Friday, February 27, 2015

Song(s) of the Day # 405 Houndstooth


'The Portland (OR) band Houndstooth have just released their first album, Ride Out The Dark, and through our jeweler’s loupe, we spy a gem.  It captures that magic moment in 1966 when folk bands all went electric and their ace guitarists began noodling at length, as the female vocalist swayed at the front of the stage.  Or maybe it captures that magic moment in 1976 when Richard Hell had left Television and some hipper-than-thou Downtown rock crits put ‘em down as  a Southern boogie band, just because Verlaine and Lloyd liked stretching out the songs with gorgeous psyche fretboard wandering.'


'They can do no wrong.'
Marc Riley about Houndstooth, February 2015

Who's the best band in the World? It's a meaningless question at this point in time. Once, heading back into increasingly distant memory it was a conversation that could be had. It was The Beatles or the Stones. After that The Who, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan & The Band, Sly & the Family Stone, The James Brown Band, The Stooges, Creedence and Led Zep had their turn. Then perhaps it was David Bowie and his Spiders. Roxy. Then The Wailers, The Pistols, The Clash or The Ramones. Throughout the Eighties The Smiths or R.E.M. staked a claim. Public Enemy perhaps. No mention of U2 or Guns & Roses here. As the Eighties became the Nineties, Nirvana were perhaps the last band who might have achieved some kind of global consensus. Soon afterwards, Oasis brought the whole question into deep disrepute by threatening to be being sued and having to reach settlement, not with The Beatles who they shamelessly and self-confessedly aped and stole from, but with The Rutles. Since then I don't think the question could be honestly asked, never mind properly answered.


I first heard Houndstooth two nights ago on the radio. They're a truly small time band out of Portland Oregon where every other decent group seems to emerge out of  at this point in time if they're not from Austin, Texas or Australia. Two of Houndstooth actually hailed originally from Austin before relocating to Portland which seems to have become the capital of 'Cool America' for some while now. They certainly have some claim to attention right now as they move from Album One to Album Two.


Houndstooth take their name from a duotone textile pattern. Bands have to scrape around somewhat when naming themselves nowadays. They've moved into textiles and fonts as we become ever more self-referential and shift towards some impenetrable, internal area. But this is a group of people who sound deeply immersed and aware of the lure of the open, American highway. They have a truly remarkable, virtuoso guitarist in John Gnorski who grabs each song and makes it sing at some point during its duration. They also have a deeply thoughtful singer in Katie Bernstein who drops great lines everywhere that resonate and ripple outwards and inwards in pretty much everything they play. I've seen her writing compared to Alice Munro short stories on the net today and that makes some sense to me. The rest of the band play their part fully though from what I've heard Gnorski and Bernstein are the driving force behind whatever's happening in Houndstooth. Listen to the songs here. And this, my own personal favourite, the opening cut from said, forthcoming record that doesn't as yet have a direct link on YouTube but should soon at which point I'll post it again. You'll be able to hear echoes of all kinds of favourite things from your collection but unlike so much that's around now, they're ploughing their own furrow.


As I said they're currently underway from their first long-playing record to their second. I was catching up on their first album, 2013's Ride Out The Dark at work yesterday. Listened to it twice, when it paid rich dividends and will give it further spins in the day ahead. Their next record, No News From Home will be out at the end of March. Can't wait to hear and purchase that. At which point I trust and hope that they will come on tour and visit Newcastle where I'll be able to go and see them. They currently have 1,777 likes on Facebook. They'll soon have more. They might have a while to go before they edge ahead of their namesake material design in terms of hits on a Google search but from that point on nothing should stop them. Houndstooth are for today the best band in the World, at least the one I inhabit. Feel free to listen and disagree.

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