|
One Million New CD Reviews.
__________________________________________________
Apache Boomtown Gems
Birdman
San Fransicko partying pouters come in compact fun-sized
packet that yuss, early seventies camporamic glam in any damn colour you want,
darling, and a few yet to be invented. Bypass any notion of the similarities to
Bob Geldof’s Rats, though there is slight resemblance to their superb second
Tonic For The Troops album, and never once will you have to pause to reflect
on what one tit or tat was nicked from (well, ok not exactly true but you gonna
argue with Wolly Bully or Psychotic Reaction) though you can place
them proudly in the silkily polka dot n’ paisley pantheon of Brats, Dolls,
Ramones, Alice, even The Gun Club and biker fumes. Snarling n sniping this is a
swaggering glitterball from gutter to groin that will make you touch your hips
and maybe even wish they’d let you.
Stu Gibson
Asia Phoenix
Frontiers
Pointlessly rising again. Let us pray for a musical
continental drift to ensure this resurrection is choked on, which would be about
the only rock action this load of overwrought cobblers would come anywhere near.
However it’s worth a download listen for the sheer incomprehension that will
crease yours and your compadres faces, as you frantically quiz each other as to
how in your worst personal hell such songs can be constructed, and query your
recent drug intake. Other than that this set of horseshit makes absolutely no
sense, possibly not even to accountants, though don’t get me started on them,
though it is hilarious and makes Magnum seem reticent to use the
preposterous pedal.
Stu Gibson
Bedford
Falls
Savings And Loan
Boss Tuneage
The subtitle “More sad songs about girls” says it all
really, for this ain’t no staunch-shouldered, mean-eyed caterwaul through
country dirt-roads and the suffocating stench of cantankerous back-alleys poured
out from bottles of heartbreak and unbeckoned beauty between slugs of squandered
romance and bumps of whatever shit the bloke round the block reckons he’s
holding. Nope, it’s drab indie rock from the same neck of the woods that should
be silenced for ever by marauding groups of musical einsatzgruppen following
this scrawl as Spastic Sheep Bleaters that can’t even muster the manhood to be
screamo, for FUCK’S sake (or lack of). I’m sure their parents and whatever
woe-hungry wallflowers that pass as friends relish their tender hearts but,
intone with me a la Eldritch – ‘Get real…get another’. If you come across
this just check the crap cover shot of the guys’ pitiful not worth a shrug shoes
and judge it forthwith, then buy me a drink if we should ever meet, for saving
you a fiver and a gainless half hour (or half-minute) or so. The credit crunch
should close such kak down. Man. Though I doubt it, this is the sort of dreck
that causes spontaneous masturbatory convulsions in the checked-coat,
cord-wearing, beard stroking cum-guzzling
South Manchester (talkin’
‘bout you, Chorlton) café bar scene.
Stu Gibson
Birds Of Avalon Bazaar Bazaar Volcom
Formed from the ashes of dark-cloud garage
groove-psych-grinders The Cherry Valence, couple Cheetie Kumar and
Paul Siler continue traversing a willfully winding road. Or two, even
three in this case, for they have indulged the false idol of pompous psychedelia,
the pontificating piles-forming nonce of the kind that forgets all sage advice
about carrying protection and births prog from its swollen girth. Praise be they
largely leave the long, arduous parts behind and those aforementioned ashes fall
more between the spliff and mushroom cloud rather than those of the weary
wishbone variety. There’s still too much Led Zep lethargy and even
Grateful Dead, though, which means Yours Stuly can only really cop you some
of this if you want to formulate whether you hate fucking heads (still) or not.
Largely concise clutters of choruses and squiggly interludes they may be but
don’t be thinking that with the tedious though cutely appositely–titled
Instant Coma they’re on some sort of door to door sales jaunt selling the
Encyclopedia Apocalyptica, cos they’re really striving to connect with their
inner-seventies child. Or worse, on Think, their inner late-sixties
Beatle. Something even cranked up choogles like Taking Trains can’t stop.
Do, however, burn the Sabbath resting on the Lords day magic carpet ride
that is the mighty opulence of Horse Called Dust, from whence cities and
whole civilizations could arise. There’d just need to be one holy hula
dance-fest with a phalanx of Salma Hayek’s and Jemima Roper’s of a
civil war first. But rock’ll always ride out, right? Right???
Stu Gibson
Born To Lose Saints Gone Wrong
People Like You
Texan terrors BTL are back with another back-bar room of
brawling, sea-faring, ocean-bound anthems with which to barricade the doors for
another lock-in littered with the detritus of late-nights, shore leave fall outs
and last minute failures. Chris Klinck’s vocals are amongst the most
stirring, and that’s soul-stirring, and affecting in rock’n’roll never
mind the street punk niche people’d love to keep ‘em boxed into, and, backed up
by the beefy, bull-horn steaks of his four hombres hewing a no limits
suction-pump of hardcore and squealing rock guitar like some soul-dredging
dialysis machine, these guys are no slightly built bunch of ‘woah-oh-ohh’
merchants whose table’s for the taking with the littlest touch. Under such
rapturous sheets these songs, and this band, work as they’re either
blessed with, or well aware of, their great (musical anyway) state’s lineage and
it’s not such a leap of faith to picture Texan troubadours such as Townes Van
Zandt or Steve Earle picking out tracks like Soundtrack or
Ante Up (Or Roll Over And Die). No false posturing or by numbers
brigandage but some well-considered and often beautiful diatribes and
salutations to situations attestable to from experience, experience that
resounds round your leaderless, rally-call hungry soul, not much apparent these
days but Born To Lose can be as profound as the are a pounding, sensory
padded-cell cataclysm. THAT’s punk rock, should you need a slap as a reminder.
And let’s face it, you, me, your best pal, all probably fucking do round about
now, eh? Powerful mojo.
Stu Gibson
UK Subs Warhead
Jet13
Featuring five blistering audio tracks and a live video of
the title track, UK Subs brand new release is a classic. ‘I Live In A Car’ and
‘Warhead’ are both new versions of familiar tracks from the ‘Subs chart-storming
golden era, whilst ‘Straighten Out’ is a more dynamic mix of the b-side from a
couple of years ago. Meanwhile, the two new songs ‘Knuckleduster’ and
‘Creation’ sound great and even though these legends of punk have nothing to
prove, they still sound as though they’re writing and playing as if their lives
depended on it.
Anyone who has followed this band is aware of the revolving
door of musicians who have come and gone over the years, but this is the second
new release in a row to feature main-stay frontman Charlie Harper plus Jet on
guitar, Brian Barnes on bass and Jamie on drums. And what a band they are,
bringing the UK Subs sound alive and kicking into the punk n’ roll naughties,
whilst maintaining the original simplistic charm of the original sound.
If you like the UK Subs as a live band but find the
production of some of the original recordings a bit flat then check this out.
Put simply it sounds like we knew the ‘Subs studio recordings always could have
and should have, thanks to a great production from Stan Standen from Demented
Are Go, who previously worked on the ‘Suns last single and also mastered The
Eruptors debut album.
Recommended for old punks and younger rockers alike,
whether your first gig was seeing the Sex Pistols at the 100 Club or Backyard
Babies at King’s Cross Water Rats, you’re going to enjoy this. High octane, raw
power. Crank it up!
Alex Eruptor
Hollywood Brats
Hollywood Brats
Cherry Red
Audience attendee aka twat walking right into a
tongue-lashing – “You sound like an abortion.”
Andrew Matheson, Brat, twat maybe but honour this – “That’s
ok pal, you look like one.”
Stomping outta the early seventies glam-slam glum-slum of
Lahnden in a parallel slime-light with the Dolls in possibly one of the
strangest synchronious misalignments in any world that’s ever been worth writing
n wanking about, not just music - history. Yes it’s that fuckaluckadingdongingly
important. This is no ‘oooh look at that Elvis chappie, let’s sign Cliff
Richard’, nose-missing by a million lines, this is as grimy and ecstatically
sticky and trashed as their
Queens brothers. Sure, one was a Scandinavian (Casino Steele,
who went onto quiet punk legendary status by forming the glorious legless but
never lug-hole-less grievous under-achievers The Boys – who later sped up
Sick On You - without which there’d be no Crybabys, and that’s not
worth contemplating), one was a Canadian (Andrew Matheson) with a mouth wider
and dirtier than The Thames but, whatever, Chez Maximes is quite simply
one of the greatest dancefloor fucks ever, a thousand of Ronnie Wood’s
best Faces riffs having absolutely no tough choice over who they’re
staying with, as they lurch off home with the sloppy seconds shoplifted from
Mott The Hoople in the corner store, purchasing skins and perusing scant
shelves of the UK’s seventies discontent in their silks, Tumble With Me
sounds like it got jacked, juiced, spilled, thrilled but never jaded at those
’72 Dolls sessions with Billy Doll on drumslumps, Zurich 17 is an
Everly’s-era cutesy camp droll that Thunders woulda, umm, died for,
as under-produced by a spindly wisp of Phil Spector’s 1960 stubble, and could
disarmingly make every tough-shouldered, high-collared rocker weep, at once
sarcastic yet care-soothingly cute-some, where Southern Belles would
imperiously keep it’s sticky fingers away from any grabbing Stone, whipping the
lords off back to their manors. Unusually for Cherry Red this is just a straight
reissue. Coupled with the lost second album sessions, or whatever scabs there
are out there (what? You think I researched this, c’mon!) tracks of which
surfaced on a Casino Steele comp a while back so they are salvageable, would be
just icing on this mostly wonderful cake.
Stu Gibson
Hydrogyn Deadly Passions DR2
Demolition
Beckoning you back to the pre-Riot grrl eighties with a
come hither flick of the hair and crotch-coaxing index finger to a world
festooned with Doro Pesch posters, Pandora Peroxide in her prime,
moving nascent stonewashed blue-jean bulges unwittingly to back rows come these
Kentucky cock-crowers.
On a backing band bed of rose-cheeked removal men huffing and puffing heroically
under their open leather waistcoats, no frills feisty fille leading lady
Julie Westlake belts through siege-openers Rejection and On And On,
with an almost Saraya–like bluesy metal sludge that with Your Life
and Deadly Passions provide a pouting pedestal for the rather large vocal
cords and larynx kept shrouded under those huge airbrushed eighties tits.
Covering Alanis Dog Biscuits’ You Oughta Know isn’t really forgiveable -
maybe it confirms she’s really a similarly strong woman, despite being sprawled
un-Alanis-ly about the place, maybe it’s to get up Alanis’ nose, but I
suspect hit single fodder holds court here. Whatever, it certainly marks a
halfway point where quality control can’t be cajoled out of a traffic ticket
like old Patrolman Perkins as the heavy-Heart ballads Candles Light
Your Face and inexcusable lame-ass llama-fest Shadow feature heavily
and the promiscuous riff on Seroquil gets wasted, endings it’s teenage
wasteland years rather more a frustrated flirt that the jock-flicking fox-trap
it fantasises about in the office. Though I guess for all its easily lambastable
failings it’s at least more forward-than follies like Vixen and
Phantom Blue.
Stu Gibson
Jon Cleary and The Absolute
Monster Gentlemen
Mo Hippa Live FHQ
Sessionista satellite with the likes of B.B. King
and Taj Mahal on his flighty-fingered credits and a mainstay of Bonnie
Raitt’s touring band, ivory-itcher Cleary unfurls some swamp-funk blues from
the Mississippi banks.
A tad too demonstrative of a muso masterclass at times, what with the
body-popping six-string bass and all songs bar the stooped sweat home of
Cheatin’ On You stretched out beyond the six-minute mark, for those
hankering for the hoodoo haunches of the N’Orlins stew the likes of Dr John
and Professor Longhair stirred up and almost succumbed to. It may filter
down from those fabled banks but the waters seem waved at touristically rather
than waded in with abandonment, though, there’s no denying the prowess of the
man’s pianner pinkies and pokers on the glorious solo boogie spot on C’mon
Second Line and on the aforelysaid Longhair’s timeless Tipitina. File
under interesting as opposed to scintillating as the sleeve promised.
Stu Gibson
Jubilee
Rebel Hiss
Buddyhead
This 4 piece LA rescue ex bit-parters from their respective
cameos, culled as they are from Wires On Fire (Michael Shuman -
yeah I thought that too - who can also mention QOTSA to his unemployment
officer, and Evan Weiss) and NIN / The Icarus Line in front
celebrator Aaron North, plus a veritable motley crew of drummers from
A Perfect Citcle’s Josh Freese to The Willowz Loren Humphry
and rumour has it even Josh Homme and Bauhaus’ Kevin Haskins. So
is all the back-slapping and protestations of being a real band, man, not one of
those stinky side projects worth the laser usage for this disc. Well, there’s
signs of striving for new identities yet they risk ending stuck in the mire of
identikit bands straining to straddle the divides as suggested in their intended
influences from Replacements (surely asking for ire?!), to Blur
(definitely if used in the same sentence!), The Verve (ditto. Thricely!), Neil
Young (need I go on??), Creedence (bit late in the day now), Jane’s
Addiction and Dylan (I went).
Stu Gibson
Lauren Harris Calm Before The Storm DR2
Demolition
A debut album from Iron Maiden headman Steve’s
daughter is sure gonna catch equal squeals of delight and derision. Apparently
spotted by legendary Brit prodcer / writer / berk who brought us Since You’ve
Been Gone Russ Ballard (who knew nought of the family connection
sayeth the legends and heralds), Harris and her band of repr-oap-bates lay down
some stadium ready, rock radio friendly, if not overly amorous, riffing with the
practiced eye of former ruffians, perfect fit for the menopausal metal set on
their nostalgia retirement farms running their estate ragged in their new Range
Rovers before racing through suburbia for the Sunday papers. Hurtling to
mediocrity and adequate this slab of marketing-man rock concocted over many a
smorgasboardroom meeting, or orgy, was written by a team almost resembling a
supermarket check-out section when the students are back in town, surely one is
an advisor to MTV, another a consultant to whichever teen soap channel de jour.
As it stands, the lady doth have a strong voice, though one lacking personality
and charisma, which would carry this record into the chapters of kook-dom. So
it’ll surely be adored by many looking for something a bit edgier than Bon
Jovi to raise toasts to their misspent youth, or the older teen independent
girl now Avril’s got hitched and Harry, well, it would insult this
‘arry to go quite that far! A perfect, cheekboned, sculpted example of one
critic, or cynic’s, classic being anothers cliché. Harry will be soooo jealous.
Stu Gibson
Mudhoney Superfuzz Bigmuff Deluxe Edition
Subpop
“Spill my seed – Suck my waste”
This twentieth anniversary two-CD set is as monstrous and
colossal a goatfuck (cheers, el Coen Brothers!) as it was hearing the
sick sludge of Touch Me I’m Sick or In ‘n’ Out Of Grace steaming
and scything through some clubs’ sound system or skanky mate’s long suffering
seventy quid stereo for the first time of many. Expanding on the original
six-track shrug that slid outta Shitstain, Seattle, like an apologetic turd down
your thigh in front of your first girlfriend’s parents, this is now a remastered
(ha ha!!) 32-track torrent of small-town torments and tragic accident, Grinding
garage–band mentality with Sabbath’s jaw-slackening apocaslippeddisco,
Stooges stun-gunning scatalogy and the cartoon malevolence of America’s
early eighties hardcore heroes from The Melvins to The Replacements,
Mudhoney were similar likeable, lanky-haired losers standing (barely)
unpretentiously and gloriously from the locker room to mall to, yup, garage.
While sure as a stoner’s wisdom and a drunk’s steady hand, the second disc
comprises kinda inconsequential though sloopendous live slop of slight interest
the first disc is the essential holy fuck of what grunted at the world as
grunge, and still scrapes with broken fingernails the weasly entrails of those
much more famous sons of that little town, but then even TAD did that.
The intro to Touch Me… can still make you come and shit almost at once
(accidentally wrong sentence structure??) like some GG Allin gang-bang
with Angus Young and a young Paul Westerberg in Beer For
Breakfast slob-glory. Sod it, most of these early tracks can. Crawl amidst
the gut-fisting suffocation of Mudride and smear yourself some new
murals, muchacho-chistas, as the disemboweling and retinal prolapsing bass
squelches all over No One Has. Furious, passionate, dysfunctional,
aggressively pathetic, nerdy yet nastily resentful, desperate and anguished, the
likes of Need, Chain That Door and Twenty Four along with
the harrowing If I Think (prefiguring the raggedly majestic By Her Own
Hand and When Tomorrow Hits from the following years even greater,
and grebo-er, self-titled debut muck) and the couldn’t give not get a fuck lurch
of You Got It (Keep It Outta My Face) along with Hate The Police
showcasing their sluurrrred-pop capabilities…if they rarely captured such
low-down grime again just ask how many no-hoping thirteen-(shit)can caners with
stomach cramps and colostomised brain-cells never mind coagulating nerve endings
could ever happen ‘pon such degrading delights in the sick swamps of their
darkest desires.
Stu Gibson
Romeo Must Die Defined By Enemies In At The Deep End
IATDE
Hail! Hail! Rock’n’Roll!? No, but this IS massive metal
with balls bigger than Valhalla and all the halls of hell only gearing up to do
battle, well, with any fucker, by the sounds of this testosterific seven-track
onslaught from the vocals and bassist behind UK stalwarts Stampin’ Ground.
In fact, it smashes those old wart wounds like giant Cyclops on spacehoppers.
Tumultuous thrashing to make the cheekiest cunt clam up except to emit
occasional squawks from various prolapsing and herniating organs, orifices and
clenched muscle walls with pincer movements of rhythmic vampire riffs raising
stakes made of rib-cages to festoon with bass-drums like grizzly bears
belly-flopping on your face, salmon-ising your insides in an instant, forcing
their clenched fist and every supple sinew from elbow to shoulder into the
vanguard of the new wave of British FUCKING Metal, that shall not be thwarted.
Stu Gibson
The 222s
Montreal Punk 78 – 81
Sonik’s Chicken Shrimp
Casually proving the lie (along with current miscreants
Chop Suicide) that Canadians aren’t just a set of bear friendly rubes higher
on the boring barometer than their self-imposed British cousins and notable
(along with the French) for being entirely culpable for the cuntsoup spawned
from the too-toothy traps and sandpaper faces famous for crimes even against the
most foul of coffee table music, The 222s basically downed tools on the
detention breadline, got all dolled up and appear to have glitzed, ritzed and (Donna’d
and...?) blitzed like heroes for a few years, before getting go go gone, faced
with the moronic musical climate that juiced and lubed itself over the likes of
Supertramp and Kansas. Destiny sure is one wonky-racked n’ deranged bitch. They
shoulda come to the Motherland rather than mong in their home city in a state.
Ten years or so later times two, a fellow set of fag-hounds suffered a similar
fate in old London
town though anyway, with the Soho Roses blurry buzzsaw glam-punk
traeshthetic hobbling gallantly into obscurity, despite their Third And Final
Insult being one of the greatest records ever. This isn’t, mind, but such
details are always worth a mention.
They certainly played like heroes anyway if this slutty
knees up and wide apart slew of home and live recordings is anything to go on.
These flurries from some DollsCooperCounty summercamp of smut-struttin’
(sorry, lass) masterclasses veer magically wide of many marks and have little
wings causing whimsical little flurries in your hearts, fizzing like cherry
bombs in your sticky pants (is that bubblegum, boy?) from Female (‘You
look like a female but you fuck like a man’) and Hold Up to Academic
Drop. A veritably slippy, sloppy, ritzy, ribald and rampant history from
rawk’n’roll’s rapacious slag-heaps, just the way we like it.
Stu Gibson
The Turnpike Cruisers
Rockin’ Possessed 1984-1986
Cherry Red
Here hauled roughly out of their unfair consignment to the
rockin’ rubbish heap, the psychobilly scrap-pit, this six or so piece
screw-loose cruise machine crammed a whole pit-wrecking clash of influences, not
least a brass section, some funkier rhythms than the frantic ram-attack of most
psycho sewer-suckers, and a sly sense of humour (from Palookaville Express
‘I was hanging out my clothes, well most of ‘em were mine / In fact a couple
were Joe’s’ and the B-Movie kitsch cock-up The Girl Who Turned Into A Man)
along with the ability to kick-back from the crunch pedal crutch. Maybe it shows
the game of chance of the music scene in the trench-stench, perhaps the
confinements of the psycho scene they criss-crossed ‘cos on the evidence of this
fleshed-out to full-lengther they could cut it, and verily cut it like ‘it’ was
some refrigerated slab of butter they sliced through as though it was mustard.
Containing tracks from the two EP’s they released before their two actual albums
Sleaze Attack At The Edge City Drive In and Drive Drive Drive,
along with compilation cuts and a slew of unissued bonus tracks picked up from
where they buried them by the roadside as they raced outta town at the tip of a
pitchfork, this is a relative obscurity worth a scratch n sniff.
Stu Gibson
The Demonics Hot Rod Pussy
Alien Snatch
This ten year best of from these
California surf-speed n’ bird
freaks covering 1993-2003 is one pure roller-breakin’ dead mans curveball that
could rock-away any beach and heartbreak beat you put before it. On a
seabed-swirling sugar-rush of Ramones, Dead Milkmen and
Dwarves, with whom they share a fondness for nudity and masks, alongside a
healthy swirling spray of similarly colossal title fetish like The Cramps
– see revealed in all their greatness and glory hole holly - Drag Race In The
Cemetery, Jesus Chrysler Super Stock, Demon Garage, Fuel
Injected Suicide Machine and She Devils On Wheels mixing morbid
comedy (‘When you’re dead / With an axe in your head’) suffused with such
sad-eyed sunset remembrances resounding like early Barracudas that a
grown stoned slob could sob, like a sobaway bitch.
Stu Gibson
The Fabulous Rachel Moss
Album An Easy
Action Collection
Easy Action
More than just a showcase and a primer for upcoming
releases this little cutie not only takes yer hat but scratches your back and
puts a bag in your hand, leading you underneath the counter to a treasure trove
that penetrates the underworld of rock’s past and slides you into some future
now with Teasing LuLu and new uk spaced out warpiers Tomorrow plus
solo soul-salvers Judie Collings and scabrous old essential dispensers of
ragged sagacity like ex-Damned Lord Brian James and his hallowed
scalpelling Telecaster alongside Iggy, Stooges, Kusworth,
Lou Reed, Steve Marriott, T-Rex, Sylvain, showing
these priceless wares with a love and passion of the performers they retch up.
Gobbling old labels voraciously like a benevolent beast along the lines of
Cherry Red, and Charly they already have Stooges, T-Rex, MC5
and Sonics Rendezvous boxes notched on their bedsteads and upcoming Lords
and Nikki Sudden ones plus issuing Kusworth solo, it’s waving a big
fucking polka dot scarf at you so step into the breeze, count your change and
indulge that yet to be pleased.
Stu Gibson
Sonics Rendezvous Band Live, Masonic Auditorium
Alive
The fabled band featuring Stooges drummer Scott Asheton
and led by MC5er Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith – who only ever
released one single, the voluptuous space trucking car-park grind of City
Slang - are caught here on the same day the Pistols famously put the
knee in their punk spectacle at that Winterland gig. It’s not documented and
what’s the point for you can be pretty sure that not many in this
Detroit venue left feeling
cheated. This little seven song disc slips out of the self-titled Easy Action
box-set and is a meeting of Stooge-death-strut fuckery with Smith’s
classic wopbamboom song writing that blazes through
Back In The USA cuts like the ever
restless Shakin’ Street but stretched into monster-truck chewing mashes
reaching out and summoning Sun Ra into the stratospheres. Modestly massive.
Stu Gibson
The Lords Of
Altamont
Presents “The
Altamont Sin”
Easy Action
With a title surely winning favours from the grand old dame
of punnery if ever there was one, ‘tis like they were sat around all this time
scratching like meth-fiends mired in a nettle bush in desperation to use it as
their third album title. If they were then they also scraped up a furious
bush-rustler of a record amidst the earth’s herpes and halitosis, hewn from
garage rock’s cavernous n’ much itched alleycat scratch, one not so virulent
since Zen Guerilla flew too close to the sun, and Thee Hypntoics
were, well, a bit too daintily English. No bunch of abscess-sucking obsessives
with barren bandoleros in rock recess these miscreants, but high plains drifters
juiced up on bulbous-jousting ju-ju n’ kicking karmic ass, laughing like hyenas
in every hellhound’s hollow-eyed hang-dog stare, grinding their snouts into new
street currency to scare your family and most fucked-up foes with. Who needs
bullets? All you need is love? Naah, San Fran or not, all you need is fug and
this plug-ugly torrent of swamp-grime and wheels-spinning gas n’ grease guzzler.
Bad-trip bards, Johnny Too Bad’s, the demon brothers that woulda been cast by
Russ Meyer had be been bulging-eyed fer big balls not big breastage, all in
black biker garb wielding garage grind garrottes, screaming whore harmonicas and
blues-based ballerina lurches with the shotgun blast vocals and
chainsaw-cracking guitars of Johnny Stiggs DeVilla and Shawn Sonic
Medina carving fatalistic scriptures of disaffection onto sarcophagi that
should hold up every toilet venue and crease the walls of every party you ever
thought you went to. They’re exactly the sorta band your mother warned you
about, that you got into rock’n’roll, black leather n’ slack morals for,
scowling out scabrous riffs that make speed outta the detritus of the cough
syrups and linctuses that snot-nosed snivelling wretch-rockers sooth their shit-snivelling
noses with while tagging along to parties, asking them to buy booze. Pipeline
is surfed on Stygian screams on opener Intro (No Love Lost), lassoing
Link Wray licks to the backseat, slyly slinking lines outta old sleeves
along their leery way, these fuckers slab it to your sorry sides with a blasé
way with all that is let loose and brutalized. It could be bottled more crudely
but they take The Stooges’ ‘Little Doll’ and ‘1969’ into Little Hell,
The Lords of the New Church’s A Gun Called Justice and honorary
lord Roky Erickson’s Don’t Slander Me for dances that make Iggy
appear static with stage-fright. Crank-compadres Going No Where Fast and
Driving Too Fast along with the skirt-tearing title-track and Faded
Black shudder-fuck any notions that their nonchalance may be anything other
than acceptance (‘Haven’t got a chance and I like it’) but artifice. Acceptance
like Murder City Devils’ ‘Some people are born…but some people are born
to Rock’n’Roll’ or Angel City Outcasts’ no terms discussed Made
For This, some records may even atone for The Cult’s previous sins,
some films, such as the speed-riddled ‘Vanishing Point’ should be remade with
this biker-fuck rubber-burner as the soundtrack.
Stu Gibson
Motorhead
Motorizer
SPV
It’s 2008 brother, which means it’s not 2007 anymore and
also means there’s a new Motorhead studio record.
Since “Overnight Sensation” in 1996, Lemmy, Phil Campbell
and Mikkey Dee have been a recording machine, putting out now seven studio
albums with what has become the longest running Motorhead lineup in the band’s
30 some year history.
While every album since then can certainly be categorized
as Motorhead – let’s face it, they all sort of sound exactly the same – they’ve
been all been solid, but to varying degrees.
“Motorizer” surpasses them all and quite a few of the
band’s earlier r ecords, too. Opening track “Runaround Man” is the best
Motorhead song in a decade. With train-like tenacity, Lemmy pounds out more
lyrics per square second he ever has. Motorhead once said if they moved in next
to you, your lawn would die. Well, listen to “Runaround Man,” and your brain
just might because it’s that damn catchy.
“One Short Life” and “Back on the Chain” groove with
Sabbath-like swagger. “Buried Alive” is pure the pure rapid-fire Mikkey Dee
we’ve come to know.
Every Motorhead album has at least one tune that sounds
almost exactly like “Ace of Spades.” “Rock On” fills the quota on “Motorizer.”
“English Rose” is another pure rocker ala “Born to Raise
Hell.”
Motorhead is the safest bet in the CD aisle perhaps of all
time. But Motorhead fans undecided on whether to shell out the cash for yet
another studio album, don’t fret. “Motorizer” is another Motorhead album, but
it’s more than that. It’s the best album done by the current lineup, and
probably falls into the band’s top three of all time.
B.J. Lisko
Danko Jones
Never Too Loud Aquarius
Why
Canada’s Danko Jones isn’t
bigger than they are remains a mystery. They rock harder than most, and even
though their material is sopping with some obvious influences, they really do
make it into a sound all their own.
“Never Too Loud” was put out earlier this year and
showcases some of the band’s most diverse material to date.
“Code of the Road,” “Still in High School,” “King of
Magazines” and “Let’s Get Undressed” are the Danko we’ve all come to know –
personal AC/DC/Kisslike anthems beat into your brain like a jackhammer.
But Danko experiments a tad on songs like “City Streets”
and “Ravenous” which toss a pop feel into the mix. It ultimately works.
“Take Me Home” is an acoustic guitar rocker dedicated to
the most important thing of all – Danko’s record collection. It’s an oddball at
first, but really it’s not all that off the beaten path. “Forest
for the Trees” noodles a little bit, but the very next track is back to classic
Danko with “Your Tears My Smile.”
The album closes with the title track, which at first I
though was a cover of Bon Jovi’s “Bad Medicine.” I swear the two songs start
exactly the same. Regardless, it’s another classic Danko sing-a-long, and a
sure-fire tune in the live set.
B.J. Lisko
Turbonegra L’ass Cobra
Wolverine
Oh me oh my oh what a concept! What a title…! What a
payload to get waylaid by!!
What can be said…’cept if you like Turbonegro you’re
pretty much guaranteed a good ride from these frisky Frisco ladies, especially
if you grind on the nutty Norsemen’s best, most discernibly bulbous offerings
from their tender, well-talced loins like Good Head, Age Of Pamparius
(yuss, the pizza one…), Don’t Say Motherfucker, Rendezvous With Anus,
Prince Of The Rodeo, Erection and Denim Demon. So it ain’t
as good as the original deal and they stay true to the recipe but all usual
rules of cover versions can be trashed and slapped with this hot-stoking, um,
masterstroke. Everything rattles n’ rolls like their compadres And really,
anyone who fails to connect the excitement at shouting about having
‘Muthafucking pizza tonight…’ in front of a huge bank of gatling gun
amplification should, well, be shot like Harry Dean Stanton in
Dillinger, the old ranch dude at the end of Young Guns or the Weller
guy that becomes Robocop. Open up and say ‘Grrrraaaa…’ and tell these
good nurses about the headaches in your pants for what is far ahead of being the
nineteenth most powerful concept in rock since that Girlschool /
Motorhead liaison.
Stu Gibson
Western Promise Running With The Saints – The Best Of…
Cherry Red
1985. Midway through Thatcher’s long, tight, hard reign
cloud, cold war cocoon, miners and dockers strikes, the Troubles, inner city
riots, industrial decline, or dismantling, came this scarred and sharp-tongued
troupe of Irish-descent Scousers condensing the barbed wire bombsite love and
passion of early Stiff Little Fingers into a driving post-punk call for
response, clanking clarion horns with The Clash, Billy Bragg and
that initial pulsing effervescence that propelled early U2 to
now-unfortunate pinnacles. This collection of early singles and Peel Sessions is
a pointed, strident picket, despite the dismal forays into reggae funk that
blighted their era, but with the doleful, dolorous but soaring voice redolent of
Mark Burgess of The Chameleons or a young Julian Cope, even
Stuart Adamson from Big Country, they stand out as earnest,
incandescent and affecting. Very reminiscent of the eighties it may be and it
might be simple at this remove to cast all that politically and socially
conscious militancy as right-on Socialist Worker-selling student activism but if
any of the myriad yet myopic so-called indie bands put the tinny guitars,
throbbing bass and machine-line drums to the grist with such conviction and
surging, uplifting euphoria they’d probably have cardiacs from extreme exertion,
such is the level of complacency shrouding all too many aspects of Blair’s
Britain. Alas, amidst the same politico-social background, a mere few years
later another sense of commitment and community saw that bands like Western
Promise were trampled under flares and rousing tribal rave beats. This is one
historical tract that should be studied anew.
Stu Gibson
|
|
Hey, how about some fucking vinyl?
__________________________________________________
Man, this Ion USB turntable is a pain in the balls most of
the time. I didn’t used to have to hunt for the fucking manual every time
I wanted to play a record back in the good old days. Then again, we wore
parachute pants in the ‘good old days’, so I guess it’s a trade-off.
Anyway, here’s the glorious results from the pile of wax I just
scrutinized.
The Greatest Hits/ The
Tough Shits Split 7”
Desert Island Discs
They’re called the
Tough Shits, and it’s on brown vinyl. Haha! Anyways, the TS
tracks sound like
Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers. Slurry, scarf-wearing drug rock. Nice. The Greatest Hits
tracks on flip sound like some groovy, if slightly unholy, cross between
the Bay City Rollers and the New York Dolls. Tasty stuff. From what I
gather (and by ‘gather’, I mean I glanced at the cover), this was produced
by Briefs-man Steve E. Nix, and the whole thing might be the Briefs in
disguise, or their cousins, or their roommates. It’s got that vibe. Good, erm, shit, man.
Black Radio/Ruling
Class Split 7”
Bootleg Booze
Split 7” that seems to be a semi-concept piece about, I
think, highway murder. Black Radio are Brit brawlers who play ferocious
speed-rock with gnarly metallic leads. It’s like that movie with the
flying guillotines, just non-stop panic and head-chopping. Fucking crazy.
Ruling Class are Swedes. They play muscle-car rock, fast n’ furious, but
with a dollop of melody, I’m assuming, to bait the chicks into their car.
Their death car!
Midlife Crisis Cranked Up Really High EP (7”)
Bootleg Booze
So hey, dig this:
Midlife Crisis is a supergroup comprised
of Dregen from the Backyard Babies, Robban from the Hellacopters, and a
coupla dudes from the Maggots and Maryslim. I didn’t realize that until I
read the hype-sheet; the cover just looks like a buncha rehab-bound
hard-luck types. So Midlife Crisis get together whenever-it-happens to
bash out some loose-limbed, raw-boned covers of their fave punk rock
songs, and there’s a quartet of them here, including, as you might have
guessed from the title, Cranked Up Really High by Slaughter and the
Dogs, Vital Hours by The Outsiders, and…some seriously obscure shit
from The Menace and FF Commando. Odds are, unless you are record collector
scum, three outta four of these will sound brand new to you, and the Dogs
track is suitably snarly so, you know, right the fuck on!
Palavas Surfers Zombie 7”
Be Fast
Very swank slab of deep-blue vinyl and a sleeve that folds
out like…I dunno, swinging doors. Musically, it’s pretty rocking French
surfabilly sung, fittingly enough, in their mother-tongue. Even the
bird-is-the-word bits are in French. So it’s educational in that respect.
Not exactly ground breaking or nothin’, but if you ever wished the
Ventures were more continental, than you’re in luck.
The Steaknives We Can’t Stand This World EP (7”)
The Lookies/Truckstop
Lovechild Split 7”
Zodiac Killer
Steaknives are Italian, which sorta surprised me, what with
the scary red blood splatter on the cover. Usually it’s American bands
pushing the openly-psychotic angle. Anyways, sweet pink vinyl and a
quartet of creepy-crawly garage-punk that grinds away at a slack-ass pace
but makes up for it’s lack of pep with some very tasty Thunders-esque
guitar licks. Lotsa talk about dogs. I think they’re into the Stooges.
Truckstop Lovechild, not surprisingly, play trucker punk.
Trucker punk with wailing, Gaye Bykers on Acid-y psycho-freakout guitar.
It’s a fearsome combo and although their track, the Nashville Pussy-ish
Thinkin’ Ain’t Drinkin’ is pretty standard stuff, something tells me
these fuckers are bound for…if not glory, than at least one fuck of an
album. Watch out for em. The Lookies sound like The Left, which probably
means nothing to 99% of you, but seriously, they do. Stooges-inspired
garage-punk looking for a fist-fight. Solid.
The Dead Ringers I Want Out 7”
Gimmie Danger Records
The skittish, rumbling bassline on
I Want Out alone
makes this single worth the purchase, but the rest of its pretty bitchin’
too. SF band fueled on snot and old glam records, doing a tuneful sort of
Dead Boys revamp with scorching, acid-punk guitars and vox that sound like
the dude just knifed his own mother. And liked it. Awesome.
Burndowns Self-titled 12” LP
Big Neck
Big thick chunk of pizza-sized black vinyl with a shiny
little credit card inside the sleeve good for one free digital download of
this here LP. Swell! As for the rock? Burndowns are Pittsburgh dudes,
sorta punk, a few metal riffs, mostly slop-house garage spew that reminds
me, vaguely, of the Meatmen without all the phony baloney bullshit. I
envision sofas with cigarette burns, cheap beer backwash, roommates who
are always late with the rent, a greasy, much-pawed collection of Swedish
Erotica on VHS. Standard loser-rock with a few dips into punk rock glory.
And that’s that.
Washington Dead Cats A Good Cat is a Dead Cat 12” LP
Be Fast
Straight outta Paris, the
Washington Dead Cats are ooky-kooky
psychobilly splattercats with semi-secret second lives as comic book
artists and Frenchy hip-hop stars, all kindsa crazy shit. They’ve been
around forever and a day as evidenced by this career-spanning LP that
collects tracks from 1986-1991 on the A-side, and 2001-2007 on the b-side.
What were they up to between ’91-’01, you ask? Dunno. Hip hop and comic
books, I guess. Anyway, they sound very much like the Euro version of
Dino Lee and the Kings of White Trash. Same predilection for mixing up
b-movie themes, rockabilly, surf, Vegas-y lounge, and sweaty rock n’ roll.
It’s infectiously fun stuff, Makes me wanna build my own Frankenstein
monster, or something.
Sleazegrinder
____________________________________________
More CDs...
Load Point Pull Down in Flames Self-released
A long time ago, Sleazegrinder sent Jeff and me a package
of stuff to review. Jeff finished all his reviews in, like, three days, and
here I am with one cd left, a whole calendar year later. Talk about
embarrassing...
Anyway, I should have given this one to Jeff, seeing as how
he is the metalhead and I am, well, not the metalhead. But how is a girl to
know that a cd with a cover done entirely in black with the band's name on
fire is going to be metal? (Exactly-I should have given this one to Jeff.)
So
Kansas City's
Load Point Pull are pretty heavy-duty, man. All black and on fire and shit.
Basslines that'll bust your windows, and that
I'm-too-tough-to-actually-sing-so-I'm-just-going-to-growl-at-you Rob Zombie
vocal style. Heavy as a ton of bricks, but melodic, too. I probably would
have danced to "Out Of Reach" at the goth bar I frequented a bunch of years
ago. So while you probably won't find this cd in heavy rotation at the
Holly-household, it is not without its hard rock industrial dance metal
charms. I think Jeff would probably really like it.
Holly
C.C. Voltage
A Touch Of Class...Just A Touch Yeah Right! Records
Pay attention now,
because this can get confusing: C.C. Voltage is both a man and a
band. (Kind of like Sleazegrinder being a really rad dude and a rock
and roll empire.) C.C. Voltage the man wears many hats, in addition to the
fine white panama he sports in the liner notes. He is a respected teacher of
German by day and a drunk punk 'n' roller by night, and he plays a
mean game of nudie spot-the-difference. C.C. Voltage the band, hailing from
Vancouver, Canada, with musicians pilfered from such lager-soaked legends as
The Spitfires and The Black Halos, is, unsurprisingly, pretty much like the
man: smart, unpretentious, earnest, and a hell of a lot of fun. This is
fantastic power-pop punk rock, from infectious opener "Think About It" to
the melodic oh-oh-oh chorus of "Remote Control" to the driven-tambourine
rock that fuels "Frankfurt." A Touch Of Class...Just A Touch" is perfect for
drunken summer evenings on the patio. Don't forget the umbrella in your
cocktail...
Holly
Disarm
By Any Means Necessary
Imprint
Though it can be claimed that South Yorkshire is an unusual
backalley for rock’n’roll jetboys n’ jeepsters to be born into, lest we
forget a certain Mr Z Mindwarp hails from someplace further on up the
road. Obviously, but not to their detriment, ingesting copious amounts of
Scandinavian ice-berg crunching polar-rolling rock, these four tirade
troubadours power-line their way through vicious vein-slicing sing-alongs
with the gruff-faced, gaunt stomached greed-lust of Gordon Gecko
indulging in mutual mutilation with Patrick Bateman. Snaking into
your synapses like yer preferred powder of choice piled up from expense
accounts they combine the brutal stomp of early Wildhearts but slash
the playful pop with a surly well-articulated, intelligent (at last!)
disdain and dark air shrouding what would be dancefloor beltclip slipping
riffs deserving of a head flushed down the toilet with the screamo hordes
sucking on
Like cross-ocean clones of Izzy and Dregen
dodging dealers and that endless draft into the drudgery of the dole or dour
jobs they manage here to present themselves as far more than small satellite
town kids on poppers n’ pills rawk. Having seen too many classic rock
pastiches (well, three but three…) this last year here’s a band at last to
take the reins from the all too over-rated Babies and show the current cess-pit
of so-lowly they’re-not-even-cringe-worthy-never-will-bes disintegrating the
ironic Motley Crue stance of too many tiresome scenesters with their
half-assed crimping with the flick of a cracked plectrum, riding some
resurgent glam sleaze coaster with strictly no roller on the back of The
Crue’s pitiful rehabilitation. Formulaic but fun, they’ve sheared off the
shackles of their roots for an international sound, making the title
somewhat ironic, it just remains to be seen if they can do the same
musically, but as it stands this fucks over with a shrug any recent
supposedly righteously-racked rock action the UK’s being feebly exporting in
recent years.
Stu Gibson
Hanoi Rocks The Nottingham Tapes
Cherry Red
Legendary live tapes reissued after two decades on the
bootleg shelves at record fairs may be ten a penny but for catching the
mighty, and mightily frazzled, Finns live in their pre-Razzle demise
prime, then you may not get much better than this. They may be of similar
ilk with platinum-tinged penchants for pin-eyed stares and similar silks,
but fear not the paltry releases that beleaguer the legacy (for want of a
better word) of Mr Johnny Thunders, like the typically tragic through
wasted opportunity Thunders, Kane and Nolan DVD. Essentially a
greatest hits set (with Lightning Bar Blues credited instead of
Mental Beat), which in reality, it can be safely but slurringly sluttily
said, is ‘all’ they were. That ‘all’ ain’t a light one either, lags n’
lushes, for beat my behind and bugger me rancid n’ wrinkly and film it in
the reflection of my PVC thigh if there’s much better on this waterblue
swirl than Boulevard Of Broken Dreams, Tragedy or Malibu
Beach (yeah yeah, ok, Oriental Beat’s conspicuous by its
fluorescent absence but testament to this celebratory shooting gallery of
galaxial glam-gems is that you’ll barely notice). So quit simpering n’
simply sit around with whatever toxins you call treats and wish you could
prance back and forth from a mic stand as well as Andy McCoy and
Sami Yaffa, as well as mangle the intro to Up Around The Bend so
well it’s a crimped, pancaked mush more like a spilt drink, then still
manage to turn it into a discernible song. Yuss, it surely takes strange
boys to slay such classics openly, brazenly and fucking amazingly.
Stu Gibson
Guana Batz Rough Edges & Electra Glide In Blue
Cherry Red
These two further batventures reissued for reappraising and
ravaging anew loiter in later night speakeasies than the first two more
fun-pub afternoon bitter and crisps sessions Held Down To Vinyl and
Loan Sharks. Though the sombre sleeve shots adorning
Rough Edges signified a downplaying of the earlier jolly boys
pissed on the promenade, bums out on the beach, barfing off Blackpool tower
outings, their style of St. Vitus on strychnine stomp remained a more pumped
up, powder-keg rockabilly, one whose fuse only got shorter on the latter
lathering of lip-quivering clatter. Bucking trends by not being
self-consciously psycho nor swung through the eighties parody-pop-schlop
blender as some nifty neos like Reckless and The Polecats,
their unique gurns and barrel-chested rampages through the bronco-buckling
bop streets appealed to the flat-topped fellowship of fuckwits as well as
the tightly ironed, more chart-bound slicks, Stuart Osborne’s
under-rated song-writing, never mind Gretsch-charming, was never subservient
to the sway to the thrashier romps and dark, dentist drill screeches gaining
ground as the eighties decayed into the nineties and the psycho scene
continued it’s mutant mambo.
Stu Gibson
Frantic Flintstones Rockin’ Out / Not Christmas
Cherry Red
Still sprightly old scumbilly goat n’ rancid throat-wrecked
lung-depleted mainstay Chuck Harvey here has a coupla rocketing
oldies from ‘88 stomped onto one CD. Just as drug-buddy Spark from
Demented Are Go lives up to his bands moniker with his scabrous tales of
healthy perversions and predilections, so the Flintstones furnish a
bedrock shakin’ bop infused with the calypsodic spirits of ska that will
bedevil the Wilma outta your Barney and make you stomp through the floor of
your car and run it on phet-faced foot-fucked pedal power with this
dry-tongue lashing of instrumentals (notably Chuck Blows A Fuse) and
leer-grinning bonzo bog-brush dog killer crap-sodding soc-hop soda-jerkers
like Rockin’ Bones and giant ewok-boppers What The Hell and
Hot Head Baby.
And don’t go thinking that half (actually over half) of
this depends on how much you wanna splash out for a Santabilly album. This
is called Not Christmas for a reason and so stands on its own feet
awaiting any little psycho miscreant and apprentice deviant to sit on it’s
knee with Bad Manners style ska (Frantic) and customary
dizzying disarray at it’s dirty finger-tips dipped in disposal that King
Kurt fans would gag on. So Little Town Of Bedrock is razed at
rock-smoking rates, She’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain is treated to
a sax-sucking mong-stomp through on Alone Again / Round Mountain and
scuzz-shuffles on Just Because (NOT a Christmas song but it does
mention Santa Claus, smart huh?) and Santa Claus Is Back In Town
(‘Santa Claus is coming…up your dirtbox tonight’) will be helping blow the
usual Christmas schmaltz up many a rockers’ sprouting smokestacks as the
nights draw in…what, Chuck, no In The Grotto????
Stu Gibson
Oli Brown
Open Road Ruf
Enjoying the patronage of, but not patronized by, blues
greats like John Mayall, Buddy Guy and Walter ‘Terminal’
Trout, this young slip of a string-bend’s not been practicing the
slightly-constipated-whilst-doing-the-cryptic-crossword-mid-chicken
dance-face since he was in nappies, as may be presumed. A relative newcomer,
plucking for slightly less than the lucky seven years, alas, you can
telegraph what this is going to be like. Sure he can play a bit of geetar
but it’s hard to imagine it exciting anyone other than your stereotype blues
fan in a waterproof and warm pint of mild. It may be in the same vein as
Stevie Ray n’ so on but twinkly fret-board skills and some vapid funk
from your rhythm boys aren’t solely what translate into the Texas flood,
thus this Open Road is
contradictorily as narrow as the confines the blues was performed to break
out of.
Stu Gibson
Pennywise
Reason To Believe
Epitaph
Ever a sucker for defiant stand and fight war cries, this
not exactly highly anticipated return from the Cali-punk legends starts out
on not such a wretched note as expected with (Intro) As Long As We Can.
The welcome is kinda short-lived, though. From the wimpering with warm milk
and cocoa under cartoon character bed clothes of One Reason and
Confusion (‘I can’t believe what I have found / The world’s been turned
upside down’ – there, there, dude, hang in maaan) this deserves a
short-shrift unless you’re unduly desperate to own more melodic poppy
speed-punk recorded in a studio far from the nearest dealer of nasal spray,
positively stuffed full of tritisms (You Get The Life You Choose,
Affliction which helpfully tells us we got to ‘fight – for what’s
right’, I’m sure you germs’ll agree we should all be thankful for that lil
gem, hell it’s gonna be my hahaha epitaph) or have been unfortunately
kidnapped by the most sadistic bastard ever and have to choose between this
and My Chemical Romance. It’s not quite that nauseating, it just slips past
in a resiliently un-scintillating slurry but I’d need castrating if I
recommended any of you co-sickos to cut this some slack. Definitely burn the
opener though, and maybe Faith And Hope. Oh yeah, for all its
anti-establishment blandishments, it’s released in
America on MySpace
Records ha ha ha, musta been some cash, nay filthy bloody fucking lucre in
there, verily meriting their name. Pricksticks.
Contradictorily Stu Gibson
Various Rockabilly
And Psychobilly Mayhem – The Western Star Promo Collection
Cherry Red
Beginning as a studio helmed by Alan Wilson, mainman
of psychobilly first-wavers The Sharks, Western Star has burgeoned
like a ‘billy bruisers well-coagulated, coal-slag quiff since 2004. This,
then, would verily be the round-up of promo clips. And an entertaining, if
not wholesomely so, trip it be too. Comprised of delightfully
zero-dollar budget clips of studio buffoonery (mainly from Frantic
Flintstones head honcho Chuck Harvey in Chuck And The
Crack-Pipes), live clips cut up by cars and malarkey in the park (the
outdoor japes and escapades under English country garden glades of The
Bad Detectives - possibly contenders for King Kurt’s slapstick
‘n’ tickle-billy crown - on Alligator Rosie, The Ugly Dog Skiffle
Combo, who’s songs manage to mangle some beauty amongst the mirthful
antics, and The Sharks hilariously awesome cover of I Still
Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, rivalling Madness in the
straight-faced stakes. Elsewhere Luna Vegas drool brilliantly, The
Valentine Villains provide perhaps the best promo (if not song)
alongside the triple-entry by current best-sellers Jack Rabbit Slim;
Henry And The Bleeders give a bad-trip, glue-fainting nightmare
glimpse into their psycho-Ted stomp, Lux a near scene-stealing,
ceiling-quaking stomp on Surfin’ Bird to rival The Cramps.
Though questionable how often you’ll return to these clips,
so long as you’re not expecting any high concept scenarios and / or, if any
of you once respectable reprobates remembers The Dirty Strangers’
Bathing Belles clip, well, dip in and go for a dive.
Stu Gibson
Teasing Lulu Black Summer
Easy Action
Teasing Lulu are a two toxic terror girls aiming to add
some glamour va-voom to the trite riot girl template, intending for the
noughtie-woman a la PJ Harvey but coming across like Elastica’s
Justine Frischmann was their New Deal advisor. Being suitably
under-produced by The Stranglers’ bassist JJ Burnel is a good
starting hand to flash then, which does give the nod to this being more than
just tantrums over lost tutus. You want the trite girl band comparisons
first, ah ok, then you may picture them as Alisha’s Attic being
exorcised by latter day Babes In Toyland, quirky verses looking up
the skirts of chart-friendly, indie dancefloor choking choruses on the
better moments, monuments to being fucked over like belting openers, the
topically titled The Ex-Factor and Waste Of Time, and
cretin-crunch anthem D.I.H. I mean, face it, nothing’s gonna be as
fearsome as Kat Bjelland in full heel-splitting, glass-piercing,
car-scorching woman-scorned super-sexy-psycho-crone-mode, but overall they
fail to inject some vital signs into their cauldron, leaving it all
tasting a bit too artificial and affected. The clunky parts clatter, the
kooky parts (Lady Luck adopts a move off B52’s Planet
Claire, the screech on Loser being neither cute nor scary)
licking not a trace of cracked nail polish off Kate Piersson’s
presumably delightful toes, neither creating any unexpected tensions and
gut-crunching caresses. Like any tease it has many a moment but it doesn’t
cut to the quick enough.
Stu Gibson
The Bone Machine La Vita Finisce La Stradia No
Billysbones
Rarely it seems in the self-decrepitising pit of
psychobilly / rampant rockabilly does much new come round the corner to
blindside you, no matter how a-quiver they may make your head n’ hair. This
masked set of miscreants are far from a vanity project for label and shop
boss who in this incarnation bearing the bronco-brunting moniker of Jack
Cortese. Their frantic fifties and bong-baiting, catapult-eyed boogie
reels you round a wall of death and remain psychobilly in as much as this is
pretty much what you’d expect The Meteors to sound like but rarely do
given all the ‘only pure psychobilly’ bullshit posturing and narrow-minded
prattling Fenech’s solo stuff belies. Sadistically souped-up,
exhaust-splintering rockin’ is the rout of the day so expect more traces of
You Can’t Catch Me (Forse Sei Gia Morto) and Rip It Up
riddled with skanky demon seed adding some vibrancy to the same old psycho
stew whiff.
Sounding wonderfully evocative in the Italian tongue –
though sometimes so unhinged it could be a Vietnamese street market (Sono
Morto seems to herald Cortese crowing that he’s ‘sold a wok…’!) – these
viscious vignettes could soundtrack and disembowel the cast-list of a
Lucio Fulci flick, from the Dion as deranged playboy of the
twisted world, driving a clutch-less Cadillac past crooked crosses and
coverless crotches, whistling I Was Born To Cry through a scaly
lip-scalped mouth, or the Little Richard trapped in a chicken coop
with a psychotic cock fighting the hundred years horn on Siamo La Banda
Che Suona Le Tue Ossa and Una Cassa Da Morto Foderata Di Rosso
swigs on your sister’s sway while swaggering into her closet and closest
secrets entirely in the manner of Walk This Way…is we missing
something (don’t start) or is gleefully wading through the stains smeared on
Aerosmith a particular hobby ‘mongst Italy’s luna-billy bopsters (see
self-crowing cockabillies The Legendary Kid Combo).
If you wanna cut to the chase of this frantic rampancy,
then yeah ya could say it’s kinda Cramps-sodden but the chase being
better than the catch, natch, get ye tha card and exchange yer currencies
and get some of The Bone Machine stamped on your ass like the grass
chomping cattle you be, for this is best recordings so far merely
bolstered not bettered by a monstrously surreal slur through Big River
as it carves their faces in the side of the Collosseum for a new
quintessential national monument.
Stu Gibson
The Lords Of The
New
Church
Rockers
Easy Action
Following the Lords
Prayer sets from a few years back, similarly authorized and assisted
by Brian James and the rest of the gang, and as a precursor to a six-CD
box-set out later this year (!!!!!!!), this set o’ alts saunters outta the
vaults partnered with an(other) ’82 live show, licks it’s cracked,
blood-smudged lips, stares you down into willing compliancy then kicks your
ass on your way to hell, calls in the night and stretchers you down into the
unhallowed and ghastly grimaces that leer through the cracks in the pantheon
of rock’s pasty-featured fuck-up’s with feline grace and damn horny
impertinence.
From a time when all your favourite rock stars were
narcissistic narc-heads on a shoestring, this lil ol’ supergroup of banditos
swooped, soared and sowed oats and swore oaths wilder and more sacrosanct
than the holiest psalter, swapping punk’s gob and malice for goblets,
ruffles, fetishes and whatever rough specials of the day coursed through
and chalices but never let the accelerator slip on conflict and the
compulsion to contradict whether in polemics or paeans to plastered trysts.
Arch, cynical, crass, calculating, candid, cryptic, cool
and just unconditionally sexier than any phet-faced, rat-eared, Sylvester
The Cat on sewer-smack had any right to be, Stivney and his
sallow-eyed deviants stride on sheets of black midnight humour with sultry
demeanour, shallow cravings and gargantuan grotesqueries from the
powder-chilling drill of Lil Boys Play With Dolls, the
grandeur of I Never Believed, the so-stoned swagger of Black Girl
White Girl whicha woulda 86’d The Stones offa their infamous ’72
tour along with the vaudeville vamp of Fresh Flesh. The live
slip of a set is as sweetly, seedy and shambolic as the much-slaked legends
say, yet when they crystallize as on the citadel sway of Russian Roulette
and cataclysmic Holy War it’s evident even on the scratchiest live
sweat-shaking communion that no-one has ever really followed their chain of
command in exploits of disobedience and dissolution.
Religion all night long, Lords that should never be laid,
nor allowed to rest…Like a perverse Shangri-la, I cried. I danced around in
my frock coats. Hear it & fucking weep… keep telling secrets…this record’s
GOTTA sell...RIP
Stu Gibson
The More I See The Unholy Feast
Transcend Media
Formed by ex-Prodigy and English Dogs
guitar-eye-gouger Gizz Butt in 2002 (and featuring Sacrilege’s
drummer, if anyone’s been wondering unduly), TMIS eschew most possibly
expected traces from those bands, ‘cept for retaining the high maintenance
tumult of their assault-savvy approaches. This second album again launches
an articulate ultra-tech metal crusade on several fronts akin to early
Maiden’s punk-puke-phoria re-moulded for The Matrix millennium,
confident discourses like a commando squad at the peak of their calibre
coupled with the intelligence of the scientists who concocted the clinical
stimulants on which the cavalry charge through the gargantuan waves of
guitar-grit.
Not unlikely to have a place chartered on Ride The
Lightning or Master Of Puppets in business class, Metallica
being a band directly influenced by the Dogs way back when Lars still
played tennis and Gizz was a teen. With this banquet of viscerally
mellifluous but muscle-bound classic thrash, may the circle be unbroken
indeed. Another strike against would be usurpers of late last century for
practitioners of metal malevolence everywhere.
Stu Gibson
The Stupids
Violent Nun / Peruvian
Vacation / Retard Picnic / Complete BBC Peel Sessions
Boss Tuneage
Instigators, possibly, of the UK hardcore skatepunk scene,
forming after doing the eighties version of free jumping down the stairs at
their local multi-storey car-park in Milton Keynes then listening to
Black Flag and The Replacements Stink a lot while sniffing
glue and each others shoes and munching mushrooms, not even hallucinogenic
ones, just bad, old, manky mushrooms (perhaps, anyway, I lost the cheat
sheets and the internet’s down at time of writing), mixed with mucus to make
‘em stretch further. Existing for just a few short years sometime round the
mid-late 80’s, this long abandoned wealth of recorded output is now reissued
(in deluxe trend-adhering digipack no less!) with a wonderfully stupid
amount of bonus material, demos, lives and stuff as Coolest Retards
and Frankfurter, which only shows how short they were in their
original form, more like Dead Kennedy’s In God We Trust E.P.
Silly, nonsensical and gloriously, joyously absurd. Largely interchangeable
but having three of the best album titles in the cosmos ever should tempt
some taste buds and loose some ears on this slew of open season butthole
surfer-ama well worth congratulating flatulatingly.
Stu Gibson
I Hate Kate Embrace The Curse DR2
Demolition
An earnest entreat in both name and title set to the sort
of simpering indie angst that these days passes for unslakable thirsts for
new terrains. Fresh off the conveyor belt from Calanywhere are this perky
indie-pop trio, with bleeps and whirls masking the bleats and yerlps. The
Killers with more guitars and a writer who obviously spends copious
amounts of time masturbating vigorously to Muse and old Brit-pop lags
like The Longpigs while mourning the demise and lack of critical and
commercial acclaim ceded to The Bravery. If that makes your ring
twitch propelling you future-wards with the lavish abandonment of the until
recently chronically constipated, then tuck in and feast, fuckers. It’s said
success is limbering up in the wings. As Mudhoney sang ‘You Got It…Keep It
Outta My Face.’
Stu Gibson
J.P. McDermott And
Western Bop
Last Fool Here
Shower Tone
In the claustrophobically cloistered worlds of rockabilly
and vintage-togged rock’n’roll, stepping out with nary a misplaced hair but
a well-vented set of toe-trouncing woes of this tank-track crushing calibre
is a feat well worth festering.
Replete with the heartache chasin’ twists of classic honky-tonkers
far more than any mere western-shirted retread of the type that takes
attention to authentic detail over attrition of art and soul, it’s like this
timeless record’s five-year gestation period was spent in a saloon opening
the sluice-gates and inhaling sorrows on the wind whilst evading deliverance
from the Elvis evil lycanthropic bop.
Lurking starch-collared and square-shouldered, the slew of
self-compositions snuck in stand as equals amidst the plentiful covers. The
vicious Gene Vincent lip-curls masking breathless splutter-lungs on
My Damn Baby and Coulda Shoulda Woulda (‘I woulda been
married if I hadn’t’ve been true…’) could cause consumption among
staples like the late-dawn Sun-session stomp through Johnny Cash’s
Cry Cry Cry. Proffering sly grins and shrugs to ghostly laments Not
Enough Of You and the title tune, they give a haunting glimpse of what
one Buddy Holly may have bequeathed to the beat had he not been dealt
out by fate. Last fool, maybe - nobody’s, definitely.
Stu Gibson
Last Train Home Last Good Kiss
Corazong
Ten years down the tracks of rain-swept, furrow-browed
lonesome city blues, it’s perhaps unsurprising, given his previous career
carving up Washington’s nightlife as a critic, that the head of the
homestead, Eric Brace, can delineate slices of heartbreak like a noir
film detective. This slickly cinematic, reflective journey quickly leaves
the raucous rancour of the opening title track for confinement on solitary
streets, rail carriages and coffee shop sofas, but for all the impressively
daubed auras of slightly stilted grandeur and late-night eloquence on
lingering love, this never really connects. Content in a self-contained
Crowded House, making even the allusive intricacies of Can’t Come Undone
and May almost distastefully bland, initial suggestions of amorous
woe regaled over rollicking rhythms and shuffling asides of barely concealed
condescension - however polite and debonair – end up meandering in dinner
party music, sipping red wine from correctly shaped – and held – glasses.
The smooth melancholy of Flood peers into similar still waters as the
Cowboy Junkies but overall the polished, urbane settings blur into
the soporific spectre of pop-chart, smock-clinging chirpers perched atop bar
stools with but a drink of bottled water, showing a case of subtlety
signalling a change to the timetable.
Stu Gibson
Regurgitator Love And Paranoia
Valve
Y’know when you identify with an anti-hero, like Patrick
Bateman in American Psycho and you sit around n’ discuss how you
could do similar with greater pleasure, it usually happens after walking
round Camden or Manchester, actually, thinking about it does the job really.
This is one of those moments but set to music and makes you want to hunt
down that Flowers guy from The Killers and construct a case
that the cast of CGI or that Pathology film would never be
able to get a bead on. Milking the sour tit of electro toss, wanking the
last dregs of woe from the mass emo irritant, inserting little slivers of
retro classics from Amadeus to Rasputin, Cool For Cats…Pulp
without any prescience, hell, even the sodding nauseating New Order
are tossed in there as well, hell, it’s like they’ve gone to the cash-point
to withdraw some supposed ‘cool’ to get on a teen-flick soundtrack. I bag
the killer role.
Stu Gibson
Sebastian Bach Angel Down
Demolition
Ever regaling any world that would listen with his true
metal credentials, Mr Bach seems to have spent eighteen plus years trying to
atone for hand-wringing ballad sans balls I’ll Remember You and
helped up the ladder by hanging out with Bon Jovi. On the back
of rehab, reality TV troubles and so on is this an album of bitter
bite-backs and kitten claws at dawn? Nope, not really, unless you see
something in Our Love Is A Lie, Stabbin’ Daggers, Negative
Light, Take You Down With Me and so on. So the guy always
had a screw loose beyond vacuous self-obsession but he sure can shriek and
that very, however scant, fact drags late eighties riffs from the sunset in
a 4x4 loaned off Ted Nugent onto heavier street corners. He should be
put under Alice’s guillotine with a blade fashioned by the yakuza for
American Metalhead though the ironic post-metal brigade will die for
it, for all the metal-talk Bach has a well-conditioned commercial head of
hair as gets all Maiden with legs akimbo on You Don’t Understand,
and squashed into the middle and end are execrable REO Speedwagon for
the noughties (Live And Die and the freakishly Pete Cetera
X-Factor contender on Falling Into You) that should be trampled with
undue haste, lest they appears on a Kate Winslut soundtrack like some
sub-Aerosmith schlop-out. Besides the selling point for his
UK crew of an extra DVD, there is more to this album than
the main selling point that three tracks feature his compadre and patron
that is one WAxl Rose (on the elegantly ridiculous (Love Is) A
Bitchslap) on backing squawk and grimace.
Stu Gibson
|