Chroming The Young

I am a massive fan of Austin reprobates The Young’s Voyagers Of Legend LP, which tore my face off in 2010 (it was one of our top albums of that year). That album was surprisingly on Mexican Summer - not a label that keeps tabs on this kind of viscerality - and was also their last one on there. Then my knowledge of their existence pretty much stopped right there. The quartet apparently brought out a follow-up album called Dub Egg, which I somehow missed. I'm scurrying around looking for it now...

But onward and upward. The Texans have a new album on Matador Records, and it's a balltearer. Chrome Cactus is sharper; harsher; leaner; sinister. There is a dropped-down drive that underscores this songs, which are then superseded by fuzzed out guitar solos a la Fu Manchu’s Scott Hill albeit with some deliberate restraint, and other abrasive effects like the squalling feedback stab on ‘Metal Flake’ or the the soaring synth that accompanies the “ballad” ‘Apache Throat’. The excellently-named Hans Zimmerman takes front and centre with his vocals this time around, and it lends an interesting counterpoint that is often overlooked in 21st century rock production – his voice is uninhibited by pedals, effects and nonsense distortion and delay, and as such stands somewhere between the monotone snarl of Girls Against Boys’ Eli Janney and the growl of Young Widows’ Evan Patterson. It helps the the sound has been tweaked by Tim Green (Nation of Ulysses/The Fucking Champs) in the blasted surrounds of the Sierra Nevada – definitely perfect environs for what transpires here - but you get a sense that Chrome Cactus may have landed at his feet fully formed. ‘Chrome Jamb’ has a narcoleptic undertone to its dry crawl, bent strings belying a Morricone hangover before bringing the doom; ‘Moondog First Quarter’ maintains the vitriol that has been missing from Black Mountain for some time. I still miss the darkness sewn into the Pixies-lite that littered their debut, but when the raucous drown-out that is the aptly-titled ‘Slow Death’ kicks in, closely followed by the feedback squall of closer ‘Blow The Scum Away’, the new Young is all that matters.

You can grab Chrome Cactus here. The Young play in NY tonight alongside SM faves Degreaser - get along.

Sonic Masala's Top Ten LPs of 2010

So this is what it all comes down to, the most important list of them all, Sonic Masala's Top Ten LPs of 2010. So in reverse order...

10. Oneohtrix Point Never - Returnal

This album took time to grow on me, in fact I think Brooklyn based Daniel Lopatin's beautiful drone masterpiece is still growing on Brendan, but in time I'm sure he'll be won over. From the chaotic noise opening of Nil Admirari to the dense shimmer of Describing Bodies and even its blissed out drone wanderings of Stress Waves - this is a sublimely gorgeous abstract work.

Oneohtrix Point Never - Stress Waves

9. The Young - Voyagers of Legend

Out on Mexican Summer, this Austin rock four-piece seems to have been overlooked by many this year - but not Sonic Masala. The most considered raucous pop-punk album of 2010, jagged and rough but touched with a solemn emotive mood, this is like fighting with tears in your eyes.

The Young - Bird In The Bush

8. Emeralds - Does It Look Like I'm Here?

Simply this years most beautiful album. The Cleveland trio really have captured something timeless in Does It Look Like I'm Here? With its delicate variations of mood and intensity each track seems to build its own momentum. Something I'm sure this album's reputation will do also, building momentum to be regarded as a modern classic.

Emeralds - Double Helix

7. Drum Eyes - Gira Gira

If there is one album this year that relentlessly pushes the totally insane card, then Drum Eyes' Gira Gira has to be it. Brooding, maximalist sonic expressions of the most warped minds. One minute sci-fi futurisms, the next driving trash insanity. A scarily fun riot of epic soundscapes.

Drum Eyes - 13 Magician

6. My Disco - Little Joy

My Disco is yet another band from Australia I wouldn't have found without Brendan's guidance. Criminally overlooked this year, Little Joy is the Melbourne trio's third LP. Pounding but calm, it is a work of rhythmic subtlety and relentless drive.

My Disco - Sunray

5. Swans - My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky

Right from the start Brendan has been telling me that My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky is one of the albums of the year, and just like the 13 year long road its taken Swans to reach this point, it took me a little while to see the true genius of this album. More approachable than the Swans' earlier brutal work but no less uncompromising. Swans with humanity and beauty? Maybe. Epic? Yes.

Swans - You Fucking People Make Me Sick

4. Liars - Sisterworld

Even with its early release Sisterworld was always going to be up there for Sonic Masala. The fifth Liars album is relentlessly tense, full of surreal imagery and anxiety. Strangely it didn't make the impact on the year we thought it would, but for us its the Liars at their most contagious.

Liars - Scissor

3. Zach Hill - Face Tat

Zach Hill is a sticksmith genius, that can't be denied. But Face Tat, his second full solo LP, underlines his credentials as a truly innovative musician. Astrological Straits was truly a bizarre and mesmerizing album, but Face Tat really takes Zach's solo work to a new level with the ferocious style with which he assaults his drums underpinning it all. Intense, deceptive, challenging, Face Tat sounds disorienting and alien at first, thanks partly to Hill's bizarre sound sources - but the more you delve into this 40 minute frenzy the more you are rewarded.

Zach Hill - Memo to the Man

2. Rangda - False Flag

Super groups are a strange thing. Whilst the depth of talent that makes up the Rangda trio is eye wateringly impressive - guitarists Sir Richard Bishop (Sun City Girls) and Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance) and drummer Chris Corsano - it can be hard for the end result to be greater than the sum of the parts. However, Rangda's False Flag so is. An uncompromising beast of a record, it is simultaneously brutal and dynamic, subtle and beautiful. Rangda landed and took our breath away.

Rangda - Serrated Edges

1. Women - Public Strain

So here it is, the Sonic Masala best LP of 2010. Surprised? Maybe, but its not a compromise. In fact we really didn't want our end of year first to be just what we agreed upon, this choice has got conviction behind it. Some may have dismissed this album at first listen. In fact I almost did, such was my love of Woman's self titled debut. But give Public Strain repeated listens and its infectious off key claws and howls work their way into your soul. We're not calling Public Strain a grower - oh no, it much more deadly than that.

At first Public Strain's sunny rhythms might come to the fore, but as the drone driven aesthetics build from behind the scenes it becomes a different beast, sweet but sour, bleak but beautiful, crisp but soaked in reverb. Those chirpy tempos hiding its dark noise underbelly waiting to leak into your consciousness. With Women's first outing pop sweetness was kept separate from dark drone noise, but here Women have spawned something of frightening beauty. Public Strain is Sonic Masala's record of the year and its been quality gaining ground since August - now we can't let it go.

Woman - Drag Open

So there you have it, we left the list late so we knew we had everything. There's nothing more annoying than an end of list that drops in early November, we're the polar opposite. So what do you think? Have we missed anything? Is there a gem you'd push to the top? Let us know.

Darkness Of The Young

I know there are albums that are deemed as 'growers'. Ones that take their time getting their hooks into you, so surreptitious are their charms that you are addicted before you have had time to think about what's been placed in front of you. But rarely could you say that an album was a 'creeper' - where each song oozes its way over you and enters you through every pore and orifice, like the black oil from The X Files.

The Young's Voyagers of Legend is definitely a creeper.

I heard this Austin Texas band first over at Raven Sings The Blues via the track 'Phoebis Cluster', which is also featured below. I was immediately intrigued - the song has that eerie vibe that the Pixies' 'Gouge Away' has, that Lynchian noir nightmare that slinks along in the shadows before jumping all over you. I delved into the band a little more, and there isnt much to be gleaned, other than they are signed to the great Mexican Summer, which helped put out the LP. So I scoured the WWW to find the album, and whilst the player I found on a nondescript site (which no longer seems to work) wasn't altogether functioning properly, it was enough to get me a couple listens to it.

Voyagers of Legend is definitely a time capsule album, taking me back to the early 90s. But instead of focusing on high school slacker ennui a la Japandroids, this is delving more into the flannel shirts of the grunge generation with more than a pinch of the aforementioned Pixies (a commonly held belief that they were the genesis of grunge as it were). 'Bird In The Bush' to me is the single track on this album that comes across as proper single material, and yet it is the weakest, whilst tracks like 'Smiling God' and Sunburst' rollick along like a burnished black steam train with roadkill in its grill.

Good luck find much on the Web about The Young - just do yourself a favour, head over to Mexican Summer and get the album. Ive got the itch to hear it again - its crept inside me and it will not let go.

The Young - Phoebis Cluster