Gun Outfit's Dream Far From Over

Dream All Over, Olympia-bred Gun Outfit’s 4th album, came out October last year, but I thought it was worth a revisit seeing as they tour the UK next month. I have had this album for months on the work computer, but only really embraced it over the Christmas break, the subtly rambling record becoming a staple of early morning hazed malaise (it was a gooood holiday). Which I didn’t expect. I expected to like it, but because of what Gun Outfit was – their last three records more burnished, burnt, bent out of shape, a delightful cacophonous mess of post-punk malapropisms (especially Possession Sound).

Dream All Over follows a rebirth not that dissimilar to The War On Drugs or The Men – although neither wasted garage psych or bristling hardcore, all three bands found their equilibrium in blues-inflected hues, finding space and hushed tones a freedom rather than stifling inertia. For the uninitiated – Dream All Over isn’t a gear change more than a total overhaul. There is the spectre of Low hovering over the sparse, balalaika-infused ‘Angelino’, sung with haunting elegy by Carrie Keith (her touches throughout the album are always stunning); the Yo La Tengo breeze blowing through ‘Blue Hour’ and ‘Legends Of My Own’; Neil Young in a cracked, silent bathysphere on ‘Came To Be’; a Jason Molina-meets-Conor Oberst-meets-Lee Ranaldo manicured desert shambolism in ‘In Orbit’. ‘Matters To A Head’ has a rustic, flannel-in-the-Appalachians undercurrent, imparted through both Dylan Sharp’s slightly more curled vocals and humble yet bruised lyrics.

There is a measured, assured elegance that permeates every track here – although nothing approaches fever pitch, the seams of warm pastoral riches more than makes up for it. I can imagine these songs scoring a night under the stars in the desert; driving into the sunset through the desert; the sun tipping its head as it pierces the desert horizon…

OK so I am leaning heavily on that well-worn “desert” descriptor. But it is so apt here, as is one description I read of it being “canyon-cult blues”. Again, the shift to LA seems to have had a profound effect on Gun Outfit. To be honest, the new direction fits like a glove. Dream All Over works best on the periphery of reality, of consciousness, in locales and dimensions that are slightly skewed and wild. This echoes with the ghosts of Laurel Canyon and the Mansons killing the Age of Aquarius, Neil Young steering the ship, the consummate folklore punk. Dream All Over sounds like a reimagining; Gun Outfit are on the beach, in the sun, burnishing with wry chagrin that belies a ramshackle energy. You really should get this record (out through Paradise of Bachelors here). Gun outfit play The Lexington Friday February 12 - see you there.

Bastard Boys Are Giggling Through Their Teeth

NY crooked losers loose in the Big Apple Giggly Boys have launched their debut album Bastards Of Young, and it is great - weird, beguiling, cracked. I was a big fan of their EP . (the cover my fiancee claims looks like me - she's on fire tonight, gloves are off), and the album veers into Spray Paint territory on opener 'The Hall', a track seemingly equally indebted to Ranaldo's Sonic Youth left-field takes on straighter rock. 'Crazy From The Heat' continues the cavernous production and Mike Zorman's moaned, quasi-barked and clipped vocals, yet there is a coldness here that evokes Scandi goth punk (the juxtaposition is in the name...) 'Butter Banquet' is more diseased, a (C)ramped sense of humour infiltrating these darker riffs and claustrophobic rolls, albeit with some slowed art-rock interludes and a glammed up lead back to the fever. 'Weird Lie' and 'Tiny Taste' again take a Ranaldo hue, but also evoke mid-career Blank Realm (possibly in the Daniel Spencer-esque vocal delivery). You can tell that I haven't made any Protomartyr references here, although you can hear echoes in 'Midnight Ones' or the similarly-named 'Darker Shade Of Pale'. Maybe because Bastards Of Young is so kaleidoscopic in sonic range that the references are spread far and wide. 'Country Lee' is something I wish Brisbane band-in-hiatus Nova Scotia had written. Now I doubt that Giggly Boys are into those guys - but the connections to Australian and American bands that flirt with mainstream composition before dragging them on wider, weirder slipstreams is clear. The throwback closer 'Whatever' is great too. Let's hope that these Bastards Of Young never get old - this is great stuff.

Grab the record through This Ain't Heaven Recordings here. If you are in New York tonight, head to The Gateway where Giggly Boys play alongside another new SM fave, Frog.

Novels In The Dunes

I have somehow missed the myriad delights that solo guitarist Sarah Lipstate has put into the ether under her Noveller moniker, but with Fantastic Planet due out on Fire Records next year, there is no excuse. She has been around since 2005 though, so I have a lot of catching up to do. Plus she has collaborated with the likes of Lee Ranaldo, Cold Cave and Parts & Labor, so her explorations of the electric guitar form is well versed and admired. And my first taste of it rose the hairs on the back of my everything. The haunting ethereal grind on album opener 'Into The Dunes' is spacious, dark, gritty - it's as if Lipstate has taken some of the contemplative latter-day musings of Dylan Carlson, run it through a crystallised synthesiser, distilled it in a modular vacuum, headed back to 1968 and handed the results to Stanley Kubrick. It could go for seven times the size and still be as astrally hypnotic. Fantastic indeed.

You can pre-order Fantastic Planet (on delectable aqua vinyl) here.

Dirty Dancing On Crystal Shipsss

Yesterday I showed the Lee Ranaldo video for 'Fire Island (Phases)' that featured Berlin act Crystal Shipsss. That momentous occasion isn't the only thing keeping Jacob Faurholt and his cronies busy though - they have released a new LP Dirty Dancer. The album accentuates the creaky meandering nature of Faurholt's musical imaginings; a nebulous pendulum of dark and light quirk, refusing to sit still, to coalesce into something fully-formed. Due to this, and Faurholt's unique, shrill vocals, Dirty Dancer has wrongfooted a lot of critics, frustrated with the artist's knack of straying off the designated path of an album, or indeed a song. It is true that the album veers in all kinds of directions, thus connecting with the material requires dedication and attention. From choral drifts to lo-fi guitar jams, minimal scratchy beats and broken synth lines, anger that evaporates, despair that congeals, glee that drips maniacally from the fangs... Dirty Dancer is unapologetic for its schizophrenic meanderings and quick-cuts. Focus instead on Crystal Shipsss as something of a stream-of-consciousness flume ride through the mind of a beguiling artist, and you might start to get the idea. Give this Dirty Dancer ago, see if you don't get swept away.

You can pick up the album here.

Wild Movements In The Arabian Dunes

About this time last year I gave a little lip service to Brooklyn wonky popheads band Beach Arabs. They finally have a full-length out, also called Wild Movement, and it's jam-packed full of frenetic, off-kilter, sunny concoctions that rock and/or roll. Liz Hogg is a happy amalgam of Screaming Females' Marisa Paternoster and Kim Deal in a dialled-down Breeders mode, whilst Nathaniel Sabat's droll, Lee Ranaldo-esque drawled deliveries offers a poignant counterpoint, two roughies that rub together to make a diamond. The focus remains the manic tempo shifts and Hogg's pitch-perfect noodling however, the math-lite precision (see closer 'Under The Whale') that underpins these lo-fi ramblings and elevates them beyond mere garage also-rans into something more appealing, a whispier Deerhoof, a American slacker take on Trash Kit or an East Coast Raincoats. Not that Beach Arabs are scaling those heady heights just yet - but with Wild Movement, they have at least made it to base camp.

You can grab Wild Movement through Mouca Records here.

VIDEO VACUUM - Scott & Charlene's Wedding, Lee Ranaldo, Angie, Cuntz

Sometimes it's hard to take life seriously. If you get thrown enough curveballs and low blows, you either shrug and laugh and find the stuff that makes your world go round, or you curl up into the foetal position whilst chewing a dogshit-stained shoe. Today could have gone either way. But a handful of Aussie degenerates and one sonic youth on his crystal ship(sss) got me across the line, just in time to neck a bottle of red, watch the new episode of The Walking Dead, and be thankful I get another day to get things right. Maybe these tracks will help you too, hmm?

Craig Dermody of Scott & Charlene's Wedding has a proclivity for suburban malaise and chagrin, yet on this latest video for 'Jackie Boy', he's taking no prisoners. A typically laconic take on the Rocky male fantasy, the clip sees Dermody jogging around NYC, looking decidedly weedy but with a puffed out chest and a decidedly grimy gray tracksuit (hopefully from Lowes),punching wet carcasses and looking to make a difference in this mixed-up world that we live in. And when Dermody mumbles-shouts 'When you've got nothing left you've still got rock'n'roll', goddamn if it isn't a mantra after my own heart. TKO, dude.

Lee Ranaldo - "Fire Island (Phases)" from Mouca on Vimeo.

The latest solo album from Sonic Youth alum Lee Ranaldo certainly divided the pundits what with its somewhat traditional mode of songwriting (well, at least for this progenitor of no wave nihilism and explorer of atonal terrains). Between the Times and the Tides is more about looking for more nostalgic and referential ways of telling stories, as opposed to crafting something outside the proverbial box, and in the main I'm a big fan. This six-minute clip for 'Fire Island (Phases)' is an ode to the Berlin winter, an experience that brings goosebumps to my soul, and he also garners help from skronky folk weirdniks Crystal Shipsss, which is pretty ace too. Ive been lucky enough to interview him AND speak to him in person - still one of my all-time highlights - so the bias has only risen, but I really appreciate the guy for forever being honest and subversive (even if that means travelling straight on when everyone else wants him to zig and zag).

ANGIE - PARALLELS from Angela Garrick on Vimeo.

If you want to circle back on the olde days of Sonic Youth, this might be your best bet. Angie is the new project for Angela Bermuda, the outlandish performer who props up the likes of Circle Pit and Straight Arrows. On 'Parallels' she gets the dirty, warbled, hypercolour VHS no-fi down pat, whilst the track itself is both Aussie pub rawk guitar noodling, buzzbin fuzz, and disaffected lyrics. It's a killer track, one I didn't see coming, and spiked my will to live even further. Nice one, Angie.

"Never Felt Better" - Cuntz from Tahlia Isabel Palmer on Vimeo.

And lastly, Melbourne's Cuntz deliver the knockout blow, ensuring that I've never felt better with, well, 'Never Felt Better.' Still giving out dark, despairing punk spirals, all the time. Despite the whole thing is a constant drunken shit-stir, you can't help but get swept up in the nihilistic charm of its atonal wares. This is actually a depressing song, isn't it? Fuck it. Scream to your heart's content, drink a shit tonne of beers, and hold the baby.

NOW GET BACK TO WORK!

Finding Old Ghosts In The Closet

My first post in three weeks goes to Glasgow art noise pop slackers Antique Pony. They apparently have an album on the way, but Gay Ghosts, their EP from the last tip of 2012, is pretty solid and worth a mention (I also found a copy of this cassette whilst in London last week). Its loose, funny, schizophrenic, noisy, tetchy - yet there are moments of aloof calm in amidst the Moore/Ranaldo hangover chaos that truly adds to the allure. The spoken word of 'Halloween', the Japanese 8-bit RPG score lurking in the DNA of 'Beautiful Atlas'... They are young, toying with concepts, and it will be intriguing to see what cocoons from their first longplayer later in the year.

You can grab Gay Ghosts here or here.

Antique Pony - Yung Satan Girl
Antique Pony - Manifold Town

It's A Shame About (Mincer) Ray

It's not often that I get a request for beer. Well, that's actually not true - I'm always being hit up for a beer, to buy a beer, to scull a beer, to shout a beer. But it's rare that such a request comes from Germany - yes, the land of the stein. That's what I received today from social reprobates Mincer Ray.

At first I couldn't work it out - the trio (two American, one Brazilian) are in Berlin! You can buy beer 24/7 from your local corner store for one euro (or something similar I'm sure, I havent been there since 2010). Beer in Australia comes at the cost of a kidney and your first born.

But then I played their new EP A Magnate's Reach, and goddamn if I wasn't reaching for the rusty scissors and an ice pack, just to help some brothers out. These five tracks are the right colour of demented guitar pop that sways between Guided By Voices (their moniker is a dead giveaway there) by way of a Jeff Magnum-led Black Lips, or Lee Ranaldo trying to go straight as the new frontman of Pavement. Such disparate swings are achieved by each member singing their own tunes, instruments being flung around restlessly with wanton abandon, all emotions present and accounted for before being discarded hastily like a sweaty condom wrapper, and you are left heaving, somewhat placated and riding the waves of ecstasy whilst still wishing it had all lasted for far longer. And to be fair, after such an effort, a beer probably is in order. The shout's on me, Rays.

Grab A Magnate's Reach here.

Let's Get Shellaced

Hole E Shit. As if I WASN'T going to be excited about Shellac's first Australian appearance since 1993 - I saw these guys only hours before this blog was conceived at the My Bloody Valentine ATP! But of course they (alongside another couple of greats, Lee Ranaldo and Billy Bragg) had been garnered for this year's Melbourne Festival, so assumptions were high that the only way to catch the rambunctious trio was to wing it south. Not so, as all three acts will alight in Brisbane in late October as part of an East Coast tour (not all together, separate tours - I would pay to see Bragg and Albini in some verbal confrontation. Actually, anyone with Albini will find it hard pressed to get on top, he is one opinionated mofo). So get your tix here for Shellac's Tuesday October 23 show at The Zoo, with Pikelet in support. They are 30-odd bucks, incredibly cheap really, so expect these to fly out the door.

Sonic Youth By Any Other Name Still Sounds As Sweet

Want the best solution to overcoming a Death March Monday? I have it.

The biggest news to come out of the weekend was the unveiling of the first track recorded by Thurston Moore's new band, Chelsea Light Moving. It's a six minute number called 'Burroughs', and it is close enough to the Sonic Youth we know and love that, combined with Lee Ranaldo's solo outings, makes it a little easier to know that the New York gods haven't left us. The band has Moore out front, and running the rest of this well-oiled engine are Keith Wood (Hush Arbors) on guitar, Samara Lubelski (Jackie-O Motherfucker) on bass and John Moloney (Sunburned Hand Of The Man) on drums. Moore's iconic guitar scrawl and purge is present and accounted for, as is the artistic connections (the lyrics are based on the last words of amazing Beat author William Burroughs). Another track has been promised for the end of the week - yay! So divulge, OD on this - and come out of your slumber for the new track on Friday.

Chelsea Light Moving - Burroughs

Don't Worry, The Future Is In Safe Hands

Lee Ranaldo has copped it a bit. A lot of people either spit questions about Sonic Youth bandmates and indie icons Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon and their heart-wrenching breakup, or slag off his latest, Between The Times And The Tides (out on Matador), dismissing it as a faux pas that wallows in past glories rather than shirking his band's blueprint for something more of the individual. Seriously, Ranaldo is probably the most prolific of all the SY clan, having put out or collaborated on almost one hundred releases in his studied career (which includes Glenn Branca, of which there would BE no Sonic Youth). Yes, Demolished Thoughts for Moore was a true departure, but in my opinion it isn't as brilliant as people tend to espouse. Personally I think Between The Times And The Tides is the perfect antidote for those mourning the imminent demise of one of the world's greatest ever bands, showing that in Ranaldo they have a true evergreen. 'Off The Wall' and 'Angles' may offer some quirky yet centred MOR rock that seems a little over-mellow, but in tracks like 'Waiting For A Dream' and 'Xtina As I Knew Her', Ranaldo showcases his roots, his influences and his future, all in one fell swoop. Plus, I guarantee this has more legs than most people can admit. Give it a shot - it's better than all right - it makes everything all right.

The ship hasn't sunk - it's merely evolved.

Lee Ranaldo - Off The Wall
Lee Ranaldo - Xtina As I Knew Her

Another (slightly older) slice of Youth

With a double dose of Sonic Youth-esque news offered to you earlier today, I thought Id throw another bit o music at the wall and see what stuck. I could have been more on the pulse and posted Thurston Moore's remix of Crystal Castles - but I cant stand those hipster fucks, so this will have to do...

Lee Ranaldo does have his hand in everything. On the eve of last year he, along with Christian Marclay (turntables), Gunter Muller (electronica/percussion), and bagpipe master David Watson (who also offers up some six-string noodling), released an album under the moniker Afternoon Saints. The album was kinda cornily titled The Shirley Jangle. It is one tripped out free form collage, a 2xLP mind melt of scritches, warbles, bleeps and ooze, like an aborted hybrid organism that is still fighting to live - and succeeding. It shouldn't work, but it does. Its hypnotic nature lies in the disparate parts that make up the whole - and the fact that the parts are tied together by some of rock's most eclectic and yet most talented musicians probably has something to do with it...

You can purchase this rare beast of a record here - the 4th side has an etching by Ranaldo - so get buying!!!

Afternoon Saints - Round Trip Trinket

Sung Gongs

Quasi have been around for quite a while, having put out various sized and themed releases through Kill Rock Stars and and Touch and Go. They are also the "side project" of Heatmiser's Sam Coombes and Sleater-Kinney's Janet Weiss, ably supported on this album, American Gongs, by Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks' Joanna Bolme. Of course Quasi has outlasted both of those outfits (especially regrettable in Sleater-Kinney's case), but they have remained a niche oddity rather than a supergroup of sorts.

This is all about to change with this album. And they are actually touring it rather than sticking to Portland gigs, which will do much for their rotation. The album finally showcases Coombes' supreme axemanship and Weiss' authoritative drumming, and is further augmented by the fact that American Gongs is a proper album, with well constructed and cohesive songs. The Lee Ranaldo sounding "Little White Horse" and bluesy barroom glitter of "Rockabilly Party" show the band at its best sans the long workout jams (which are a treat live), whilst "The Jig Is Up" and "Everything And Nothing At All" denote their mournful, whiskey-soaked side. Quasi are a band that deserve to be noted - not just due to the superior musicianship of the parties involved, but to the fact that they are a fucking good band.

Quasi - Little White Horse
Quasi - Rockabilly Party