Rotting Pits

Sub Pop are making some major plays in the past eighteen months that have me reinvigorated in their utmost relevance as a label. I have always held faith of course, but with their signing of Mogwai and excellent new records from Deaf Wish, Metz, Pissed Jeans and Sleater-Kinney, their cache is bolstered. Add to this incoming desiccated salvo Neo from Seattle nihilists So Pitted. The name threw me, so when I heard 'Rot In Hell' I was punched in the face with the raw racket blasting forth. The trio manage to spew bile in tetanus-coated fury with a sense of banal diffidence that is almost offensive if it wasn't so dead-eyed brilliant. The band play out as if Pop. 1280 were electrocuted on-stage and zapped back into a parallel corduroy-and-flannel 90s cesspit, thankfully landing on and killing Green Jelly and taking their place. The orange-and-black cover art for the album (not due out until Feb next year) is stark and arresting - the colour coordination reminding me of SM band Cobwebbs, with a similar sense of gutter noise melding with slack-jawed indifference. Pre-order Neo (in white vinyl) here.

Wishing For Pain

The schizophrenic tones/drones of Melbourne malcontents Deaf Wish assault us once more on new LP Pain (their first full-length effort on Seattle legends Sub Pop). Their abject adherence to democratic demolition means the ten tracks here remain decidedly chaotic, each member of the band bringing their own sense of warped reality to the melting pot. So we start with the 1-2-3-4 zigzag of ideas: the maladroit menace of 'The Whip'; the breakneck brutality of 'Newness Again'; the sinuous comedown of 'They Know'; and the woozy vertigo and lackadaisical decay of 'Sunset's Fool'. It feels more than a Petri dish of ideas - rather, it's a four headed beast acting in tandem, allowing each synapse to flare and fire, ramping up and damping down where necessary. Then there are mixtures - the throwback punk and frayed fuses of 'Eyes Closed'; the cantankerous, sweat-stained desperation of the title track; the seductive dichotomy of innocence born and lost of 'Sex Witch; the panicked pace masquerading as controlled mayhem of 'On', whirring in its own squalling bathysphere. Then there are the two elongated grinds of 'Dead Air' and 'Calypso' - the former a feedback-drenched fusing of minds melted, a jam expending the last vestiges of sanity, coalescing into a fever pitch, an anarchic aligned mantra; the latter the sardonic aftermath, an inventory of the damage done and the debris left behind, a cathartic yet corrosively defeated fade-out.

In short, brilliant.

Buy Pain here. Deaf Wish are playing a couple shows in Victoria before winging to the US for a run of shows, supported (at least at one gig) by another great band, Coma In Algiers. Hopefully we will see them here in the UK soon too.

Busting Up The Ballroom

I was not expecting this. As always I am procrastinating from doing any actual ‘work’ by listening to music – and NY band Ballroom’s debut 12” EP dropped into my email. For whatever reason I downloaded the album without listening to a sample of the music (with the amount of music that I get a day, and the limit my work has on downloads, you have to be extremely picky – although the fact it’s on Ever/Never Records, who put out Degreaser and Wilful Boys (who shares band members, along with connections to Home Blitz), might have been a persuading factor) – but it is clear that this was meant to be, as Ballroom has blown me away (and successfully wasted a good hour of the day, so double win). The visceral burst of chaos and barely-bridled gritty aggression launches out at you and grips your by the throat. For whatever reason, I felt ‘I’ll Be Coming Back’ could have fit into the Australian noise rock tradition, and whilst not as unhinged as say Bird Blobs or Deaf Wish, there is a pub rock nihilism that lurks beneath the serrated exterior. Like a seething mass of heaving paranoid psyches in one sweat-stained room, Ballroom cannonballs through from start to finish, invoking violence with a sense of desperate, orgiastic gratification. I’m sold.

 

Musky, Scuzzy Blues

What to make of the self-titled album from Oakland's blasted bastards Musk? Out on Holy Mountain (who had a diverse roster in the past, with the likes of James Ferraro and Country Teasers passing through their corridors), Musk is a heaving, roiling, gnashing beast, unable and unwilling to stay on the melted tracks. 'Funny Feelings' may be emblematic of the blues rants that many critics have stuck bloodily to their lapel (think JSBX with rotted teeth and cardboard bedspreads), but 'Rot Soft' is just as ready to take a wild detour into pigfuck country, as if the four-piece rutted down in the bayou and fucked Jesus (Lizard). 'Trash Roof' devolves like Aussie reprobates Deaf Wish scratching at their cold sores and two-bit whores. But above all else, the majority of Musk rolls out the fetid carpet into the quagmire of insanity, taking the redneck road less travelled - something another Antipodean act, Six Ft Hick, have made their own. No matter the fisticuffs or the rough-and-tumble, Musk is a grotty powerhouse of rancid rock that I hope I can bathe in forever.

Grab Musk here - you really must.

Eating The Future Is Exhausting

A relatively new endeavour, Melbourne’s Exhaustion (sporting members of Snawklor, Ooga Boogas and Deaf Wish) nevertheless sound like they have been around forever, strapped inside an iron maiden on the seventh level of hell, only now allowed to vent their anguish and despair in what is a short-lived respite from the horrors of eternity. Such is the dirge on their debut LP Future Eaters, all screeching guitar, guttural bass, funereal drums and Duncan Blachford’s contorted and flayed vocals, that it is difficult to listen to this without feeling heavy of head and heart. That said, this is an album that leaves an indelible mark.

Opener 'Don’t Fly Righ't is a Jekyll/Hyde sonic orgasm, filled with chagrin and malice in equal measure; 'Keep The Change' offers redemption via humiliation, soundtracked by sheet metal and rusted nails in sonic form; the gut-churning regret brought on by a heinous act manifests into howling despair and paranoia on 'Old Mickey'. The lynchpin is the ten-minute-plus dead-eyed lurch of 'No Place For A Holiday', its ominous groove continually spiked by garrulous guitar strikes, a relentless bassline grind, a bizarrely soothing electronic outro from Zond’s Justin Fuller and a narrative that evokes humanist horrors at every turn (Hitched a ride down south/Fell asleep/Lost my way/When I came to/Life was a living nightmare/Don’t look back/Run). Future Eaters is in many ways a malevolent, malignant album that is more likely to invoke an epileptic fit than an epiphany… in many ways a sister record to the self-titled debut by the Spinning Rooms, but instead of small town madness we have urban nightmares amidst industrial wastelands and the grotesque. This is difficult to like, but nigh on impossible to ignore.

You can buy Future Eaters via Aarght! Records soon - original pressing sold out, but repressing (in white no less) is out next month. Its dark, dank, destructive. Everything I love about music.

 

Plenty of Hard Rubbish on the Lower End of Things

Good morning sleepyheads! So I thought Id give you something Ive been mulling over for the past few weeks. Melbourne quartet Lower Plenty seemed to get some really street cred last year with the release of Hard Rubbish in April last year (through Special Award Records and Easter Bilby). Hell, Mess+Noise gave it their Album of the Year. Named after a Melbourne suburb (really), the band specialise in woozy, mournful lo-fi pop, and their pedigree (Dick Diver, UV Race, Total Control, Deaf Wish, insert other million band names here) ensured that their name was shouted across most boozy dives in the Victorian capital.


Now Hard Rubbish is preparing for an European assault after the US got a taste thanks to Goner Records (and have a split single 7” coming out through Matador). Fire Records, who over the past couple years have been loving the hell out of great Aussie music (Blank Realm, Scott & Charlene’s Wedding, Opposum, HTRK, Greg Boring, insert other thousand band names here), are adding Lower Plenty to the bill, and it seems a no brainer.

But…

I’ve found it difficult to fully embrace Hard Rubbish. Not that I don’t want to. I’ve tried, and still am. The fact that Lower Plenty works as an outlet for the various band members to ease back on the grimy throttle of their other outfits is worthy in and of itself; whilst tracks like ‘White Walls’ emanate with the kind of drawling inert and off-kilter Australiana guitar pop that I usually lap up. But there is a want to shower after listening to these guys, or at the very least take some happy pills. The term “downer country” has been coined, possibly to play on the downer pop that the likes of Craig Dermody and Matt Kennedy revel in – but isn’t most country downer? Certainly the best C&W exists when the narrative comes from the gutter. And Lower Plenty definitely dwell there, and at times it feels TOO relatable, too world-weary.

   

But there are moments on Hard Rubbish that burrow like a sonic termite into your cerebral vortex, gnawing away at you until you have no recourse but to tumble under the weight (or the lack thereof) of your resistance. ‘Nullabor’ is the kind of Badlands-style romance that anyone can believe in, let alone Australians with an itch for the quixotic unknown; ‘Close Enough’ is heartrending in its wistful acknowledgement that a relationship slipped through the fingers (“I was close enough away to see the fading of the dark”). 

Once this happens, you really take on board the lyrics – the mumbled, half-asleep, foggy from slumber and alcohol phone conversations, sinking lower into the moth-eaten couch, sweating in a tongue-and-groove house, lamenting a place and state of mind that you can’t (or won’t) leave. With the vocals interspersed between Sarah Heyward, Al Montfort and Jensen Tjhung, there is enough variations on the tired intonation to offer fresh counterpoints – but only when you let the songs inside. At the end of the day, Hard Rubbish will tear you up, wring you dry, and leave you on the edge of the bed crying. But if ever there was a beatific wonder in being resigned to emotional failure and heartbreak, then Lower Plenty have nailed it. 

 Sorry everyone, I just got some dust in my eyes…

   

Hard Rubbish is available for pre-order here. You can still get some through Goner here. Expect to hear more about Lower Plenty in 2013. 

Lower Plenty – Strange Beast 

Lower Plenty – Close Enough

Welcome To Vacant Valley

The tops dude behind Vacant Valley in Melbourne has been putting out some amazing underground releases in the past couple years, such as Jouissance, Cured Pink and Penguins. There are some choice releases on the way too, two of which I'm am super psyched about.

Brisbane noise trio Psy Ants will soon be calling it a day, but not before unleashing onto the world their first (and obviously only) release, the Bit Tongue Prik 12". They played the first ever Sonic Masala Presents, and promptly blew everything away. It'll be sad to see them go, but at least this means there will be a physical keepsake that doesn't require sneaking into their bathroom to get locks of hair.

Also bringing out a 12" is Melbourne act Pop Singles. They have been peddling their guitar pop smut for a while with a few cassettes and such out there, but All Gone will be their first LP. I've only heard this track off the album but suffice to say I like where it is heading.

Expect to hear more when the waxen goodies come out, but until then, enjoy the tracks below!

Psy Ants - Spike
Pop Singles - All Gone