballad with “Holy Ground” before tackling one of Morricone’s most famous pieces, “Come Maddalena.” The title track closes the album, and it’s as fitting a tribute to Gocher and farewell to the band as one could hope. A mournful tune complete with requisite baleful mariachi trumpet, it never slips into melancholy or sentimentality.

Sun City Girls have long had to deal with accusations of cultural tourism, suggestions that they were taking the piss with sacred musics of the world. That’s partly true, but probably not in the way their critics meant. For some, their mashups of music from exotic locales most of us would never physically visit was a welcome contrast to the piety of WOMAD, an answer to the Gabriels, Simons, and Stings who smugly pontificated on “world music” to Rolling Stone and CNN. These guys often acted as if they discovered these musical cultures the way Columbus discovered America. That’s harsh, and the pros and cons of WOMAD is a complex subject, but in the 80s and early 90s, there wasn’t a lot of distribution for non-Western music in America, and to have to suffer through receiving it via the filter of milquetoast millionaire rock stars was kind of galling. Sun City Girls reminded or even taught us that this music didn’t have to be treated with reverence, that it was amendable to the playful rules of rock ’n’ roll or Fluxus-like tweaking. But listen to the singing on “Imam” and “Black Orchid” and tell me there’s not a deep love and respect for Arabic music there. Listen to the playing on virtually any track on Funeral Mariachi and you’ll hear the feeling that immersion in foreign countries for prolonged periods has brought to their playing.

It might seem foolish or maybe just hopeful to call Funeral Mariachi accessible, since this music will only ever appeal to a marginal audience. But the wild men who still love to cop an attitude and provoke have created an album of unexpected beauty. They go out not with a bang or a whimper, but with a wide-eyed and confident work tinged with sadness, knowing they were part of something truly unique and amazing that met an untimely end.

Group Inerane - Guitars From Agadez Vol. 3

From Tiny Mix Tapes.

Political turmoil, violence, and personal tragedy are not what immediately come to mind when listening to Group Inerane. The joyful, exuberant songs on the latest in Sublime Frequencies’ Guitars from Agadez series don’t seem indicative of the circumstances in which the music was created. Listen to an upbeat tune like “Tamidit,” a perfectly suitable piece for the wedding celebrations that still serve as Inerane’s primary venue in their home country of Niger, and you’d never guess that it was recorded shortly following a coup d'état that replaced that nation’s president with a military junta. And you certainly wouldn’t think this album followed so soon after Inerane’s guitarist Adi Mohamed was shot dead during a rebel battle.

By now, the music and history of the nomadic Tuareg people of the Western Sahara are relatively well-known to "world music" aficionados and NPR listeners, thanks in large part to Tinariwen. That group serves as ambassador of the politically-born, groove-driven guitar music to most Western audiences, and as such tends to be a more well-scrubbed, professional ensemble than many of their peers back home. If you've heard Tinariwen, or especially if you've seen them live, you know how hypnotic and trance-inducing they can be. But playing in the concert halls and festival stages of Europe and America to thousands of people for years has somewhat taken the edge off their sound. Group Inerane, like Sublime Frequencies labelmates Doueh and Bombino, still sound like what they started out as and largely remain: the local party band. This is social music, intended for dancing and celebrating.

To record the album, Inerane leader and guitarist Bib Ahmed had to leave the group’s home of Agadez, because it was too dangerous for Sublime Frequencies co-founder and archivist Hisham Mayet to go there. Ahmed traveled to the Nigerian capital of Niamey, where he arranged for a pick-up rhythm section to record with him. He also enlisted the services of Koudede, an acclaimed, much-sought-after guitarist of the Tuareg style. The addition of Koudede, bassist Abdulai Sidi Mohamed, and drummer Mohamed Atchinguel has resulted in a more relaxed-sounding Inerane than the one found on Volume 1. Cleaner production also contributes to this sound; whereas Volume 1’s on-location recording contributed to its raw, psychedelic sound, the photos inside the gatefold of Volume 3 show the group within the eggshell-soundproofed confines of a studio. The high-pitched ululating and group vocal chanting are gone as well, leaving Ahmed to handle the singing with Koudede supplying occasional backup. In many ways, this is a much different group from the one heard on Volume 1, and this recording documents the transformation of a group that has been forced to change due to circumstances beyond its control. Recorded live in the studio, the music is no less energetic or immediate, and it sounds like these guys are having a great time.

There’s some debate as to what extent, if any, American blues influenced Tuareg music or if both merely share a common ancestor in West Africa. Tinariwen denies that they ever heard blues before visiting America in 2001, while Doueh has readily admitted the influence of Jimi Hendrix and James Brown. Musicologists and amateur scholars love to argue about this stuff, but it’s doubtful that there’ll ever be a conclusive answer to what extent who made whom. Regardless, this music inarguably shares some source with Mississippi Hill Country blues, as most recently recorded and disseminated by the Fat Possum label. That sound is far more pronounced here than in any previous Agadez release; the crawling groove and droning guitar of “Alemin” is especially reminiscent of a Junior Kimbrough slow-burner, and even the vocal intonations are reminiscent of the late Holly Springs bluesman.

There’s no question that the ongoing political upheavals and violence in Niger’s Agadez Region has offered an extra layer of "exoticness" to the Tuareg albums for Western audiences. Virtually any article, press release, or review you read is going to mention it, and it would be foolish if not irresponsible not to. But you have to wonder: What exactly does the relationship between the music and the environment it springs from mean to the outside listener? How much does the backstory color how we hear the music? Is the music more of a gateway to learning about a region and culture most of us wouldn’t think much about otherwise? Dwell too long on the contrast between the day-to-day reality of these musicians and the fetishistic collectibility of these limited-edition LPs and things can really get strange.

Of course, how much context matters differs from listener to listener. Some people can’t enjoy music without having as much background information as possible. More casual listeners have dispensed with liner notes altogether and wouldn’t think of doing beyond the most cursory internet research. If they like something, they listen to it and don’t really care about M.I.A.’s position on the Tamil Tigers. Most people fall somewhere between these two extremes, while Sublime Frequencies loyalists definitely skew to the former grouping. But despite how much context you bring to it, if you can listen to this record without being moved — physically and emotionally — there might be something severely wrong with you. Put this record on at a social gathering, and it’s hard to imagine that people won’t start nodding their heads, tapping their feet, or unconsciously swaying to the music. This is the kind of music that can interrupt the flow of daily life, make people look up from their computer screens at coffee shops, suspend their small-talk in bars, or start dancing at an otherwise dull house party. This music is plain wonderful, life-affirming, and celebratory any way you look at it, and if you consider its origins, even more so.

LA Vampires Meets Zola Jesus

From Tiny Mix Tapes.

As Zola Jesus, Nika Roza Danilova caused a sizable stir in the past year or so, releasing an EP, a split LP with Burial Hex, and two solo LPs in 2009 alone. Purveyor of crimson wave/darkwave/noise goth or whatever wacky appellation you want to hang on her music, she’s covering similar ground as a lot of contemporary post-noise songwriters who favor muddy production smeared across their poptones. Sharp drum machine-produced beats, shrill keyboards, and epic distortion are the delivery system for generally recognizable song structures. But the main attraction to ZJ, and one that will likely remain so no matter what musical direction the opera-trained 21 year old ends up taking, is her voice. While those with a deep affection for her voice could listen to it in almost any musical setting, those who find her singing affected and mannered, who can’t take that much drama in every song, have to at least acknowledge the strength of her voice.

Danilova seems to have been born at the right time, though, because the vogue for noisy pop suits her powerful, resonant voice surprisingly well. Her musical mood seems confined to the dark and gothic, which seems fitting, but she doesn’t get all impenetrably Diamanda Galas about it. She broadened her audience a bit with the cleaned-up sonics of this year’s Stridulum EP, even if her underlying aesthetic hadn’t changed that much. Although it seems inevitable that Danilova will end up working with a big-time producer (Chamber pop via Marius de Vries or Van Dyke Parks? Club bangers courtesy of Switch and Diplo?) or turning up on a tasteful collaboration with Björk or Antony, a lot of people like those fuzzy/skuzzy layers of keyboards and canned drums, and are hoping things don’t get too spic and span just yet. Thankfully, LA Vampires Meets Zola Jesus arrives to further postpone her assimilation.

As half of Pocahaunted, Amanda Brown has been increasingly incorporating dub rhythms and production techniques into the droney duo’s quasi-tribal trip. With LA Vampires, she seems to have embraced the dub aesthetic wholly while keeping Pocahaunted’s gauzy recording quality intact. Brown is credited with all the music on this 25-minute EP — “Beats, keys, vice” — to which Danilova adds her echo-y, layered vocals. It makes for a fine pairing, the production leaning toward the murky lo-fi end of things but foregoing the more piercing, dissonant sounds of earlier ZJ efforts for a smooth, underwater dub vibe. At times, such as on “Searching,” Brown adds a bit of slowed-down acid jazz vibe.

Brown’s concocted a sinister dub brew for Danilova to sing over, or really, under, as most of the vocals are buried and unintelligible. Not a problem, because if the inspirational, greeting card-style lyrics discernible on Stridulum are any indication, ZJ’s vocals always work better as atmosphere. Only on the EP’s closing version of Jamaican singer Dawn Penn’s frequently covered and sampled “No No No” can we clearly make out words, the hypnotically repetitive refrain “No no no, you don’t love me I know.” This song follows “Eulogy,” the one track here I found to convey much emotion. Maybe that’s because this is the one track where Danilova’s wordless vocals dominate, the sparse beats and keyboards creeping around in the background. Whereas ZJ’s music tends toward high-drama strum and drang, the music Brown lays down just kind of hangs there, mellow and intoxicating, not trying to elicit any emotive response.

There’s nothing terribly complicated or eclectic about the music overall, and there doesn’t need to be. The slow grooves and hazy sound are a perfect but until now untested fit with Danilova’s singing. LA Vampires Meets Zola Jesus is seductive, lulling listening, as easy on the ears as anything either of these artist have recorded, but that certainly doesn't make it lightweight.

Rangda

As featured here.

Using either “improv” or “supergroup” to describe a rock band can make many listeners wary, and with good reason. Apply both terms to the same band and you’re taking a serious risk of scaring away even the most open-minded potential audience. Despite being such a group, and naming themselves for a Hindu demon queen who enjoys snacking on babies, there’s no need to be frightened of Rangda. The trio of underground music heroes Sir Richard Bishop, Ben Chasny, and Chris Corsano has created a thoroughly engaging, and at times surprisingly pretty, album.

The collaboration almost didn’t happen. Several years ago, Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance, Comets on Fire) approached Bishop (Sun City Girls), whom he’d long admired, with the idea of forming an improv-based group with two electric guitars and drums. Corsano, who’s worked with Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth and Nels Cline, was the natural choice for percussion; his combination of ferocity and precision is unmatched among drummers in the avant-rock and outsider-jazz worlds. Busy schedules and the fact that all three live in different parts of the country kept the idea from becoming a reality until last September, when they played their first show together, without having practiced a single time. The next day they recorded their debut album, False Flag, and a European tour followed in the spring.

“We each had a few skeletal ideas to work with that ended up on the album,” the migratory Bishop explains from his temporary home of Portland, Ore. “But then we went on a European tour and developed our sound on stage. We would play two or three extended improvs a night, but even some of those started to have form.”

False Flag is divided more or less evenly between melodic sketches that allow for improvisatory exploration and looser, free-form playing. While the languid “Sarcaphogai” and the sweetly lyrical 15-minute album closer “Plain of Jars” are subdued, the sheer physicality of Corsano’s performance on the more animated material sounds exhausting, and neither Bishop nor Chasny have recorded anything this intense in years. Though the music is largely improvised, it’s not three guys stumbling all over each other, as can be common in other rock-centric improv settings. The two guitarists are familiar with each other’s work, and Corsano has played frequently with Chasny (Bishop says Corsano can “do anything he wants and it’s great”), resulting in a simpatico band dynamic. Both Bishop and Chasny are well-versed in Indian and Middle Eastern music, adding a twist to more familiar rock forms.

As far as the supergroup designation goes, it’s a bit of a joke with some truth to it. Chasny received critical acclaim throughout the last decade for his psychedelic folk project Six Organs of Admittance, and has been a sideman for a wide range of other acts, most recently Current 93. Corsano has played with a mind-boggling number of top-shelf improv and jazz musicians, and even showed up on Bjork’s Volta in 2007. Both have numerous recordings and road miles under their belts, but they’re babes in the woods compared with Bishop, who spent over 25 years turning on—and freaking out—audiences around the world in the inimitable Sun City Girls before launching a career as a solo artist in 2005. Sun City Girls had its own unique way of doing things for a quarter of a century, before the death of drummer Charles Gocher in 2007 signaled the end of the band. But Bishop says he’s surprisingly comfortable with his new bandmates.

“Last year I went on tour with a backing band, and it was strange because I had to be a bandleader,” he says. “It turned out great but I’d never had to do that. I had a certain amount of comfort with them on stage, but it’s never as easy as with Sun City Girls. But the European tour with Rangda proved we work really well together.”

So well, in fact, Bishop says he’s already thinking of Rangda as his new band.

“I’m looking at it very seriously,” he continues. “I think we could continue for the semi-long run. We’re already talking about releasing a live record. And the only unexpected thing about it has been a good thing. Chris is a serious guy, we’ll play something and he’ll say, ‘No, it’s not good enough.’ I’m not really used to that. That never happened with Sun City Girls—of course it was always good enough. But that’s a good attitude to have, to take things a little more seriously.”

Cats and Dogs

From Tiny Mix Tapes.

Royal Trux
Cats and Dogs (1993)

Under the “About this record” section for Cats and Dogs on Drag City’s website is a statement that reads simply: “Do you remember the summer of ’93? Our brief stay in Camelot…”

That’s a joke on nostalgia, I’m guessing, but for music fans of a certain age and sensibility, it’s a bittersweet one. If 1991 was the year punk broke, 1993 might be considered the beginning of indie rock’s brief golden age, the year indie went from describing DIY-style labels and bands that were financially independent from major labels, to signifying a sound based in guitar-oriented rock groups that favored lots of distortion and quirky if not obtuse lyrics and album art. It was also the year Matador partnered with Atlantic Records for distribution.

1993 was the year between Slanted and Enchanted and Crooked Rain, the year of Bubble and Scrape, Painful, Vampire on Titus (though, truth be told, most of us wouldn’t know that until next year’s Bee Thousand), On the Mouth, Icky Mettle, and so on. Choose-your-own-indie-rock adventure. These are considered seminal albums now, and back then the bands responsible were starting to get wider distribution and even some radio and MTV play, thanks in no small part to corporate America trying to figure out what was and wasn’t “grunge.” And for some of the bands, the best was yet to come.

How does Cats and Dogs fit into all this? The answer, as with most things Truxish, is unconventionally. Despite having introduced Pavement to the world via their early singles and EPs, Drag City was never an indie rock label, à la Merge or Matador. It was home to sullen songwriters (Smog, Palace), conceptual groups steeped in art theory (Red Krayola, Gastr del Sol) a Popol Vuh-admiring psychedelic-folk artist — back when that wasn’t so commonplace (Flying Saucer Attack) — and whatever the hell Royal Trux was. Drag City’s flagship band, Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema’s outfit made two albums of difficult, art-damaged rock, and a more accessible but still kinda weird untitled record before releasing 1993's Cats and Dogs, a recording that was easier for indie rock fans to digest, and one that helped them get signed to Virgin records.

Cats and Dogs didn’t sound like indie rock so much as a comment on — or reflection of — indie rock, something that seems even more apparent 17 years on. Like Jean Luc Godard’s earlier films, Royal Trux albums often played like critiques of the genres they were operating in while remaining wholly enjoyable in their own right. You could groove on them whether or not you caught all the references, but once you did, your understanding and enjoyment changed, almost always for the better.

Cats and Dogs is littered with sounds that would be familiar to anyone listening to college radio at the time. The guitar tone and slow/fast tempo change of opening track “Teeth” borrows a style that was already a cliché for innumerable indie bands formed in the wake of Nirvana, and every band had at least one song that featured a similar languid coda that allowed for scorched earth guitar soloing; “The Flag” apes early Pavement’s love of unsynced doubled vocals and noisy scuzz placed over a pop song; “Friends” sounds like a Sonic Youth noise digression (though of course the spectre of SY loomed large over every rock band in the 90s); “Tight Pants” could be Sebadoh attempting math rock; and I’ve always heard the funky break beat and vocal breakdown near the end of “Skywood Greenback Mantra” as a send-up of Hagerty’s former bandmate Jon Spencer’s flirting with minstrel-like band Blues Explosion or a prediction of the coming of Beck’s shtick.

Of course there’s plenty of stuff here that has a more tangential relationship to then-current sounds. Side one ends with “Turn of the Century,” surely one of the great tracks in the Trux catalogue. Backed by a wistful piano figure, Hagerty’s multi-tracked guitar playing has rarely been as gorgeous, his duet with Herrema never as emotive. It’s comedown acid rock for clever kids, music as narcotic. Like the heroin dealer/user in the movie Rush said, “It’s like floating on a cloud of titties.”

The feeling gets a bit queasier with side two opener “Up the Sleeve,” a song about scoring/using drugs. It has a real menace to it, the guitars and analogue synth creeping along sleazily only to be interrupted by fuzz-peddle riffing near the end. If “Up the Sleeve” contains the first real hint on this album of the antisocial troublemakers who recorded Twin Infinitives, that druggy duo seems to have been resurrected in full for album closer “Driving in That Car.” It’s a lengthy dirge propelled by what sounds like handclaps and cowbell, a retro to the future synth that sounds like a spaceship landing, and chants about time and taking off your shirt.

Whether you accept this reading of Cats and Dogs as self-conscious indie rock or not, you have to admit that Royal Trux were one of the most referential bands of the era, with an astute critical sense. Not for nothing was the word deconstruction used repeatedly in Trux reviews and profiles of the time, and even if you didn’t fully understand what that word meant (I submit few of us truly did), you knew what these Cultural Studies-steeped writers were getting at.

Hagerty has famously claimed that Royal Trux’s three records for Virgin were a conceptual trilogy, representing rock music from the 60s, 70s, and 80s: Thank You (produced by Neil Young compadre David Briggs in 1995) was ostensibly their take on 60s rock, though the early 70s swagger of Stones/Faces/Mountain is equally present. Sweet Sixteen (1997) was their trip through 70s glam rock, the icing on the toilet bowl cover image mirroring the dirty riffs and guttural vocals sweetened with stadium-sized production and mixing, while Accelerator (1998) topped it off with a shrill-sounding take on 80s pop rock. But before this trilogy, they had already executed their take on the sound of the 90s with Cats and Dogs. I don’t mean to suggest they approached the album with the strict idea of “covering” that decade, that their intent and purpose was so thoroughly fleshed out as it would be, just that they were deliberately tweaking the sounds of their contemporaries. They were operating in an aesthetic they had yet to define, making it up as they went, reinventing their sound from album to album. Cats and Dogs is as different from the previous year’s Stonesian untitled (the “Skulls” album) as that album was from the broke-down futuristic nightmare of Twin Infinitives as that was from their rickety debut as Royal Trux were from Hagerty’s previous band Pussy Galore.

In addition to their abundance of ideas and self-reinvention, what most distinguishes Royal Trux from their peers of the 90s is Hagerty’s guitar playing. No one else seems to have his understanding of — and affection for — classic rock, using its tropes in a non-ironic way that explores the further edges and possibilities of hoary riffs and solos. While other bands would acknowledge classic rock with a wink and a smirk, as if those sounds were dumb fun they liked to revel in but were ultimately above, Hagerty seemed to embrace them precisely because they were dumb, almost awed they could be as powerful and musically malleable as they were.

So maybe the summer of 1993 was a too-brief stay in indie rock Camelot. The music got more predictable and codified as it got more popular, and the internet would soon show up and make everyone an instant expert, rearrange our idea of historical narratives by crushing all of pop culture history into one infinitely sided dice where every era touched every other one. Neil and Jennifer (surely a better Jack and Jackie than Ira and Georgia) wouldn’t continue into the new millennium as Royal Trux. They split up, breaking off into Hagerty’s prolific and often baffling project Howling Hex and Herrema's somewhat confused take on Sunset Strip rock, RTX. The late-period Trux records are great (and absolutely perfect for road trips), and in many ways superior to what came before — certainly more listenable for most people. But Cats and Dogs stands as a perfect transition from their provocative experimentation to a more standard idea of a rock band. Never again would they turn their penchant for re-appropriation so inward, evaluating their own time while also transcending it.

I can’t believe this record was ever out of print.

Bill Baird's Silence!

Tiny Mix Tapes review here.

Peter Stampfel

Today's link to the past is my profile of Peter Stampfel for Metro Pulse, done in advance of his playing Pilot Light last June. Peter is a very interesting guy, a talker with lots of stories and music history to share. When he came to town he played three times before his Saturday night show at PL, and that one went for almost three hours.

Hypnagagme pop

Interesting collection of articles in the new Wire about various contemporary uses of past music, particularly analogue and early electro pop music of the late 70s and early 8os. The one with the most currency for me is Byron Coley's slightly curmudgeonly (natch) take down of Hypnagogic pop and contemporary synth music, in service of elevating raw American guitar rock a la The Bassholes, Siltbreeze groups, et al. He at least has a sense of humor about the whole thing sorely lacking in the other participants' entries (save Keith Moline's usual droll observations), and his paragraph on the proliferation of bygone music era simulacrum cum instant internet experts needed to be said years ago, and repeated often.

I like a decent amount of what gets lumped under the Hypnagogic pop banner, but part of what's irritating about it is it's a genre named and defined by David Keenan (the same guy (ir)responsible for "New Weird America") in the pages of The Wire about a year ago. Since then, he's used the term in almost every profile or longer article he's written. He's even gone so far in a profile as to include a quote by the guy from Rangers commenting on Keenan's use of the word, thinking aloud as to whether he's a part of a genre the author invented a name for a few months earlier. What's more, many other Wire scribes use the term excessively, so it's appearing at least a dozen times per issue, probably more. Meanwhile, if New Weird America is mentioned, which is rarely now, it's done so somewhat sheepishly, and the Noise kick they were on a few years ago has receded into the background.

This is to be expected, and The Wire of all magazines is justly respected for picking up on new trends as they continue to monitor old ones. They continue to do a remarkable job of keeping up to date as a print magazine, even staying ahead of most online music magazines and popular blogs. And Keenan does make a lengthy if somewhat sketchy case for the Hypnagogic genre and what might constitute a practitioner. However, if a Mojo or Q were to invent a name for a genre and have their writers using it excessively within months of coining it, you can imagine the snickers and tut tutting coming from The Wire's offices. As it is, I feel like the magazine has beat that particular horse to death in less than a year, and I'm sick of hearing about it.

What's more interesting to me, and this could very well be because I'm American and don't have as thorough access to information about this music and the culture it reflects and is created in, is the hauntology movement represented by Mordant Music, James Kirby's various projects and Ghost Box, among others. In fact, Mark Fisher's article in this month's survey reminds us Kirby was 10 years ahead of Oneohtrix Point Never and Justin Bieber pranksters in finding the sublime hidden in the dregs of pop music. And, yes, I know hauntology was probably appropriated from Derrida by a Wire writer, but for me its application to the music it describes is both clever and appropriate. Plus I generally like the music better.

Blue Hills

Here's my latest review for Tiny Mix Tapes, Michael Hurley's Blue Hills. I'd say it's perfect porch sitting music, but it's been so hot, humid and mosquito-ridden around here that I haven't tested that theory yet. Anyway it's good for any weather.

Bluebeard

Given the four Catherine Breillat films I'd seen, I was expecting Bluebeard to be far more intense and/or confrontational, possibly even borderline lewd given the subject manner and age of the female protagonist. The subject manner being an adaptation of Charles Perrault's infamous fairy tale, the age of the actress playing his child bride being 15. To my surprise, Bluebeard ended up being a restrained, visually imaginative, deceptively straightforward rendering of the tale.

Breillat demonstrated how a period piece can appear ornate and believable on a modest budget, via a precise eye for detail and astute decision as to what to include and exclude from the frame. Ridley Scott's excellent The Duelists also does this well, and having watched it the week prior, probably made me more aware of this aspect in Breillat's film. Most period films, especially pre-19th century European-set films, love to indulge in at least one market scene, in which the costumers, set designers and director love to show off the fruits of their meticulous research and antique shopping sprees. This can be fun, but it has become such a cliched thing to watch for, usually accompanied by jaunty music and a cacophonous mixing of "market sounds" as the protagonist strolls through the stalls, it can be distracting, a bit of a joke. Breillat forgoes any such showy exposition, the two scenes requiring more than four actors in the same frame at once being a brief funeral and a necessary dancing/gathering scene. The use of diegetic period music makes it all the more believable, and if I recall correctly, no other music was used during the film, except for opening and end credits.

Two other famous French films it immediately recalls are Bresson's Lancelot du Lac and Rohmer's Perceval, two singular stylistic works that it would seem impossible for Breillat not to have been informed by to some extent. Specifically, Bluebeard's framing and laconic pace recall Lancelot, while the music and costumes bring to mind Perceval. In addition to being exquisitely photographed, the film features several slow, almost still shots that function as tableau vivants which recall paintings, and the red headed sister of the bride has a distinct Pre-Raphaelite appearance.

Having been so effectively reworked in a feminist vein by Angela Carter and others, the Bluebeard tale is treated in a similar, though subtler, feminist manner by Breillat. The most unexpected and radical notion is the almost sympathetic portrayal of Bluebeard as a misunderstood, lonely ogre. (Though I haven't watched any of the Shrek films in their entirety, what bits I've seen of them couldn't help but come to mind.) His child bride is most certainly an innocent, but perhaps not as much as we might expect. After the death of her father, she decides to take the risk of marrying the bad boy (or in this case, serial killer) so she won't have to live a life of deprivation, something her older sister — who seems to detest poverty and her mother's defeatism even more than her sibling — refuses to do. And I don't exactly detect sympathy from the film for the arguably pragmatic but inarguably opportunistic mothers presented here. The framing device of two small girls reading the tale in a contemporary setting is inspired, adding another layer to the film, particularly during the story's climax.

Any film that takes as it subject matter a well-known story, doesn't alter the narrative of the story in any dramatic way but still manages to surprise and cast new light on old themes is impressive. Bluebeard impresses for this reason, but anyone approaching it with little or no knowledge of its source will surely by drawn in and hypnotized by its visual beauty and near flawless execution .

Farewell, My Lovely

After reading Kent Jones' appreciation in the latest Film Comment, I watched the 1975 version of Farewell, My Lovely starring Robert Mitchum, something I've been wanting to do since I saw this as an adolescent. Not exactly a must see, it still has enough of a pessimistic streak, attention to period detail and odd but interesting casting characteristic of the 70s to make it worth a look. Mitchum as Philip Marlowe is kind of fun at first, but then it gets weird and sort of sad, particularly when he's kissing a woman half his age, diving behind cars to avoid being shot or stumbling around in a heroin daze. Part of the problem is Mitchum was 54 at the time, and I guess I never expected Marlowe to live that long. I assumed he'd eventually mouth off to the wrong person or his past would catch up with him. He was supposed to be in his mid 40s around the time of Playback, the last Chandler novel in which he appears, so I suppose mid 50s isn't that far fetched. It didn't help matters that this guy basically reinvented Marlowe for the 70s two years earlier, in a completely opposite direction that Mitchum took him. Altman's The Long Goodbye and Dick Richards' Farewell make for interesting genre contrasts, with Altman's film being very American New Wave and Richards' stuck in a more or less old fashioned studio mode. And though Jerry Goldsmith's score for Farewell seems to be a bit more successful as a self-consciously hommage than the other elements of the film, to my ears it borrows a bit too much from John Williams' excellent Long Goodbye score.
The most interesting thing in the film for me was Charlotte Rampling as the femme fatale. She does a pretty amazing Bacall impersonation early on in the film, getting Bacall's tone and inflection just right. She continues in this playful manner until it's time to start shooting people, atwhich point she gets that look in her eye and becomes the complex, emotionally troubled woman she seems to enjoy playing so much. Can't wait to see what Todd Solondz's got in store for her, Pee Wee and Omar.

Evans

There are few activities in life I enjoy more than listening to Robert Evans read his book The Kid Stays in the Picture. (Wait, is that even considered an activity? It is if you're as lazy as I am!) I found the book on tape about 8 years ago and I've listened to it three times in its entirety, and dip into it randomly now and then, always while driving. I've only ever owned vehicles with cassette players, and The Kid has traveled with me in two different cars, one truck, at least a dozen states and God knows how many miles. Fortunately my girlfriend also finds his megalomaniacal ravings entertaining, if somewhat repellent, and Evans' nasal, coke-ravaged voice accompanied us on drives to Edisto Beach and Washington, D.C. and back. Am I obsessed? Worse — I'm addicted.
His audio book reading is the same recording used for the voiceover on the documentary of Kid, but the film is much shorter, and anyway it's better to listen to Evans' tales without the visuals the documentary offers. If you haven't read/heard/seen Kid, you might still be familiar with this brilliant parody/hommage. Patton Oswalt does a bit on him as well.
The widespread fascination with his biography, especially his reading of it, seems to lie primarily in how utter oblivious Evans is to his self-absorption. Every incident of his life is recounted with the utmost melodrama, and even if he starts out a story being self-deprecating, by anecdote's end he's in the catbird seat. His narrative is especially hysterical/cringe-worthy when he talks about his love life, marriage and the birth of his son. You expect him to be cocky and asinine when telling stories about schmoozing with Jack Nicholson, Francis Coppola and politicians, but it's as if the guy has worked in movies so long he remembers his real life as contrived as the old fashioned Hollywood pictures he used to act in. He seems to honestly think educated, adult people spoke to him with the ridiculous dialogue he assigns them.
I said I listened to his entire bio 3 times, but that's not entirely true. My copy is missing the fourth and final cassette. Tape 3 ends with him standing beside Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office, looking into President Nixon's bathroom. (I am not making this up. Who knows if he is?) His friendship with Kissinger is something he takes obvious pride in, deriving way more pleasure from it than running Paramount, his marriage to Ali McGraw or his son. He begins the book with the premiere of The Godfather, and how he convinced Kissinger to skip out on Vietnam peace talks abroad to attend. I've been tempted to purchase the missing tape on Amazon, but I like the idea of leaving Evans and Dr. K side by side there outside Nixon's crapper. I have read the book and seen the movie, but all I really remember about the end is Steve McQueen sleeps with Ali and Evans does a Scarface-sized mountain of coke. And The Cotton Club really sucked. As did The Two Jakes.

Here's Mr. Modesty himself.

Idumea

I was brought up Methodist, so I'm no stranger to the hymns of Charles Wesley. They were littered throughout the United Methodist Hymnal. But one we never sang, and one I'm not even sure was in that hymnal, was Idumea. It's more of a Sacred Harp tune, and it makes sense a modern church wouldn't want to sing a hymn so existential and fixated on death. Too bad, because it's absolutely one of the loveliest tunes there is, and all that talk of worlds unknown, deepest shade and fiery skies could really appeal to a young boy obsessed with mythology. Oh well, the hateful giant organ in the sanctuary would have probably drowned out the singing, anyway.
Little could Mr. Wesley know that about 250 after he wrote the hymn, a Christian eschatologist who practiced magick (a member of the Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis) would construct an album around "Idumea." Nor could he imagine the song would be performed so wonderfully by a hermaphrodite, a stripper/porn actress, a faux hillbilly and the guy from Soft Cell. You have to be careful with David Tibet and Current 93, his judgment is sometimes questionable, but Black Ships Ate the Sky is definitely one of his best. Tibet got eight vocalists to sing "Idumea" and scattered their versions amidst original songs of his own. The album's about the apocalypse, more or less, continuing in the sort of Process Church-like vein of earlier works. It features some great music courtesy of Ben Chasny, John Contreras, William Basinski and lots of other folks. I can't overstate its beauty, even though I'm not always entirely sure what Tibet's going on about. (Sample lyric: "I have dug a candle as red as dung/And the dragonfly answers back/Hello monkey-paw!") He's on his own gnostic trip, and it looks like he's having a good time with it.

Baby it's slow when lights go low

This song is so great, something I was reminded of when I saw this likewise great use of it in Bronson recently. The movie can be tedious in its use of violence (I suppose that's part of its point), and it looks like some of the best scenes have been isolated and put on YouTube, including this pretty fun dance party courtesy of the Pet Shop Boys. Though I found it sort of conceptually wonky, the film's worth watching in its entirety for Tom Hardy's performance, a borderline frightening Method tour de force that includes one of the most severe physical transformations since De Niro in Raging Bull.

Sunn O)))

I'll be randomly posting links to old articles of mine, starting off with this profile on Sunn O))) I did for Metro Pulse about a year ago. Wow, it doesn't seem like it was that long ago. They played the Bijou and it was pretty amazing and even a little frightening. Attila was, at least. I saw them at the Orange Peel in Asheville the following night, at a show that wasn't quite as eerie but was louder and way bass-heavier. I love these guys.
Maximum Volume Yields Maximum Results

The Unbearable Triteness of Blogging

Nevertheless. I will finally do it.