The Fix

It’s a bit hard for me to write about these guys at this point. I have written about them before. Then I booked shows for them. Then I went on tour with them. I told them I probably wouldn’t write about them again: that the conflict of interest was too great, that we were friends, that we should let that be that. But there’s always something that keeps me involved, something that keeps me telling those around me about Clockcleaner (or Clockclean Er, however they think it should be spelled), and now it’s pretty much all about saying goodbye to John Sharkey III (the one with the bat) for a while.

This guy. He’s in love so he moves to Australia and starts working for VICE Magazine. That’s how you do it, I suppose. Meet somebody, quit your job, move out of your life, sell everything and bail. Get a Comsat Angels-themed tattoo. Let your inner Goth out and allow it to bleed black all over your noise rock band’s damaged sounds and GG Allin worship. If you’re going to flame out, this is how it should be done.

You should also anger as many people along the way as possible. I caught their final US show for some time at Southpaw in Brooklyn a few weeks back, opening for the reunited Negative Approach. What’s the best way to close this set, you ask? How’s this: cover NA’s “Ready to Fight” but get the rhythm section to slow it down to a crawl, the way Flipper would have done it, and let it roll for about 20 minutes. This show was bad enough–a band that had killed it at a reunion for Touch & Go’s 25th Anniversary concerts 18 months earlier had been ground down to a pop-up hardcore re-enactment that had all the personality of the animatronic puppet band at a Chuck E. Cheese, replete with the kids going nuts for tokens while the adults sat back with their slice of pizza and $6 Miller Lites, waiting for them to wear themselves out so they could go home. This is the bird in the hand, as it were, to a band like Clockcleaner, who live to irritate audiences and lambaste all who aren’t in on the joke. After a respectable set of their own material and a cover of GG’s “Hate City,” they laid into it–and would not stop, despite the consternation of the crowd. They clipped the fuse; made ‘em wait it out. They got booed and spit on and had beers thrown at them, but they continued to grind out one of the headliner’s most caustic songs to ashes. Brannon was mad. Everybody was mad. But it was hilarious, and had to happen. (The performance is being released on a 12” single later this year, along with a single of GG Allin covers, and a split EP with Deerhunter, contractually credited to Cockcleaner and Queerhunter).

There’s really not a lot to Clockcleaner’s sound, and never was, but their dark, nihilistic slashery has a place in my heart. Look for another full-length, entitled Auf Wiedersehen, due out in 2009, with a U.S. tour to follow. And enjoy the jams provided to Fuzz from their last release, Babylon Rules.

I was at my grandparents’ house for Mother’s Day, sitting in the study, writing this review, when my grandma comes in with a bowl of fruit (what a lady, right?). She cocks her head as she’s about to walk out and stands in the doorway listening to the music playing on the stereo.

“Piano? Who’s this?”

I laugh apologetically. “It’s the Brian Jonestown Massacre.”

“What a strange name for a band.” She pauses again. “It’s not very well-played, but it still sounds nice. What’s this song called?”

I should have seen this coming. I blanche at the question, you see, because this little ditty from the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s new album, this pseudo-classical calm in the eye of the shit storm that is My Bloody Underground, is whimsically titled “We Are the Niggers of the World.” How to answer such an innocuous question without eliciting a whoop of horror?

Evasive measures barely saved the day.

“Well, Grandma…Brian Jonestown Massacre isn’t so bad. Have you heard of this band called Cannibal Corpse?”

She hadn’t, obviously, and as she closed the door, my grandma gave me a look like I was somewhat retarded; as if to say, “Cannibal Corpse? Are you fucking serious, kid?”

Oh well. It could have been worse. At least she didn’t come in while I was listening to “Automatic Faggot for the People.”

Damn you, Anton Newcombe.

Oh yes, My Bloody Underground has proven to be a polarizing bastard. You loathe it or love it. Or, if you’re like me, initial hate gives way to deep affection. My Bloody Underground is both a departure for BJM main man Anton Newcombe and a return to his noise-rock roots as evidenced by his debut, Methodrone. The new album’s title refers to the Velvet Underground, My Bloody Valentine and, perhaps serendipitously, “My Little Underground” from the Jesus & Mary Chain’s Psychocandy. While we’re on the topic of influences, we might as well throw Sonic Youth, the Stones, and assorted krautrock in the mix, too. And don’t forget the inexhaustible well of Newcombe’s ego. Predictably, album number thirteen is filled to the brim with influences both external and self-referential. It’s also long; with a seventy-eight minute running time, it’s staggering, really–a sonic endurance test.

Yes, Newcombe remains the incorrigible provocateur. Song titles like “Bring Me the Head of Paul McCartney on Heather Mills’ Wooden Peg,” “Who Fucking Pissed in My Well?” and the aforementioned “We Are the Niggers of the World,” are so ludicrous that they don’t push the envelope so much as shit on it. “Automatic Faggot for the People” is such a silly swipe at Michael Stipe that you just have to chuckle at Newcombe’s inanity. Can you believe the guy is forty years old? Anyway, let’s move past the more inflammatory aspects of the album.

Save for a few moments of relative calm, My Bloody Underground is a heavily textured album of cyclic dirges–this is the furthest thing from three-minute electro-pop. Opener “Bring Me the Head of Paul McCartney…” seems like it drags on for three minutes too long at first play, but the Velvet-like strings grow on you, and then you don’t want it to end. “Who Cares Why?” and “Just Like Kicking Jesus” are also particularly adept drones that combine Kevin Shields’ and John Cale’s respective sonic idiosyncrasies. Lulls in the storm include the bluesy “Yeah Yeah,” and “Ljosmyndir,” a soothing vocal collage that floats on a bed of ambient synths. Ten-and-a-half minute-long closer “Black Hole Symphony” is notable only because it’s the one song on the album where title and content match perfectly.

If you don’t make it past the first few songs, you’re making a big mistake–the latter portion of the album is where Newcombe’s intentions crystallize. The three penultimate tracks are particularly good, forming a trinity of unholy intent. “Automatic Faggot for the People” swirls with gales of white noise that blanket clangs of percussion and a faint but persistent melody; “Darkwave Driver/Big Drill Car” is a loping space cowboy lament haunted by Morricone’s electric ghost; “Monkey Powder” is a rogue wave that maintains momentum by way of an insidious surf guitar line as the song drags you on a midnight walk on water. For those who have leased their souls to that charming man in black at the crossroads of noise and krautrock, this cinematic trio is wholly satisfying.

All said, as much as you might want to hate him, Anton Newcombe showcases an undeniable ability to re-contextualize compelling soundscapes into a cohesive, if drawn-out, opus. The pretension is off-putting, sure, and the many melodic hooks would arguably work better if they were compressed into three-minute songs. But the Brian Jonestown Massacre have always followed their own muse without regard to wider popularity–at times to the point of apparent self-sabotage. Newcombe seems to thrive on conflict, however, and if nothing else, it’s clear that My Bloody Underground is a work of personal conviction. All crassness aside, that’s something that even my grandma would appreciate.

Getting around to actually judging the music on this one is a real chore. Dean Spunt and Randy Randall of No Age are two of the most inspiring young figures in indie rock. I don’t live in LA and can only make observations based on how they’ve rippled across the US, but from my perspective, No Age have forged what so many artists hope to by resisting being placed on an altar and instead taking to the streets, so to speak. They have (not single handedly, of course) started a vibrant creative community.

For me, No Age, The Smell, Abe Vigoda, Mika Miko, PPM (Dean’s record label) and all of the other bands and artists contributing to the experience in downtown LA has challenged what we in Chicago call a “music scene,” and I doubt that the feeling is an isolated one. I considered how much of my music appreciation is typically done privately. For many, LA’s recent explosion has provoked introspection into how much more engaged we can be creatively when we exist in a community, when we allow ourselves to be constantly encouraged through interaction with others enriching their lives through art. It makes life so much more than liking music and going to concerts. The exchange of ideas and culture flourish and the human experience is advanced. Well done, No Age.

But enough about LA. This is an album review. All of the preceding is to say that it’s difficult to look atNouns independently of the context in which it was fostered. But maybe we shouldn’t completely.

Nouns is No Age’s first true full-length album. Last year’s blindsiding debut, Weirdo Rippers, was a crop of songs from five vinyl-only 12”s that were compiled and released together via Fat Cat Records. For records of this kind, it’s necessary to forgive a few incongruities and imbalances but, in Weirdo Rippers’ case, the movement, both in song and in sequence, was unexpectedly flawless. The song-by-song approach had served No Age well. The concept album be damned, I suppose.

Nouns is No Age writing a record from start to finish; the sound is no significant departure from Weirdo Rippers–the cymbals and guitar riffs spiral into a primordial soup. Dean’s blasts of vocals project urgently from the mess of feedback and effects burying the immediacy of the band’s natural pop-punk grace. If you were as entranced last year by Weirdo Rippers as I was, than you know that this is where No Age flourish most profoundly. No Age establish a standard for noise music. They give noise a purpose in seasoning their songs. It’s not used indefensibly but as a method in authentication. It’s why No Age is indie music’s greatest hope: their sincerity is matched in song and in deed.

It’s important to note that Nouns is anything but front loaded. “Miner” and “Eraser,” in particular, give the record a slow start and the finest pop-punk melodies are reserved for the second half of the disc. The first half may even intentionally dissuade some listeners from fully grasping the record’s direction. “Things I Did When I Was Dead” is a delicate and dreamy ballad though it somewhat jars the record’s flow. “Cappo” seems like dead weight, a retread of ideas already explored and “Keechie” seems to slow things down enough for No Age to regain their focus. “Sleeper Hold,” perhaps the album’s most foundational track, is where I wanted this record to start. “Here Should Be My Home,” “Ripped Knees,” and “Brain Burner” showcase No Age at their best.

Nouns isn’t a disappointment but it isn’t No Age at the height of their powers. Part of the charm of Weirdo Rippers was its attention deficit source material. On Nouns, No Age do their best to transition from a more singles-oriented release to a true album and uncover a few weaknesses. This album will undoubtedly make a big splash for the band but it isn’t yet delivering everything that No Age is capable of. They’re only just getting started, however, and I’m confident that their future efforts will leave Nouns in the dust.

Don’t have time to search out this week’s essential MP3s, streams and viral videos? That’s why we’re here.

Lily Allen “I Don’t Know”
The British pop tart gets serious on this leaked demo, contemplating her place in the world over a not-too-solemn synth score: “And I am a weapon of massive consumption/ It’s not my fault, it’s how I’m programmed to function.”

(via Fabulist)

Nine Inch Nails “Discipline”
After getting something like 17 albums of instrumental music out of his system, Trent Reznor returns to making manic electro-noise-pop on this track. The best part is that he’s giving it away for free.
(via Nine Inch Nails)

Scarlett Johansson “Anywhere I Lay My Head”
Produced by TV on the Radio’s David Sitek, featuring cameos by David Bowie and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and comprised entirely of songs written by Tom Waits, actress Scarlett Johannson makes what is possibly the first credible album by an actor. Ever. Here’s a taste.
(via Bring Me Up)

No Age “Eraser”
Sub Pop continues on its quest to sign on all the world’s most interesting bands. This Los Angeles fuzz-rock duo’s stratospheric tune must be the reason why.
(via Pop Head Wound)

Santogold “L.E.S. Artistes”
This week’s totally awesome ’80s throwback comes via Santi White, a sartorially savvy Brooklyn musician that records under the name Santogold. With M.I.A. producer Diplo at her side, she blasts hipsters while simultaneously offering them a wicked future anthem.
(via Captain Obvious)

Vampire Weekend: “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa (Black Dominoes Remix)”
It seems like we weren’t the only ones thinking Vampire Weekend’s take on Paul Simon’s Graceland album would sound a lot better with a twist of random noise and dash of Latin space.
(via Pretty Much Amazing)

Shinichi Osawa: “Star Guitar (ft. Au Revoir Simone)”
The Chemical Brothers’ best song gets a rough-hewn remake and becomes even better. Well, almost.
(via The Yellow Stereo)

I’m going to take a stab that for more than half of you reading this, the band Steel Pole Bath Tub was before your time. They belonged to an era where a band couldn’t share its music with a limitless number of people without leaving the house. They lived in a music scene that was documented largely by zines, college radio airplay, and crosstalk in between fans. Naturally, they are all but forgotten today except by those who were there and whoever those people talked to about it.

But anonymity can be a wonderful thing, especially when one is committed to making evil music. And Steel Pole Bath Tub was certainly all about that. It seems so unlikely that the group’s dirge-like stew of minor chord aggression, shit-eating grins, Hawaiian shirts, traumatic heaviness, and a primary reliance on TV and movie samples in their songs could find release in the current marketplace. Intellectual property being what it is today, it could cost millions to clear much of the material that was part of the Tub’s sonic foundations. Punk rock and the non-instantaneous spread of information meant that if you wanted to find these guys while they existed–roughly 1986 to 1996–you’d have to do the legwork yourself. Most copyright holders didn’t even bother, and for the longest time, the group’s work carried on unimpeded. This is how we kept it together back then, when the whole of human experience hadn’t been placed at our feet for us to gloss over. But by participating in this endeavor, none of us knew that we’d join what would amount to the last generation that would need to go about it this way.

Originally hailing from Montana, the group traveled west, settling first in Seattle, and then in San Francisco, where they spent the bulk of their career. SF and its surrounding areas have been a hotbed for weirdness in popular culture since the ‘60s, and guitarist Mike Morasky, bassist/tape operator Dale Flattum, and drummer Darren Mor-X seemed to consume as much as it spat out in that regard. True crime novel adaptations, steam whistles, ominous soundtrack music, clips from “The Brady Bunch” and “Speed Racer,” Vincent Price’s sinister laugh, the bubbling of some random elixir in a make-believe laboratory, a woman’s scream, and the ever-present burbling of a Galaga machine were just a few of the sonic artifacts that peppered their nail-biting, isolationist smears of syrupy nightmare put to punk rock’s rotten-apple core.

Their former label-mates the Melvins showed us, through deed and action, how to make music sound evil. Steel Pole Bath Tub, however, decided to show us why, and this is the reason their music endures with a small but dedicated following to this day. You don’t need to look much further than your local news broadcast to understand how a medium like television makes the most out of trying to scare you senseless. Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, before cable and in the heyday of independently-owned TV and radio stations, it was as if the entire TV experience was designed to give you nightmares. Mr. Yuk commercials, “Chiller Theater” rebroadcasts of pulp trash, decrepit old cartoons and dramatic re-enactments of actual events. Lester Bangs even wrote about the gleeful recklessness of how these operators carried themselves, barely serving the public interest and loading us up with the subcultural wares we secretly all wanted. I think the Tub understood this better than most, and this is why their main body of work–the LPs Butterfly Love (1989), Tulip (1991), and The Miracle of Sound in Motion (1993), as well as major EPs Lurch (1990) and Some Cocktail Suggestions (1994), not to mention the dozens of 7” singles they released–have held up so well. Not only do they serve as a tent pole for the times, but also for those before it. The group’s riotous use of imagery in their cover art, posters and apparel also carry on the same traditions, lampooning and fetishizing past crazes like Tiki bar culture and attacking the mainstream in dripping handfuls (witness a sweatshirt with a gun on the front and the words “JUST DO IT” printed down each sleeve, or a T-shirt featuring Colonel Sanders with skulls in his eye sockets, artifacts to which only a less litigious society could commit).

Alas, the suburban media blitz and cultural paranoia that saturated Steel Pole Bath Tub’s fundamental ideas have changed enough to be considered passé in terms of how they affect us. Horror isn’t what it used to be. Our misfits no longer have the outlets of matinees and horror conventions to treat as their own. Now everyone’s every move is scrutinized, often at the will of the individual searching for recognition and a connection with others. Those who don’t fit in can no longer disappear. Spend some time with the music of Steel Pole Bath Tub and all of the unseen horrors and wildly sexualized afterthoughts that come with them will rush back to the fore. It’s time.

Couldn’t make it out to Austin? No problem, we’ve got your cheat-sheet to the artists everyone will be talking about when they get back home.
(Free MP3 downloads available via SXSW Music.)

Be Your Own Pet, “Bicycle, Bicycle, You Are My Bicycle”
We’ll admit these punky Nashville kids kind of scare us, but that probably just has to do with the conviction with which they sing, “We will come to your town/ Burn your house down/ Turn the sky brown.”

 
British Sea Power, “Waving Flags”
Epic British guitar rock that sounds a bit like Coldplay, but not in a bad way? Yes, please.

 
Basia Bulat, “In the Night”
This floppy-hat wearing Arcade Fire associate has got a ukele and she’s not afraid to use it. Especially not with a piano, banjo, flute, jangly acoustic guitar and that endearingly earthy voice.

 
Cassettes Won’t Listen, “Paper Float”
Don’t worry about the name; it’s not an emo band. It’s just an alias for bedroom producer and Ben Gibbard soundalike Jason Drake, which after listening to this stately jam we quickly realized is much more preferable.

 
Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong, “Lonely Buoy”
A much-hyped British outfit looking to break apart from the pack with an effortlessly tuneful spin on the current ’80s post-punk revival inflicting its peers.

 
Jens Lekman, “The Opposite of Hallelujah”
Clearly, there aren’t enough Swedish men singing sad songs over old time music hall symphonies. But this one is as good a place as any to start building a collection.

 
Lightspeed Champion, “Galaxy of the Lost”
A former member of the unfortunately named noise rock act Test Icicles, Devonte Hayes has successfully reinvented himself as a sensitive but slightly gross singer-songwriter with a serious comb over.

 
Matt & Kim, “Yea Yeah”
The blogosphere loves this indie electro-rock duo. The rest of the world, however, remains woefully oblivious to its lo-fi charms. It’s up to you to change that.

 
Peggy Sue and the Pirates, “Television”
“Flat screen, I am addicted to it,” sings this British duo, as it casually updates the Slits’ minimalist dub-punk sound. We know the feeling.

 
The Virgins, “Rich Girls”
Finally, a band interested in revisiting the Stones vastly underrated disco period. Thank you, The Virgins.