R.E.M's Dead Letter Office turned up on the jukebox at Rosie's a few weeks back. Much to my delight! It's the small things. One of my very favourite records of their's. Full of early B Sides, covers and songs that didn't make their early records final cut. The Velvets covers, Crazy, Bandwagon, Voice of Harold and much more. And also Chronic Town, their debut EP, tagged on the end of the CD release. With this, Carnival of Sorts, still one of my favourite song of all of theirs. Echoing down the years!
Blast off! A new album out yesterday from Melbourne trio Primo! made up of members of Shifter. It races from the traps on the first and maintains its jittery, giddy momentum without missing a step to the last.
This is familiar stuff. Think Girls at Our Best, Mo-Dettes and Dolly Mixture and so forth. Splendid things all, and Primo! do the legacy proud, each of the song checks in between one minute and three and seems perfect for a John Peel session in the early Eighties.
Does it matter that virtually every note of this could and probably was put out over thirty five years back? Not to me. Because it's all done with unwavering freshness, melody and nous.
On a week when I came upon four or five albums that floated my boat, Primo's Amici, is up there with any of them. All three band members chip in throughout on harmonised vocals. In some ways there's something of the ethos of early Ramones here. As Charles Shaar Murray wrote about that band: 'it's like eating peanuts, cherries or smarties. You can never have just one.'
As an appetiser for the forthcoming Goon Sax album, coming out in Autumn, it's perfect. Primo! (note the exclamation mark, it's wholly apt), are coming to Europe to tour and those who see them will surely love them. All for one!
At last. Some decent New Dork Dolls on the jukebox. Although it's strange to see it's their second album Too Much Too Soon rather than their superior first. Nevertheless, it has some fine songs on it. Like this!
Sometimes it takes me a while to get round to listening to a band that are receiving a certain amount of buzz, simply because of their name. Such is the case with Washington D.C. trio Flasher whose moniker has rather unpleasant connotations in England.
My loss, because their debut album, Constant Image (which came out a few weeks ago), is full of sparkling moments and brash invention. Drawing on the legacy of Post Punk, like so many bands these days, but sounding fresh and immediate on their own terms.
Using a call and response approach between all three members, as some kind of calling card, they've put together a great set of songs here. My own personal favourite thus far is second track Sun Come and Golden which is a meld of classic Wire, Gang of Four and B52s motifs. While Constant Image doesn't altogether cohere as an album, (possibility on account of its diversity), it has the brazen urgency of the classic D.C. Punk sound, abrasive and immediate, although it also grows on me every time I hear it so perhaps my judgement on the record as a whole will shift. In the meantime these four should give you a good idea.
Mow The Glass, the second album from The Lavender Flu, is a startling and breathtakingly smart record which came out just last Friday. The record was rehearsed and recorded in a small house in Oregon on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. In other words distinctively lo-fi. But it certainly doesn't sound it. It's an album that arrestingly recalls a bygone age of psychedelic American voyage and discovery.
A project driven by Chris Gunn, (also of The Hunches), and a rotating circle of like-minded friends and associates, Mow The Glass is an album that just invites the description lysergic and comparison with golden and possibly long since unplayed records and bands in your collection.
Austin, Texas's favourite sons The 13th Floor Elevators are the most obvious and immediate reference point here. The Flu, like the Elevators are insistently frazzled and saucer eyed and come across occasionally as verging on mass-derangement in terms of their approach. But at the same time they are also acutely disciplined. Only one song goes beyond four minutes and every track is deeply imbued with fierce, righteous wonder.
Apologies for spitting out whole sections of the thesaurus here but Mow the Glass is an album not only deserving of it but actually requiring it if it wants to be adequately described. In addition to the Elevators it recalls the phrasing of Dylan in his 'wild mercury' phase, the transcendental chime of The Byrds, Moby Grape, Country Joe, The Seeds and also Television who redrafted this stuff through the prism of New York street experience in the Seventies. Sonic Youth and early Mercury Rev and Flaming Lips also flit in and out of the mix occasionally.
Mow the Grass is more bucolic than much of that. It touches on Cosmic Country on occasion. But it's also wired. And strangely at the same time rather thought through and sculpted. Structured chaos.
There's plenty of stuff around these days a bit like this, (particularly coming out of America), but very little of it is both as thought through as this and yet still manages to come across as so utterly spontaneous. I've found listening through to it over the last couple of days a glorious trip, (sorry, but there you are), in terms of experiencing epiphanic moments that send me spinning back in search of their source.
This may not reach an enormous audience, (not many of the band's obvious inspirations ever did), but it really should. The band have very little social media exposure and possibly prefer life under the radar's blip. Nevertheless, you'll do well to hear a better record of its sort in this or many a calendar year. The Lavender Flu. Listen to Mow the Grass and 'gaze upon the chimes of freedom flashing.'
Remarkably, I don't think I've had T.Rex as a Song of the Day up to now. So, to amend that, here's something from their first album in their reborn form after the years as Tyrannosaurus. I was directed here by Johnny Marr.
Splendid. Muscular in a fabulous, spindly, synthy way. Teleman make me feel I'm on a fairground ride and start to await forthcoming album Family of Aliens with enormous, slavering relish.
No, nothing from the Lloyd Webber musical. Not surprisingly, there are any number of songs about Eva Peron given her seismic impact on her own country. Here's the one I was most taken to, from last year by Buenos Aires punksters Los Bilis.
Walter Martin, once of Jonathan Fire*Eater and The Walkmen has a new album out this year which I really should explore and report back on. In the meantime, here is a fine, fine song from him from a few years back for Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the Glasgow based architect, designer, water colourist and artist.
Air Waves third album Warrior, (which came out a couple of months back), is a delicious lo-fi Indie treat with a great deal more ambition and scope than that tag, (as appropriate as I think it is), might imply. Its cover features a photograph of Air Waves Nicole Schneit's father Martin from 1970 standing with a bicycle wearing an alarming looking gas mask adorned with a daisy. It's a really arresting and implicitly political image and the record it represents is just as proud and distinctive a statement.
Starting off on Home with the lines, 'Would you like to ride with me. All the way home..', over a quite beautifully simple guitar coda, it gets going as it means to continue. Then on to Morro Bay where 'you can find us in our room. Listening to our favourite tunes'. It's all homely but quietly impressive and reminded me of the DIY approach of Young Marble Giants masterpiece Colossal Youth for some reason
The album proceeds from there in stately fashion. Each track mellow, tuneful and considered. Air Waves took their name from the title of a Guided By Voices song and that's not insignificant. That band, like Young Marble Giants and many of the other early eighties electronic reference points that are dotted around Warrior were determinedly operating under the radar, and the end result is all the more impressive in terms of its quiet but steely ambition and achievement.
Partially inspired by the diagnosis of Schneit's mother with fallopian cancer, the record is a statement of loving solidarity peppered throughout with sexual identity and pride. In Schneit's words: 'I want these songs to be heard by people in my queer community but also by anyone that wants to feel strong, powerful and included.' And that resolve to speak both to her own people but also make her voice heard by a broader audience is impressively realised. This deserves to be heard.
Like so many statements from the American Indie community over the last ten years or so, this minds me of the sensibility of Juno and its soundtrack and of Juno herself but perhaps a few years further down the line, having dispensed with her puppy fat and switched her gender alliance.
And then at Track 9 and the title track the record shifts a gear and hits paydirt. This is very much an anthem of pride for the dispossessed and marginalised. A mission statement every bit as precious as The Smiths, Riot Girl and Le Tigre used to make them. Roping in Kevin Morby, a long time favourite of this blog it chugs on with breathtaking momentum. It's a small wonder in itself but by no means breaking the flow of an album that is now utterly into its stride.
A few tracks later the album takes the bell and sprints to the tape. Warrior is a series of messages of quiet melodic sophistication that coalesce into a glorious and defiant statement. A small, but perfectly formed masterpiece. Straight out of Brooklyn, as if you didn't guess.
'The Stones at this point - post scruffy blues band and pre-psychedelic aristocracy - had a look and sound as lethal and streamlined as a Ferrari at full speed, with an engine (powered by Watts and Wyman) at least that efficient. Keith's guitar intro is worth the price of admission, and he keeps it up straight through to the end, where he, or Brian Jones (or somebody) comes up with the quirky, quavering riff on which Texas acid-punk hero Roky Erickson built a whole career.'
Pamplona, Spain's Rio Argo with the first track from their self-titled six track EP out recently. Strummy, melodic, determinedly Indie and damned happy! Each song is a joyous ride.
Yesterday I chanced upon Clint Michigan and was thrilled with my discovery. It's one of those happenstance moments that you come upon something unexpectantly and know immediately that that something is a bit special. I've had it from time to time in life, early R.E.M, Nick Drake, Elliott Smith, Sufjan Stevens to name a few.
Clint Michigan is probably a smaller discovery for me than those ones but nevertheless his album of a few months back Centuries is a small but notable explosion and sure to be one of my very favourite records of the year. I knew that almost immediately. It seeped its way into me on my very first listening
This is not music without precedent. It seems almost midway between the sensibility and sounds of Elliott and Sufjan, (perhaps veering too close to Sufjan on occasion for comfort), with some sprinklings of Paul Simon thrown in. It's full of warmth and weariness, reflection and consolation. Existing within the familiar but adding a few more gems to its particular chosen catalogue.
Music of course is one of the greatest consolations of all in life. Something that provides you a shoulder to lean on or an arm to support you when things seem at their most troublesome. I'd been going through a slightly difficult time for one reason or another recently, (not worth going into here), but listening through to Centuries was a palpable help in that respect, the way good art, and music particularly always is, in reminding you that you have fellow travellers.
Clint Michigan is the artistic moniker of Clint Assay, an American singer-songwriter based in Brooklyn, in his late thirties, who has clearly had issues with addiction and depression and works through them in a way that is both 'winsome and weighty', feeling like pushing yourself day by day against an ongoing wind through life, 'the same old ball and chain' of American existence,as Michigan sings in second song here Beg For It.
Michigan works his way through his issues here in the best way possible, creatively, with no little melodic deftness and lyrical acuity, one track succeeds each other, each blessed with his soft vocal delivery and supplemented by thoughtful musical arrangements and occasionally by a joint female vocalist which allows the songs to work their way towards some of the meditative calm of Leonard Cohen.
So while the ongoing struggle of Michigan's life is evidently here, so is the redemptive grace that he's achieved through working it through in song. Hopefully it's offered him some of the strength and resolve that he offers to other here. Centuries is a resourceful, troubled, but ultimately rich and graceful gift. File between Smith and Stevens, even if that doesn't make alphabetical sense. Michigan belongs here.
The Guardians of the Black Leather and Shades Brigade Return (Part 1). Death in Vegas, (I imagine in support of a forthcoming album), arrive with these two. They're not unexpected. There are certain rules of this kind of cool which are instantly recognisable and which they don't deviate from. Hey, the first song's called 'Honey' in the finest noble tradition of Velvets, Mary Chain and Spacemen. Both tracks shimmer along effortlessly on electro rails. Less genuinely dangerous than Suicide of course, also immediate forbears. But does that really matter anymore? This stuff resembles an idea more than a reality nowadays. And anyway, it all sounds fine by me...
You don't really think of potential Pop sensations as hailing from Matlock, Derbyshire. But such is the case with young Patawawa. And this sounds destined for the soundtrack of the endless British summer of 2018.
