Contrified Dusk, Urban Sprawl Dawn - Welcome To Natural Child And Endless Prowl

Two albums that I've only just started dipping into as I do some late-night work. First up is the new record from Tennessee garage cowboys Natural Child, Dancin' With Wolves (out today through Burger Records). It is true countrified sojourns, a campfire travail into the heartland of the South, and the now five piece really revel in the warmth this approach gives them. The devilish, ramshackle charm that informed their earlier records is almost non existent, something that listening to Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings may do to you - in a good way. Dancin' With Wolves is one of those rare records that is both perfect background filler and immersive delight - rustic inebriation on the languid stories of Natural Child.

Then I stumbled across Endless Prowl, which is actually a collaboration between Brisbanite Daniel Ford (Black Vacation/Thigh Master/Kids Cryptic/Evening Hiss/probably other things...) and Teva from Upclock. This is the opposite end of the sonic spectrum to Natural Child - the kind of late-night jams that discombobulate and contort between the worlds of night and day, never light nor dark, just a never ending tide of wavering existence between the beginning and the end, both seductive and weary, sensuous and lurid. In short, this is some great stuff. Whether Endless Prowl will actually amount to much more than this one collab remains to be seen. Lets hope that we do.

Just Vaguely Running

I mentioned in a recent post about Brisbane band Cobwebbs that it pisses me off when people assume that something is cool just because it is inaccessible. I know people who say they like things because they are oblique, obtuse, confrontational, indecipherable, and therein lies the attraction - most people will not attempt to penetrated such barriers, so the people who DO attempt it believe these artists must be geniuses. It may be true for some, but in most cases - such as the Vice review of Cobwebbs' All Around - it's utter bullshit. And totally untrue anyway - I saw a dude buy a copy from Rockinghorse Records on Saturday (I was buying Goat, Natural Child and The Animals LPs, just in case you were wondering).

I stumbled across this Impose article about Chicago band Running. Now, judging them on that name along, they (like Sydney band Songs) are very difficult to look for on Google. The writer of the article made it sound harder to hunt this band down than it truly was. as they had a album on Permanent Records and another on Captcha that came out last year. In fact, back in 2010 we wrote about that Permanent Records album right here. This isn't a "beat them to the pulse" kinda deal, I just don't like people immediately assuming that the inaccessibility of information on the Internet about something or someone means they are necessarily any good, or that they are even hiding from the perceived limelight.

Maybe they just don't own a computer.

That said, the Impose article isn't bad, and Running is fucking awesome, plus they are launching a new album on Castle Face that I believe could be one of the best records of 2013. Vaguely Ethnic is its name, and if 'Controversial PR' is anything to go buy, we are in for some serrated, bare-arse noisemongering, made by drunken degenerates in checked shirts, with bruised kidneys. The trio have going sans vocals on this one, which heightens the Pissed Jeans comparison sonically - breakneck breaking of necks are likely to ensue. 

Vaguely Ethnic isn't out for a couple months yet, but rest assured, expect to hear more about this release as it comes to hand. It will be a completely amazing physical package also - they take great care in their aesthetic, something akin to Double Dagger in that respect, which only helps to heighten the anticipation. I imagine they frequent The Empty Bottle too - and if you live in Chicago and DON'T frequent the Empty Bottle, we don't know each other anymore.

Backwards Looking Forwards 2011 - Pow Wows, The Spits, Acid Kicks, High Wolf

Here's a few more sweet rekkids from last year that you really should dip into...


Pow Wows is a Toronto band who put out the great Nightmare Soda on Get Hip. The band actually recorded this way back in 2010, but its release some months later has done nothing to dilute its seedy goodness. In fact, I put this alongside Natural Child's 1971 as a companion piece of slacker garage, and as that album was in my best of 2011 list you can bet your bottom dollar Nightmare Soda would have made the cut if discovered earlier. Plus, 'Do The Splash' is my belated fave track of 2011. Not really, but it is a killer track, for drinking booze in the pool in these summer months, which has happened on occasion. Try it - its good for you.

Pow Wows - EIO (During The Flood)
Pow Wows - Do The Splash


I told you about a High Wolf release that Bathetic put out early last year. Well, the demented guru put out a longplayer at the tail end of 2011 called Atlas Nation. It is the typical waterlogged mantra drone fare that High Wolf dishes out, but after getting loose to Pow Wows and doing the splash, it's a great come down. Atlas Nation is available through Holy Mountain.

High Wolf - Raagini


But there is only so much spacing out one can take, and that's where The Spits' V comes in. A harder, vitriolic Ramones, Seattle's fave purveyors of garage gutter punk delivered an album that was straight outta New York circa 1981. It's unashamedly in LOVE with the leather smell of Johnny and his bros - something a few Brisbane bands can definitely sympathise with - and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.

The Spits - All I Want
The Spits - Fed Up

Christmas Island Crack Bones, Meth Teeth Depart In Control

Dammit Sacred Bones, give me some time to breathe! Or at least have decent listening time to your other excellent releases...

This is a little different though, as it's two ace bands putting out separate 7" singles. Christmas Island kick off proceedings, hitting us with fast paced, jangly indie shambolism. The urgency on offer with 'Drawing Skulls' evokes Kings Of Leon if they remained stuck in Holy Roller Novocaine (as they should mercifully have done) and jammed with Natural Child. Then its Meth Teeth's turn to drunkenly sedate us, their drug-fuelled malaise the perfect counterpoint. I loved Meth Teeth's ultra lo-fi album Everything Went Wrong from last year, and the two tracks here let us know they are still delving in this subversive, catatonic brilliance (I should say were - they are unfortunately no more! RIP!). Four tracks, two bands, one massive slab of awesome-o.

Christmas Island - Drawing Skulls
Meth Teeth - Control

Jeff Is The Champion

Nashville irreverent psych pop rockers JEFF The Brotherhood have been mining the the predictability of their innate unpredictability for some eight or so years now, and its very likely that most of you haven't amply sampled their wares. Well, this year's We Are The Champions is probably the best chance you will get to understand what this duo - brothers Jamin and Jake Orrall - are all about. And what they are all about is creating imminently catchy psych punk soundbytes with errant speed and mania that invoke the gamut of bands of their ilk, from Ratcat to the Ramones, and then infuse it all with more than a dollop of pop writing acumen. The good Weezer references have been rife, and admittedly fair enough, yet I can't get over how addictive this whole shebang is. The duo are clearly all about the rock out - check out 'Bummer' or 'Shredder' for instance - but then get a load of 'Diamond Way' and you will be happy that if you like your rock, and you like your smart pop, here's a way you can have your cake and eat it too (which is a fucked reference by the way. Why else would you have the cake? Unless you are obliged to give it to a bake sale, or you have inserted a file in it with the sole purpose of breaking your lover out of the pen. In which case, make extra fool!)


We Are The Champions is available on the brothers' own label, Infinity Cat - also home to ace bands Natural Child and HAM1. June also sees them doing some dates Stateside with Fucked Up, and one with iceage - awwwwww yeah!

JEFF The Brotherhood - Shredder
JEFF The Brotherhood - Diamond Way

Natural Child's Not In It - They Live It

I first heard of Nashville's Natural Child earlier this year when scouring the Scion Garage A/V split series and found their 7" collaboration with The Strange Boys (read and check out their track 'The Jungle' here). Well, these retrobates released their debut LP, 1971, last month, and I can safely tell you that they have lost none of the rambunctious, ramshackle blase brilliance that is hinted at in that previous release. The band continues to pipe along on their marriage of blues, punk and garage, embracing Lynard Skynard as quickly as they do Black Lips, and above all waving the flag of getting blitzed like its a commandment from God. Maybe it is.

The album title couldn't be any more apt either - these tracks sound like they've been ripped from the bargain basement of Championship Records. It is definitely adhering to the DIY ethos that is what upholds most garage rock's current recordings, yet it sounds so at home here. This is the perfect soundtrack to a crazy, boozy, drug drenched night with your tightest, and the album to throw on the morning after when reliving those heady highs and laboroius lows. Even when tracks veer away from these themes, such as the Ono-enlivened 'Yoko', with its lurking dirge-like psych riffs, Natural Child hold it all with a sense of jazzed virility that is so potent its hard not to become pregnant with manic expectation - anything can happen, and most probably will. Above all, 1971 just fucking rocks.

1971 is out now on Infinity Cat - get it now.

Natural Child - Makin' It
Natural Child - Beer

A Strange Split Adolescence Is Only Natural

Another amazing Scion Garage A/V release, this time a split between The Strange Boys and Natural Child.

The former offers 'American Radio' - four and a half minutes of just about every genre you can think of spliced by a bored commuter dialling through the stations on a lonely pitch black night. Every section is so good - funny, poignant, spot on - in fact you want all of them to be true songs! Its fantastic. Although the fact that they aren't actual songs will probably infuriate quite a few - but I still found it a good listen.

Then Nashville's own Natural Child comes along with 'The Jungle', a track that is far too short. It’s a boozy campfire sing-a-long that foregoes the jock with the Jack Johnson predilection and instead is played by crackheads around a fire in a metal drum. With Back To The Future references.

You'll be able to get this one on Record Store Day - be a good one to add to this ever excellent series.

American Radio - The Strange Boys

The Jungle - Natural Child