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CD REVIEWS November, 2006.
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Glenn
Danzig
-Sleaze
Mick
Harvey
Spanning seven projects ‘tis a mark of the man that the whole flows, only veering slightly on the Morricone-dusted pieces from ‘Go For Gold’, where ‘The Farewell Song’ features Cave on chapel-collapsing vocal incantations. The desolate wonder and barren expanses of his Australian homeland are refracted through aeons, projecting ghostly panoplies that possess the collective unconscious. Austere in their minimalism, unsettling in their very tranquillity and gradual groundswell of foreboding such gentle gestures to great lakes of regret like ‘Homecoming’, ‘By The River’, ‘Two Guitars’ and ‘End Titles’ all connect with a warmth hard to filter from single-note synth, wind and strings with peripatetic percussion. Like a fast-forward slide-show seared onto your retina, images tumbledown and ideas tangle in your mind ensuring each listen is a launchpad for a largesse of luminous scenes from trails ancient but still trodden. The sense of bleak beauty in a time before land pulsates palpably…chemical reactions undergoing violent courtships…molecules merging into a molten miasma…semblances of stark romance in wilted Victorian landscapes as redolent as the fading fragrance of a longed-for love on your scarf. Ambiently ploughing fertile furrows far from aimless, senses are stirred and seeds of would-be wisdom from somewhere within planted letting your mind run riot around pregnant pauses, expectant silences and long overdue realizations.
-Stu
Gibson
Shit
Like A Champion 3
The
Heart Attacks
Drilled
on dead-end delinquency and deadened dreams degraded into a violent, vibrant
degeneracy that no detergent or law enforcement can contain ‘You Oughtta Know By
Now’ shovels adrenalin into a near-death nightmare, lessons learnt then ditched
like an addicts treasure thrown down the sink during an intervention, ‘Summer Of
Hate’ should be a salutary sing-a-long, not least as due to vocalist Chase Noles’
excitable slurring drawl makes it sound like he’s singing ‘Salma Hayek’. The
title track falters and stalls somewhat in the stable of its bar-room troubadour
ambition, more Sunset Strip suckin’ than Southern delta drama, suggesting, in
comparison to ‘Widowmaking’ or ‘Eyes’, that they stick to their street-schooled
low-slung slut status. Turning tables though, in the finest tradition of those
that live to cross lines and are saddled up to ride any side of the great
divide, heartbreak wine and strife-sore ode to love’s Shangri-la fantasy
‘Tearstained Letters’, featuring a possible career high from Joan Jett, is
tantamount to a testimonial for the year. |
Urinal
Mints
-Sleaze
Goodfinger
-Sleaze
Lonesome
Spurs “Jack and Coke, Jack and Coke,Even better with a Marlboro smoke…” – ‘Jack and Coke’
Crowning
Glory
-Sleaze
Over the
Edge Local
dudes (says Boston
right on the cover, which is SUCH a Boston thing to do) playing high-octane,
high-speed greaser punk with a hard, street-rock edge. Unlike a lot of the
cowboy hat bands that pass by my desk, Over the Edge possess actual muscle in
their sound, a palpable, throbbing power that grabs you by the ears and knocks
you right into the wall. The songs range from tough, hook-heavy greaseabilly
tunes like “The Kids” and “I’m Not a Monkey” to shout-along, rabble-rousing punk
like the excitable “One Nation Under Surveillance” and “Teenage Riot”. There’s
shades of everything from the Clash, Social Distortion, the Supersuckers to
Nashville Pussy and the Ramones in here, so chances are, if you have a bitchin’
belt buckle, you’re gonna dig these cats. They sound like they know how to fight
too, which is a good trait in a rock n’roll band. Too many pussies in rock these
days. See now,
if Fonzig wants to be scary, he ought to take some tips from these guys. From
the creepy Lovecaftian cover to the gory battering ram chaos inside, these
fuckers are nothing you want to find on your doorstep. The sound is an incessant
thumping and panicky howls, like an accidentally buried vampire desperately
trying to claw his way to the surface. Occasionally, a beastly doom-metal riff
escapes the fracas and lumbers along on unsteady legs, but is quickly washed
over by the endless tidal waves of black mud. I’m not sure what any of it means,
but I remember being in the emergency room once next to a guy with two of his
fingers in a plastic bag, and his semi-hallucinatory moaning and wailing sounded
a lot like this. So maybe it’s about drunk carpentry.
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Teenage Graffiti
You, you’ll be see right
through their lipstick libertine schtick and their ill-advised attempts at
seriousness (a cornball pass at Kinks-style pop on “Adalae”), but unlike the
gag-inducing earnestness of Good Charlotte or the like-heavy-man doom obsession
of My Chemical Romance, the Pink Spiders are a teen-friendly pop-punk band built
entirely around acting like a complete dope and making as much noise as possible
(though producers Rick Ocasek and Jerry Harrison make sure that said noise is as
spotlessly clean as the porcelain on a new toilet). That should keep you from
wanting to put your fist through your dashboard the next time you’ve gotta
schlep the little crumbsuckers to the all-ages show, and for that alone, be
grateful to these nice, harmless young men. Street
Dogs
-Stu Gibson
The Head
Cat Comprising Lemmy, Stray Cat Slim Jim Phantom and rockabilly fret wrangler Danny B. Harvey this collection of old Rock’n’Rollers is like a cut-price campfire Million Dollar Quartet with its informal, knockabout air of a backstage jam. In fact they could have come ‘fresh’ from a busking session on Sunset Boulevard and recorded it right at the table pictured on the front cover. Despite showing up, yuss warts ‘n’ all, the obvious defects in the Lemster’s voice (i.e. that when not straining at the leash it’s just a weak, arthritic wheeze – ‘Well…All Right’ and ‘Trying To Get To You’ are prime-rib examples of the difference) the lack of projection and almost disembodied spoken word nature it takes on at times befits the bleary eyed nature of such tattered heart rags as ‘Peggy Sue Got Married’ and ‘Fool’s Paradise’. It works especially effectively when multi-tracked to a hallucinatory hungover heartache haze on ‘Learning The Game’ though it’s when they really rip it up as on ‘Lawdy Miss Clawdy’ and the double-shot brace at last orders of a stomping ‘Big River’ and ‘Matchbox’ that, with Harvey’s helium-fingered flights of fancy, they could hotwire Harleys and carve tunnels through the Hollywood hills. Essentially a modest curio it’s still a more than enjoyable shake, rattle and roll through timeless tracks of trysts, talking with fists and raising drinks to chances missed by cats old enough to know that there’s no knowing better than this. -Sleaze |
-Sleaze Waco
Jesus
As to the band, well, Waco Jesus is a sleazy grindcore outfit. Musically it sounds like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre at 300 miles per hour, just a merciless onslaught of slashing guitars, machine-gun drums, and angry barking. Where WJ differ from other bands of their ilk is lyrically, they don’t bother with the clinical disease and dismemberment scenarios. Instead, they grunt about hitting people in the face with 40 ounce bottles of beer and punching women. Which may not be any better than the pustule apocalypse bullshit you usually get in grindcore bands, but at least it’s different. Oh, and there’s an all Asian lesbo triple 69 pic in the CD tray that you can masturbate to, in a pinch. So that’s a nice bonus. -Sleaze
Labor Party
-Sleaze
Lethal Fixx
*Any resemblance to similar Wildhearts’ chestnut “One Life, One Love, One Girl” I am assuming is completely coincidental. Let us not forget the Poison/Easy Action debacle, eh? -Sleaze
Guitar Fucker Guitar Fucker don’t like nobody. That’s why he fucks his guitars alone. He also fucks the bass, the drums, and whatever else is in the room. You too, if you don’t watch your back. The result is voodoobilly swamp n’ roll, one-man-band style, sometimes devolving into Beck-style garage-funk, and sometimes just tearing your nose off with sandpaper punk n’ stroll. It’s groovy, baby, and just as raw and primitive as you’d expect from a misanthropic freak from Trash City, Switzerland. Almost makes me wanna fuck a guitar myself. Or whatever else is in the room. -Sleaze
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-Sleaze
Shaun Kama and The Kings Of The Wild Frontier
“There’s a sinister alive in me/It’s the nature of the beast “The grass is always greener than the jealousy we own” – ‘Searching For Atlantis’
Emptying his pockets of threadbare vows, cautious commitments, the ashes of burnt bridges and parsimonious pledges to partisanship, Kama and his cast of miscreant majesties ditch the keepsakes of cursory romances and hitch a ride on a road less travelled than sensed…diabolical, debonair, dandified in finery while waving a ruffled cuff at frippery. A tangible civil ceremony between alt.country, Americana and Sun-spot storm flaring Rockabilly-Surf-Swing ministered by the Wicked Witch of the East from ‘Wild At Heart’ but with a fantastical, ethereal air this talismanic collection of candle-flickering Lynch-node music has roots so deeply embedded they cut through comparison like a shamans grasp on the psyche of a pretender on the path to purity and penury. The expansive and cinematic, no, panoramic…and palatial sound is doused in a mythic California, senses spring alive as an enervating sea air showers mystical wisps of possibility and promise shore-ward; shifting visions of a lonesome driver high on winding coastal roads, mowing the miles down on endless stretches of white lines that fold in upon the languid, yes, seductive, vocals – an intricately nuanced baritone, insouciant AND intense that once acquainted with is ever more enchanting - each lyric trailing from silver-screen spokes to shimmer in the rider’s wake back to whence they came in a realm of an eternal truth Kama, like others of his ilk – Mike Ness, Johnny Cash, Texan troubadour of trouble and torment Tommy Hale, Paul Westerberg, ex-Slobberbone genius Brent Best (‘This One Ends In A Murder’), even Willie Nelson (spiritually) is seeking. Like scientists or mathematicians of the soul each one creating resolute additions to the great songbook of lives less troubled by their making the arcane actual. Not for nothing does Kama cover Cash’s pinnacle ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down’, though the Cash comparison comes to the fore with Kama’s character itself, or the sheer strident strength of it at the centre of the swirling, eddying strains veering in spheres around the room. Like Cash, Kama is possessed of an itinerant questing need that fuels his songs and perhaps fools his senses into occasional lapses of satisfaction, for the storm-clad candy skyline depicted on the back cover of the CD is always close enough to catch on the whispered breath of a lover lying next to you in the distant motel lamplight (Tarantino and Clooney are next door in ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’) nurtured in a nihilistic quagmire like Robert Mitchum in ‘Night Of The Hunter’. A sulphurous sense of isolation singes throughout, irrespective of the batter ‘n’ thrum of ‘All By Myself’, less a man-with-no-name than an elegantly disinterested Josey Wales using Morricone’s soundtrack as wolf-whistles to the girls. Wed this to a redemptive rapture flowing between the pews, priests and penitents of the songs and there is here a gospel of great consequence to get ingrained, holy, and gruesomely ghostly with. The mournful though never moping ‘Your Bastard Son’ carries on the Cash theme, being a plaintive ballad not just from the heart of the man, but from the heart of the arid earth as though Kama really is drawing strength of purpose from deep down in the primeval squalor and, again like John R. Cash, approaches it with the dignity of a condemned man about to be put to death for crimes that are not his own, reflecting with gallows regret simple opportunities bypassed that come under the hefty, Victorian novel, sized chapter headed ‘mistakes’. Don’t be surprised if you see this on a future Mike Ness or Eddie Spaghetti album. Opener ‘Lost Lonely Road’ could be ‘The Ballad of Easy Rider’ for a forsaken everyman anti-hero who would have been moving in next door to the protagonist of ‘Racing In The Streets’ on Springsteen’s ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’ album, whose leap of faith upturned the faltering foundations of a world that fell on the feet of fickle fallacies. A beautiful, wondrous scroll through symbolic totems of salvation that heralds Hank Williams at his most lamentous when moved rather more by some measure of heavenly spirit not several measures too many of hard liquor spirit. Figments of mottled, macabre melodrama drained more from traditional Latin and Mexican musical veins than mere Psychobilly playschool preambles give a grand, gothic air of poise and preternatural power of the same gaunt grandeur and haunting grace that has been evident in traditional folk music from English rural farms, Spanish flamenco fiestas and onto The Carter Family and Blind Willie Johnson. By no means known to Old Nick is this a drab and desultory arch-horrorpunk-gone country cash-in. ‘Muerto y el Diablo’ has the grand majestic sweep of the sea at twilight, a surging blast of silt and silken spray that sucks you down willingly, gladly, into an eddying vortex of watery wilderness. ‘Frostbite Heart’ also has a Spanish / Mexican last frantic fandango at the Alamo, corpses crammed into ponchos like pimiento in olives; ‘Searching For Atlantis’ is a Hawaiian shirt ensconced chest, opening with the sound of gulls, inside which beats the weary pulse of a guy (who may or not be from Guadalcanal Diary, as that’s what it sounds eerily like) stuck on that lost lonely road to nowhere, where the exit signs lead you back around to the entrance, and is a kind of Groundhog Day of when you get your favourite guitar nicked and lose your good lady to a guy who has no interests but more money than you; ‘I’d Be Scared Too’ is a cold-shoulder of comfort clad in Leonard Cohen-esque allegories which only add a more sinisterly attracting quality to the stark light and white heat splendour. Putting a fittingly diabolical nail in the casket, ‘Dear Scarecrow’ grimaces to a grinding halt with Demented Are Go’s Sparky singing on the possibly autobiographical ‘Ghosts of the Twilight Zone’, the only dance in the psychobilly dungeon but one that nevertheless still slots into place like your legs in your favourite old leather pants. Besides the title also being used for an Adam and the Ants album the band are well-named, reflecting as they do an essence of a frontier, a wilderness whether of land or spirit, that’s uncharted, untameable and unlikely to be contained, if it’s inhabitable at all. In the midst of proceedings, like a priest of the opaque and opulently obscure is Mr Kama divining details dredged from delicate denials of lives past, revisiting pasts with the malicious glee of a mortician, holding himself up to the scrutiny of his sinister subconscious and extricating the last mortal words from the death-wheezes of wrong turns, no matter how gracefully stepped they where, ill-fated encounters and star-crossed statements stagnating in gutters of intent. Several states and mindscapes away they may be but it’s a timely coincidence that within months of each other the newly solo Kama and Ducky Boy Mark Lind release personal yet universal records from either seaboard, a reflection of big schemes stagnating on small streets, tattered hearts flailing at the beat of ragged dreams, and a pragmatic grappling with the poetry of “the straight and narrow, that’s where I long to be” (‘Lost Lonely Road’) handled by precious few alchemisters. An absolutely stunning record by a name I was oblivious of. Buy it and play it endlessly, intoxicate and regenerate. “Don’t know where the hell I’m going…” – ‘Lost Lonely Road’ -Stu Gibson
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Glenn
frightens the horses, if not the palefaces that adore him, with this second
foray into ghoulish mock-opera. Says here that this ‘un tells the creaky old
story of Lilith, the witch they named that lesbian folk festival after, but you
will mostly hear creaking doors and ghostly shrieks. It’s the same atmospherics
as the Halloween party records we (well, me at least) used to howl along to in
the 1970’s, with a little sub-Thirwell darkwave tossed in towards the end.
Pretty fun in a slasher soundtrack sorta way, but perhaps not as lofty a piece
of work as ol’ Glennzig would like. 
I’m not sure
what the story behind this series of comps are, although it appears to have
something to do with a dude named Ol’ Bob, who is apparently dead. Next time you
see Garth Plinko, ask him. As to what’s on it, it’s got some hot action rock
(Electric Frankenstein, Dwarves, Ironhead, Nerds), some classic punk (Boston’s
own drunken fools Darkbuster, MDC, Hotlips Messiah), a few of those gross nu-punk
bands that sound like an emo Journey (Corporate Circus, The Stunned), a band
that sounds like Flipper (Kinky Wizards), and, you know, some other shit. 83% of
it is pretty boss, which is a damn good ratio for a comp. I think it might be
too late to help out ol’ Bob, but I’d say this is a worthwhile purchase anyway.
The
Urinal Mints are a ‘porno punk’ band from Indiana. And that can’t be easy. The
cover of “Own Your Soul” is this weird ugly cartoon that kept me from listening
to it for months. Shame on me, I reckon, because there’s some searing punk n’
roll inside, heavily influenced by gonzo pornography, street corner drugs, and
the Dwarves. The guitar player (Lukkake) is a corker, switching effortlessly
from bludgeoning flash-metal to blazing acid-punk in the blink of a bloodshot
eye. So that’s pretty hot. There’s 27 songs on deck, every single one of them
about the band’s penises and where they want to put them, so don’t expect
anything deeper than “She’s Got a Dick” and “Fuck Me in the Ass”, and you’ll
have fun with this one. Dirty fun. Bring condoms. 
New York
cool fairly drips off this five song EP by Goodfinger, a psyche-tinged lounge n’
roll outfit consisting of an ex-Underneath What drummer, two chain-smoking
hipsters and a sultry front fox who sounds like some slinky French crooner from
the 60’s, only not as old and…not French. To be honest, their sound is fresh
enough that no easy comparisons come to mind, except maybe for the dark pop
melancholy of Manic Street Preachers and the breezy future-rock of Transvision
Vamp mixed with bright, brash 70’s AM radio gloss. It’s very sexy stuff, the
perfect soundtrack for intercontinental non-stop flights with coke snorting
supermodels on board and a Martini shaker in the briefcase. Closer “I Know I
Know You” is the closest thing they’ve got to a straight ahead rock song, the
rest float on a bed of fizzy bubbles, with “Radio Perfecto” reaching deepest
into the pleasure centers. Classy stuff. 
They cut
the sleeves off their shirts, and they sound like their balls are dipped in
Iron. 
If
you have younger siblings (or children), chances are you’re going to log more
than a few hours driving them to wherever kids go to hang out these days – the
mall? Methadone clinics? -- and invariably, they’re going to demand radio
dominance during the taxi service, so do yourself a favor and tuck a copy of
Teenage Graffiti, the Pink Spiders’ second CD, in your front seat. Little
Sister will appreciate the big, fat, bounce-around hooks on the admittedly
catchy “Modern Swinger” and “Soft Smoke,” and she’ll probably be totally wowed
by their casual flaunting of the Parental Advisory sticker, and by their
references to naked pictures on the internet and blow and general forbidden
behavior. And more than likely, she’ll probably think the Spiders themselves –
who are meticulously disheveled and sport Hollywood nightcrawler names like Bob
Ferrari and Matt Friction – are kinda cute in their Hot Topic New Wave wear.
Showing
that stripped down subterranean punk rock sprawling from the cracks in pavements
and sidewalks is actually more uncommon than it might normally seem. Waving
flagstones for the common cause is one thing, but combining such calls for
direct action with a valid heroism and earthy humanity place the Street Dogs
alongside Strummer and Guthrie in a gallery of protest and discontent that
extends back further to the lineage of literate traditions of the eloquent
emerald isles, from opener ‘Common People’ to bar-room ‘Sloop John B’ update
that signals closing time ‘Katie Bar The Door’. Perhaps it’s partly down to
Dropkick Murphy’s founding father Mike McColgan’s past as a fireman and Gulf War
veteran that issues are tackled head on and unflinchingly so, but the compassion
in songs like ‘Rights To Your Soul’ and ‘Fatty’ really win though over the more
overtly political polemics of ‘Decency Police’. The part-autobiographical sad
vacation of a soldiers fate on ‘Final Transmission’ stands square with the
towering anti-war totems of Steve Earle and could be adopted as a signature
anthem for the current climate of disaster, raising its plaintive poetry to a
‘Born In The USA’ style testimony to the unvalidated valour of the Vietnam war.
As the year started with fellow Bostonians Mark Lind and the Ducky Boys
statements of the disunion of day to day lives so it enters the close with
raised hackles and staunch haunches with this snarling masterpiece. 
Texan shitkicker punk with headbanging tendencies. Best indication of the
Von Ehrics’ aesthetic is the cheekily titled “Rock Track for the Kids” which
rides an absolutely blistering superchug riff and sounds like Eddie
Spaghetti fronting Velvet Revolver. Elsewhere, they get rootsy and downright
honky-tonkin’, as on the affecting “The Way It Is” and Beasts of Bourbon-y “Salado”.
None of it’s forced, however, and you get the feeling the VE’s really do
like having sand in their boots and the sun in their eyes. I mean, we all
wanna be cowboys, but these good ol’ boys actually sound like the real
thing. Whiskey swillers and hellraisers. Fans of the Rev Horton Heat, sudsy
American beer, and Daisy Duke take note. 
First off, I would like to point out that my first label comp, Cock N’ Roll,
had a similar booklet layout as this one, and I almost got arrested at the
US border for it. So bravo to Waco Jesus for the outlaw porn shit. Good luck
in Canada. 
Given the name and the lack of hair in this band, I expected the usual
blustery shout-core, but was pleasantly surprised to find that Labor Party
is actually a dirty, harmonica-laced rock n’ roll band in the vein of Radio
Birdman and the Leaving Trains. Far as I can tell, Slave Labor is a family
affair, with Frank Labor handling vox, guitar, and harmonica, and wife
Sharon on bass. Old school punk dude named Buck Ellis on drums. They’re from
Phoenix, but there’s plenty of Texan boogie in their sound, down there with
the bashing 60’s garage-a-go-go and the ramshackle 70’s punk. “I Bleed”, the
requisite rock n’ roll anthem, hit me the hardest, but you know, choose your
own poison. If ya dig true-blue, down n’ dirty, bloody-fingered rock, you’ll
wanna join this party.
Ambitious young roosters from London offer up five tracks worth of
lip-smacking sleaze, including storming glam-slam opener “One Love, One
Life”*, a seamless Crue/Hanoi pastiche in “Slave Train”, a charming,
chiming take on Phil Lynott’s “Dear Miss Lonelyhearts”, and a couple of
bristly Dogs D’Amour-esque booze-swillers. Sure, it’s the same ol’ leopard
skin rags with the same ol’ cigarette burns, but Lethal Fixx fit into it all
so snugly that they sound like they’ve been at it since 1983. Not bad for a
buncha scruffy street kids. Not bad at all. 
Stepping through the discarded detritus of a history lightly dappled with
heartache, honour and hard-earned truths from hymnals of half-lies, Shaun
Kama hits the solo artist sidewalk shrouded in shattered horizons - ennobled
by experience, wreaths of withered wisdom in his back jeans pocket, black
jacket worn like a battle flag, collars high, cap low, eyes alert but
observing nothing.