These Mates Are Solid Cuntz

I only showed their fake baby handling skills on Monday, but here we are again, talking about Cuntz. The Melbourne devildrivers have polished off a second album in a year (we spoke favourably of their earlier effort Aloha here), and Solid Mates is a excellent counterstrike. It allows more of a focused caterwaul of baseness, becoming more vitriolic in the process. The bitterest pill to swallow - it goes down better, but cyanide is still cyanide. When a song about walking the dog (violently - I think it's a love song) hemorrhages into 'Ation', a song about masturbation, any innocence you were desperately clinging to is ripped from you and crushed into the ground. Bonus points for the song 'Brizbane' having throat-shredder Ben Mackie sounding the most bored and pissed he has been in his life before yelling the title over and over with his eyes bugging out - and yes, the cabs are fucking expensive. Pissed jeans and wet dreams - regardless of whether this is your idea of a nightmare or an orgasm, you're still left with the wet patch.

Pre-order Solid Mates from Homeless Records here. They've just completed their US tour that included an electrifying Gonerfest set. Yep, these guys are cuntz.

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

Ex-Cult Still Haunts Your Filthy Dreams

 

When anything is given the seal of approval by the Svengali of garage rock, Ty Segall, you know you should sit up and pay notice. Mikal Cronin was one, Wymond Miles another. Memphis punks Ex-Cult (formerly Sex Cult) have a killer reputation, and now have their debut record out on the ever excellent Goner Records, and for the most part this is deliciously brutal stuff. Jagged, ragged and ramshackle, spit and vinegar their lifeblood.

The record sounds like a live album – not that “we wanted to go back to what we sound like live” kinda hype, but it sounds like a good recording of a live performance in some shithole in the wall in the backwaters of their hometown. A performance where they are killing it. ‘Knives On Both Sides’, ‘Shade Of Red’, ‘Shot The Beehive’ all have that sneering nihilistic venom that is hard to emulate because you have to inhabit it, whilst there are some vintage punk rock throwbacks like ‘Young Trash’, ‘Better Life Through Chemistry’ and ‘Post Graduate’.

There are a few songs that sound almost carbon copies of each other, yet this swing between grassroots 70s Brit punk and snarling sonic terrorism not only feel genuine, but archived – as if Segall dug Ex-Cult out of a 40 year old time capsule. This is a great record (am I just high, or have there been a high proportion of high-rotation killer albums out the past few months?) Segall can lead me to the jaws of death, and further, and I would trust him every step of the way – especially if these guys were the frontline attack.

 

Ex-Cult is available here. It’s a visceral slice of serrated pie – cut your teeth on it now.

Ex-Cult – Knives On Both Sides
Ex-Cult – Shade Of Red

Leather Bound Love For The Digital Age

Shawn Foree has been putting out his multinstrumental bedroom project Digital Leather for a few years now, and made his most notable offering with 2009's studio offering Warm Brother (via Fat Possum Records). His new album Infinite Sun harkens back to his more DIY offerings. Its out through Volar Records, which 'Sea Of Hate' is off.

Digital Leather - Sea Of Hate

NB - Since writing this I have been down to Rockinghorse Records in Brisbane which is unfortunately closing its doors - another fucking independent store bites the dust! Anyway, I bought up big, for cheap - and was so suprised to find not one, not two, but THREE Digital Leather releases there! I bought Sorcereor, the effort on Goner Records, but Dance Til Dead and Blow Machine are still down there!

Friday Cover Up - Marc Gets Ty-ed

Last week I gave you the brilliant EMA cover of Robert Johnson's 'Any Kind Heart'. Today I give you another absolute doozy. As I mentioned back in April, International Record Store Day throws up some amazing releases. Well, one we didnt get here in Australia (well, not in Brisbane anyway!) was the 12" EP release by San Fran rad merchant Ty Segall called Ty Rex (through Goner Records). Now this is special in any case - Ty Segall is brilliant no matter what. But this is Ty covering six Marc Bolan classics in amazing fashion. I have fond memories of T.Rex - mainly lazy summer days in my first year as a teacher, swimming in the pool that I tended for the next door neighbours, drinking and smoking J's, with Bolan et al belting out the stereo...it was beautiful. All six songs rock, and I strongly suggest you get this - you can get a clear vinyl version from Goner Records, otherwise hunt around people!


Ty Segall - Fist Heart Mighty Dawn Dart (T.Rex cover)
Ty Segall - Salamander Palaganda (T.Rex cover)

Also exciting is that Segall is winging his way to Aussie shores! He plays at Woodland on July 7! Ill fight all and sundry for one of those tix...

Doin It Like Rabbits

Sonic Masala (especially Paul) loves manic rock performers. Hence our (especially Paul's) love of Israeli garage wigouts Monotonix and the manic gyrations of party stopouts Pulled Apart By Horses. And although Ive heard a couple songs in the past, I saw some clips last week of Arizona's Nobunny - and a new SM favourite is born.

Imagine Andrew W.K morphing into a centaur, and Nobunny has a running mate. With songs exuding rude, obnoxious and infantile behaviour, complete off-the wall performances with varying degrees of undress, and mannerisms that whip the most demure of music enthusiasts into a writhing bag of euphoria and pheromones, its impossible to not have fun. The music itself? Great garage rock. You marry the music with the man and you get an all round good time.

Latest LP First Blood is out next week through Goner Records, whilst hunt down older releases through Hozac Records and Burger Records.

Nobunny - Blow Dumb
Nobunny - (Do The) Fuck Yourself

NOBUNNY- I Am A Girlfriend (mess-around) from rob downs on Vimeo.