Woolen Men

The purchases were relentless on RSD, weren’t they? Well I hope they were for you guys. I spent money I didn’t have, and didn’t get everything I wanted – to be honest, most of that existed exclusively in Australia, and even more localised to a lil guitar shop in Brisbane – but what’s a guy to do? Well for one he can buy Temporary Monument, the 2nd LP from Portland’s Woolen Men. They sound kinda like The Wipers doing Parquet Courts doing Husker Du, with a Ramones hangover and extra motorik on the side (see the fun as hell title track). The trio are pretty pissed off at the Portland hipster affluenza that has infiltrated their hometown – pricing people out, closing down musical institutions (a common occurrence – the venues were there first, you moved into a music centric area, what did you think you would hear at night, you entitled fucks?!) And apart from the opener ‘Clean Dreams’ (which is still nicely acerbic), the songs rip along with a lo-fi angularity, a buzz-box fury that at turns feels slanted and disenchanted... Temporary Monument is the band’s testament to this, but also to the complacency of those who are displaced but accept it – it’s time to bristle, to bear arms (in a figurative sense), to fight the smug fugue with white noise – or rough and ready hook laden basement rock, at any rate. The album is out through Woodsist, it’s pretty bloody great, and you can get it here.

Flannel Robes

For a band raging against sitting still, with releases pushing towards the upper echelons of a hundred on just about all formats and through all labels, including Olde English Spelling Bee (whatever happened to those guys? A serious question there), Not Not Fun, Night People and Woodsist, waiting almost a year for a new Robedoor release feels like being spurned by your S&M-fixated lover. The LA droners lick those wounds though with Primal Sphere, the upcoming album the duo have coming out on Hands In The Dark Records. Their brand of electro-doom secretions doesn't deviate far from the Robedoor norm on the new LP, but therein lies their charm - they are truly insidious, their slight transgressions worming their way throughout a prolific oeuvre so that the beginning and end become indiscernible. Plus, on a track like 'Flannel Shroud,' you can get your undead shuffle on - nothing like a funereal dance number for the apocalyptic ages.

You can preorder Primal Sphere here - highly recommended. And brilliant cover art too.

Third Crack At The Skull

Portland's Eat Skull exist in a netherworld of churning hydraulics and gurning hysterics, a puerile, deadbeat bunch that revel in a no-fi miasma of noise and inertia. This would put them on the second tier, neither here nor there, a band that rarely left their nihilistic domain, were shite on record but incendiary live (if you were lucky enough to find them in a dilapidated art gallery or underneath a bridge) - if it weren't for the fact that the four-piece hide well-written pop compositions underneath the clatter and debris. Siltbreeze may have latched onto the nascent nihilism of their sound on debut record Sick & Tired - an album that should be good, if not for all the aural sandpaper scouring away your eardrums -  but others saw the melodicism beneath. I had the luxury of seeing them support Ganglians around Xmas 2010 at XOYO in London, and they wiped the floor with those hippies - then bizarrely made it over to Australia for another spate of fun-filled shows. Nevertheless it felt like the potential had not been maxed out - not by a long shot. The boys became more open with their songwriting on Wild and Inside, and have perfected their move out under the waterfall of static and abrasion with III, startling in its fidelity, whilst also vindicating the beliefs of many that Eat Skull were...you know...actually good.

That's not to say that their third LP is straightforward,  accessible fare - not by a long shot (e.g. 'How Do I Know When To Say Goodnight' is some synth freakout that will infuriate and energise in equal measure; 'Twin Sikk Moons' offers the noise, without the tinnitus) - but its leaps and bounds the best thing they have produced sonically. I still long for tracks like 'Stick To The Formula' or 'New Confinement' to receive such luminous treatment in the studio, and maybe the next album will push Eat Skull into that upper echelon. But until then, III is incredible in parts, with a few tracks destined to signify what it actually means to be Eat Skull, without the shitgaze.

III is out through Woodsist - you can grab it here.

Eat Skull - Space Academy
Eat Skull - Dead Horses 
Eat Skull - Catch Em Before They Vanish

MV & EE

Matt Valentine and Erika Elder are the kind of rustic Americana nymphs that will always be playing music whilst ensconsed in the earth from whence they came - no matter how warped that music may become. As MV & EE, the duo have managed to simultaneously evoked a languid style of neo-folk rock wizardry whilst crafting deceptively lithe musical arrangements - looking laidback, but always on the ball. On their latest LP Space Homestead the magic continues. The atmospheric opener 'Heart Like Barbara Steel' is more like Mark McGuire/Emeralds ambience territory, before breaking into the woozy folk of 'Workingman's Smile', the reverb-heavy and C&W-in-sepia 'Sweet Sure Gone' and the ethereal 'Moment'. As always it isn't so straightforward, and the haunted blues of 'Shit's Creek', the lagorous guitar solo on 'Too Far To See' and the cathartic sprawl of 'Wasteland' show their psychedelic hand in full glory. It's a strangely alluring album, much like the couple themselves, and is likely to grab you gently but firmly and lead you into the woods, never to be seen again.


You can grab Space Homestead (out through Woodsist) here.

MV & EE- Workingman's Smile
MV & EE - Wasteland

Doubling Down On The Family's White Fence

White Fence kicked off 2012 by combining with Ty Segall (I can't stop mentioning him, can I?) with the great record Hair, and now there is his double volume opus, Family Perfume Vol I & II. This is ambitious stuff. I know Tim Presley - and a lot of his contemporaries - are voracious musicians, continually pumping out the gems, but to put them all on one release risks shining up the occasional dud. And so it does with Family Perfume. Don't get me wrong - White Fence's penchant for skewed paisley rock with a dash of psychedelic charm is on full display here, and there are some absolutely warbled garage pop corkers to be found in this treasure trove - but some of these tracks feel a little half-baked. Maybe it's because after Hair, where Presley was all brushed up production-wise, I'd like him to step out from behind the 4 track and static hiss. I'm not talking about getting The Arcade Fire to back him or some such nonsense, I just think that now's the time to open things up a little more. Anyway, personally I like Vol II as an album proper more, but Vol I has some real highlights, which I've included below. There's 29 songs to sift through (chosen from a purported cache of 80), so take your time and enjoy. It's great to have something this ambitious floating around in the burgeoning garage rock movement (if you can call it such a thing) that embraces touchstones such as The Beatles (think of The White Album), and whilst the end result doesn't reach such heady highs, it certainly gives it a red hot shake. But seriously Tim - get on the blower to Segall and get another album running...


Family Perfume is out now on Woodsist.

White Fence - Balance Yr Heart
White Fence - Down PNX
White Fence - Take Away Life's Endless Take

Strangely Transfixed By Royal Baths (Updated)

I'm still not wholeheartedly convinced that I like Royal Baths. I mean, the Brooklyn-via-San Francisco band tick the right boxes - dark, brooding, garage based tendencies, drone tinged rock, a love of Spacemen 3... Yet I can't quite get them. Whether it's because I think/thought they're style over substance, or that they are/were a little over-hyped, I'm not sure. I wasn't enamoured with their debut Litanies (on Woodsist), but I listened to it quite a bit anyway. Weird.

I'm equally flummoxed by how much I'm enjoying them right now. I find their songs to be fairly insidious in how they squirrel under my skin without my notice or permission. It kinda hurts my head, because I can't put my finger on it, yet there it is, on repeat, making me happy and maudlin at the same time. Their new album, Better Luck Next Life, is coming out through Kanine next week, and it will be interesting if there is a similar sensation to the first. Likewise, I'll keep you posted as to whether it bewitches me the way the first one did, or if I genuinely dig it (or genuinely loathe it - nothing is off the table here...).

UPDATE - Royal Baths will be playing in Brisbane! Yep, they have lined up Woodland for Thursday March 29. I think it's time I settled my love/hate stance once and for all...

Royal Baths - Black Sheep
Royal Baths - Darling Divine

Don't Nodzzz Off In The Second Innings

I hadnt listened to Nodzzz at all until last year when my friend Leigh was wearing one of their t-shirts (I think it was the night before the ill-fated Intelligence show that never was...). Leigh did a very brief schooling on the snotty San Fran trio, and I raced home to try out their self-titled LP. Very excellent, I thought, and whilst I am yet to see them live (sigh...), I await the day with bated breath.

Now I realise this is an "old" album - its been around for the best part of the year - but Innings (on Woodsist) is a hell of a lot of fun, and it's something I think too many people overlooked in their rush to get all chillwaved and Odd Futured. It was unfairly maligned because it was so short, haphazard and carefree. In fact, i tended to agree, and in this day and age of disposable music, I very rarely come back to disappointments to give them a (somewhat deserved) second shot. But I felt I owed it to Nodzzz, and in the end I am very glad I did. Its not perfect by any means, but it is so fun and there are some absolute killers here that it actually gets you excited for their future releases all over again. They are actually fun, not trying to be. Its coming into summer here in Oz, and I think this is a tasty soundtrack to some silly sunny times.

Nodzzz - Time (What's It Going To Do)

Ganglians Eating Skulls At XOYO Tonight

Another week, another rad Upset The Rhythm show to get along to. Tonight sees Sacramento jangly upstarts Ganglians take centre stage at XOYO, supported by scuzzbuckets Eat Skull and minimalist garage punks Graffiti Island. Im mega pumped for this - Eat Skull's LPs out through Siltbreeze and their latest Woodsist Jerusalem Mall 7" have been dirty slices of enjoyment, whilst Graffiti Island have garnered some intriguing word of mouth thumbs ups (if thats possible?). Enjoy - we certainly will!

Ganglians - Voodoo

Eat Skull - Dont Leave Me On The Speaker

Graffiti Island - Head Hunters

Snap, Crackle, and Purling Hiss

I know that Philly's Purling Hiss has just released an EP that I am yet to listen to, or the Woodsist newie Public Service Announcement, and that PH mastermind Mike Pollize is in another band, Birds of Maya, that is his apparent 'day job' - and yup, havent heard them either. Which makes me a bit of a bastardero. But whilst Im endeavouring to brush up on these three factors, Im going to introduce you to this self-titled debut LP. Purling Hiss is fuzzy, indulgent, ambling, incredibly loud and unrepetent. Think of recent SM postees Bo Ningen and their ilk - that Japanese psych that curls in and out of itself, and is so insanely fucked up that you cant explain why you like it, you just do. Then mate that with the dissonant sleaze scuzz of Puffy Areolas...oh yeah...

It comes from the bosom of the jam, and refuses to leave. Hang on a minute, it does - middle tracks 'White Machine Noise' and 'DUI' are less than a minute bites of mangled noise - but the album is bookended with such ridiculous hyperbolic sojourns into rainbow noise that they are more a 'blink and you'll miss it' break up to the rest of the album's trip.

Purling Hiss is out now through Permanent Records - if you can still get a copy. If not, Hissteria is out on Richie Records (who have also had Kurt Vile in their midst), whilst start saving for the Woodsist debut Public Service Announcement.
 

Purling Hiss - Montage Mountain

Walking The Road to Agartha Bombed Out Of Your Face...

...which is the only way to describe Herbcraft's psych saturated meanderings. Helmed by Matthew Lajoie, Herbcraft has had a fine ride in blogland, with Raven Sings The Blues and Altered Zones praising latest effort , the cassette Papers, whilst Chocolate Bhobka rates his album Herbcraft Discovers The Bitter Water of Agartha so much its in their best 2010 album releases so far (both releases are out on Woodsist subsidiaries - Fuck It Tapes and Hello Sunshine respectively - which isnt surprising seeing the quality spread Woodsist has been putting out of recent times. Buy both here). The attention is warranted - Papers is a true excursion into desert psych-neverland-peyote overload territory, whilst the LP is a masterclass on how to one-up the glut of drug-fuelled concept albums of yesteryear. Put Herbcraft on, close your eyes, and you may never see the light again. Nor will you want to, or even give a shit either way - this is the music of a isolated neverending garden of delights. You wont ever want to leave...

Herbcraft - The Road to Agartha (from Herbcraft Discovers The Bitter Water of Agartha)

Herbcraft - One Thousand Papers (from Papers)