CD REVIEWS September, 2007.
(note: I'm too laz...er, busy to do all the record label links. Just google 'em.)
_____________________________________________________________________________________

The Dirty Pearls
Beauty Rocks
The Dirty Pearls

I’m thinking that The Dirty Pearls are the red, white, and blue version of Crystal Pistol in the sense that big ideas make real fucking sense when shot out of a cannon, and when you festoon your bravado all over the goddamn place like it was meant to be, the good citizens of Rock Nation are more likely to stand up and take notice, ya dig? And I’m not talking ‘bout slapping posters on lamp poles, my friends. No, I’m talking cock of the walk type stuff, I’m talking about slapping people with bona fide 70s swagger, and these sleazy, hip shakin’ New Yorkers (ex Sex Slaves and Drag Citizen) have stars in their eyes, sunshine in their hearts, and brass in their balls. Handclaps, la-la-la’s, and juicy hooks make the drinks go down smooth and the women look really fucking good. Everyone’s a sucker for good time rock n’ roll, right?

- Jeff Warren

Black Diamond Heavies
Every Damn Time
Alive

Gospel-blues-punk preacher-isers John Wesley Myers and Van Campbell baptise you in beatific raptures of Hammond and drums, literally stripping the sound down to its scantily-clad soul. Almost too perfectly Myers is the literal son of a (Baptist) preacher man, whereas Campbell descends from a Bourbon-distilling family. As it is, you can absolutely bloody tell too, such is the whiskey-swilling testifying herein. Voodoo shuffles its sinicious way through Fever In My Blood, swigging, swaggering and setting the VU meters swinging right through the red like a shamans trance-eyes for the entire ceremony till the closing corpse-raising Guess You Gone And Fucked It All Up broadsides you with it’s mutant Tina Turner chicken-dancing on a Motown mamba mantra. Funky cactus-caressed wagon-train blues like Leave It In The Road and Poor Brown Sugar and ‘Hip Shake’ update Might Be Right aren’t so much like Canned Heat as they heat yer can, violate viscera and turn your pupils to pulp direct from the pulpit. Best though are the wee wee hour sojourns through nocturnal damnation of All To Hell and Stitched In Sin, draped in ditch-dirt and paying the tab at the Devils Inn with small change from the confession box, while swabbing woulds with sandpaper.

- Stu Gibson 

Not Psycho Enough!? Vol.2
7"
Dull City Records

(Sometimes I wonder how I got this gig. I like to think I have pretty good taste in music, but there are definitely some gaps in my musical knowledge, a shortcoming that you will have to forgive. But I am learning, and learning is cool, right?)

So anyway, back in the day there was an Australian band called the Cosmic Psychos, who ended up being a pretty big influence on the whole grunge movement of the 90s. I had neither heard, nor heard of, them until a few minutes ago (this is where that whole forgiveness thing kicks in), but if this e.p. of covers is any indication, the Cosmic Psychos kicked some serious ass. The version of “Supervixen,” by Finland’s Lothar is like some crazy goth/punk/metal/dance song, all growls and cymbal clashes, and even though I couldn’t understand a word except for the title, it did make me want to slip into my pvc bustier and 5" platform boots and flail wildly around. Similarly, France’s Jerry Spider Gang rock the shit out of  “Can’t Come In,” inviting me to dance while exhorting me to fuck off and/or get fucked. (Will do.) “Crazy Woman,” covered here by another Finnish band, Spank My Jones, and “Rain On You,” by England’s The Dry Retch, are more straight-up rock than dance rock-the most fitting adjective I can come up with is “onslaught,” which is actually a noun. Listening to these two songs is kind of like overdosing on a drum/guitar/cymbal/vocal cocktail and then getting that adrenalin shot to the heart that makes you leap up and resume the flailing around you call dancing.      

Trust me, this record will be plenty psycho enough for ya.

- Holly

Not Psycho Enough!? Vol. 3
7'’
Dull City Records

I haven’t heard Volume One yet, but I’m pretty sure that each volume in this series gets successively more psycho, if that is possible. This time around, the Cosmic Psychos get covered by four fellow Australian bands. I can definitely see the influence on early Nirvana/Core-era STP in Hell Crab City’s version of “Pub”; this song has, like, 27 wicked guitar solos. And, wow, do the Meatbeaters play everything fast in their cover of “Back In Town”; I feel like I just ran a fucking marathon and I need a cigarette, and all I did was listen to it. Interstater rock out with their penises out in the raunchy and hilarious “David Lee Roth” (how can you not love a song with lyrics like, “I want long golden locks”/”I want a great big twenty inch cock”?), and Gazoonga Attack rip up “Come On Cunt”; again, “onslaught” makes a pretty apt description. This volume makes me want to play air guitar until my fingers bleed more than it makes me want to dance, but I think I’ll probably go out and buy some Cosmic Psychos records anyway. You probably should, too, and pick up these covers while you’re at it.  

And trust me, this record will be plenty psycho enough for ya. And then some.    

-Holly

John Doe
A Year In The Wilderness
Yeproc

X legend Doe’s latest installment along the expansive plains of literately agitated Americana carved in a heart with razorwire sees him carry on in a manner only comparable with that of Paul Westerberg, both coincidentally hitting the road alone around the same time at the turn of the nineties, though Doe retains a sensitive positivity to old Paul’s rancid sardonism. Where once he and Exene Cervenka straddled the borders of harmony and branded Americana on US Punk’s beaten behind, here Doe enlists the likes of Aimee Mann and the tremulous, aching keen of Kathleen Edwards to his searching, yearning and ever-restive sense of rainswept alienation. Bruised but un-bending, don’t come here looking for L.A. punk circa 1981 – other than Hotel Ghost and maybe Lean Out Yr Window - but for a spirited and strong step of reflective paeans to pain and passing through, or caressing those skeletons as he puts it in the aforelymentioned Hotel Ghost, that adorable laments The Golden State and A Little More Time – one almost tragicomic and bittersweet, the other stoically but softly heartbroken - make wholly worthwhile, not at a detriment to the rest of the record though.

- Stu Gibson

Jingo De Lunch
The Independent Years 1987-1989
Boss Tuneage

Four burly Berlinners with a States-bred spoke-shredding singer Jingo De Lunch cranked out an axle-mangling slop of road-hog raunch, gurgled holy gasoline from right under old Zode’s nose at times and rage right outta the clenched fists of Rose Tattoo, striding out ‘cross dusty dirt-tracks one minute while striking out hardcore style about social politics, and shoulda left a whole sorry shit-stream-down-a-four-day-drunkards-shorts of bands atrophying in their cacti-crushing wake. That they cover both Bad Brains and Thin Lizzy may aid in summing up their kinda antiquated but in a good way approach. Right back in the midst of hair-halos and as Seattle simmered this lot seemed to have been railing their rallying cries into an abyss. The curse of those kicking at doors that aren’t there yet. On here you’ll get road-block barging metallic biker-boogie with an almost horror-punk howl like No One Can reach You and Reaching, riff-fisting from Cursed Earth and Shot Down while the intro for Thirteen is an awesome example of video-tastic stick-twizzling. Possibly what The Nymphs shoulda sounded like.

Stu Gibson

1000 Hertz
Input The Output
In At The Deep End Records

Another acute pincer-punk hardcore hailstorm, fittingly and rather fantabulously from Fuckston, Fuckshire, UK (I reckon somewhere round the Midlands), uglier even than current UK emo-mashing merchants Gallows, this is a frantic signal of discontent to failing systems, redundant modernism and ‘fake smiles and soundbites’ that hauls eighties metallic masochism into a present it vaguely recognises but instinctively knows is the same old teeth-rotting cereal re-branded sugar-free, summed up succinctly in A Grave Fit, Made And Dug For A Nation. Structured like a somersaulting sky-diver who, upon landing, has to endure the old knife-knuckle dance then a bout of Russian roulette that would un-nerve De Niro’s character in ‘The Deer Hunter’ their off-kilter frequencies and passionate discharges reflect schisms political and personal while also simply fucking rockin’ with a resonance and channelled-adrenalin rage that should flay the Rod Stewart hair off the emo-screamo lot. Scream for me Fucksters!

- Stu Gibson

Darkwater
1920
Upnext Records

That Darkwater are a UK grab-bag of electro-rock-metal comprised of two sound guys and a fairly well appointed female frontage-person in the mould of Brody Dalle’s little sister makes Garbage comparisons simple and coincidental. There are similarities in the squizzy spirals of loops and sampladelica but moreso there is the peculiar MTV metal-lite-ica guitar set to tween-wowing stun more cotton-wool pads to clean zits than raw power that could accompany the all-too-perfect audience-baiting lead track, with it’s slightly fetishist overtones (‘Come on and hate me…’cos I’m starting to like it’ then swapped for ‘Show me what you’re made of…’) that is actually more like late eighties Alice Cooper than industro-apparatchik’s it’s veiled as. Such colours become truer on ballad of anthemic alienation Left Behind, which is highly unlikely in their case.

Stu Gibson

Rot Shit
The Worst Kids Ever
7"
Big Neck Records

Rot Shit is from Pittsburgh. (I actually took the time to find out where this shitty band is from, and I did it for you, dear reader,  because I know how you like to know where a band is from.) And that’s about all the time I am going to waste on this shit. If you can’t spend more than 30 seconds composing even one of the twelve(!) shitty songs on your shitty record (and I use the term “song” very, very loosely), I don’t see why I should spend any longer attempting to review it. This was by far the shittiest piece of shit I have ever had the displeasure of listening to. (But points for being aptly named.) 

- Holly

Savage City Outlaws
Revenge My Rock ‘n’ Roll
7"
Wrecked ‘Em Wreckords

I am a huge Portuguese wrestling fan. Okay, I’m not. But the metal-punk Savage City Outlaws sure are, and that’s really all that matters. Once you step inside the ring, they’ll come at you with everything they’ve got: “Tarzan Taborda” is a choke-slam of a song with some truly smokin’ guitar solos, followed up by the piledriver that is “Rock ‘n’ Roll Gambler. ” On the flipside, “Sabu” is like a flying clothesline to the face, while “Moustache Mullet Metal Outlaw” will drop-kick you to the floor and leave you writhing. There’s no denying that this band will kick your ass, but they also sort of sound like a bunch of slightly-overweight, long-haired, sweaty foreign dudes in cut-off denim, hunkered over their beers, growling belligerently at the tourists over the noise of the cockfight in the backroom. Watch out for flying chairs. 

- Holly

Peter Case
Let Us Now Praise Sleepy John
Yep Roc Records

Country-blues troubadour Case is one exemplary magnificent mark of a craftsman. Roll up and roll along to be regaled by stories from the street that even the protagonists don’t notice as they drift through Case’s nonchalantly astute observations. A musicologist as well as a master picker and storyteller putting him alongside Richard Thompson and Guy Clark, while harking back to gentle porch-dwellers like Mississippi John Hurt this never gets in the way, where often it would come across as a tawdry pastiche. Songs like Underneath The Stars, Million Dollar Bail sound like kindling dry leaves and wood splinters, Ain’t Gonna Worry No More is a gorgeous lone horse in a field hue of reminisce and with a keening voice atop these are sing-a-longs with a far from simple message - if you want a simple reference look to the Woody Guthrie brought to the modern day portraits of society akin to Steve Earle in acoustic mode. Similarly simply eloquent with evocative imagery make this quietly angry and rather superb record all the more compelling to boot.   

-Stu Gibson

Omar Kent Dykes and Jimmie Vaughan
On The Jimmy Reed Highway
Ruf Records

As tribute albums to old blues guys go you can’t get much more of a righteous treatment than at the hands of these two esteemed Texan longhorns. Nor can you knock the subject matter, no business-like Armani suited salutes to Robert Johnson as from old Mr Clapt-out here, or pub-band jamboree, but the slouching miscreant of grimy harmonica driven blues fuelled on (fire)water so muddy it looked like the tar in an octogenarian Gauloise chain-smokers lungs, Mr Jimmy Reed. Possessed with a unique shuffling style, switching from low-down sexy to spine-splicingly sinister at a slug of fortified wine, these songs leer at you from under their pulled-down hat-brim, begging you to make your move. And, you know what sinners? You can’t help make that move, so wired into primal impulses are these songs amongst the electric blues boom Reed helped motorvate along with old Muddy and T-Bone Walker. So what if they all sound the same, or variations thereof? Watch your soul smoke to Baby What You Want Me To Do / Bright Lights Big City and Big Boss Man and scowl along into your scotch.

Stu Gibson

999

Death In Soho

Overground Records

Second wave Punk stalwarts ye’ll all know, love or loathe from all those cheap-shit multi-CD compilations that contain some of the shittest recordings, if not the actual shittest, of the seventies punk racketeers around, amongst a few grandees (and in Thunders’ case grand dame), 999’s first album in a fair few years certainly deserves a hearing, if not an earful. Sure, it’s more considered and staid, too studio-conscious, if not in need of a bit more crazy-eyed, crack-lipped clatter of the gung-ho gob n’glue garbage dump drama of yore. It can’t be said that it’s like the return of a voice addressing the state of the nation a la TV Smith or Billy Childish, though an admirably straight-forward assessment of the pavement-side of the spilt kebab and puke of our streets is all over tunes like The System and Last Breath, while Stealing Beauty is a lovely little heartbreaker. A little prosaic, but not un-enjoyable in its sub-Vibrators classic punk’n’roll boogie, the main bogey up this nose is the weak production that doesn’t capture any energy or any real ire. A shame, as some songs like the ‘phet-faced jitterbug jerk of What Do You Know and drinking song Life Of Crime are minor classics with extra toppings that make it possible to forgive the terrible reggae aberration that is Deep Peace.

Stu Gibson

Hard Ons
Most People Are Nicer Than Us
Boss Tuneage

If it be correct that this most seminal of Aussie punk stunt-fucks are ‘Motorhead meets the Beach Boys’ then they’re the ones out there outside the shark nets gleefully wiping out and taunting the Great White’s with goofy grimaces, making the seabed rise up into a swirl with bungee-jump-rope-cutting chords before floating their guitars on the surface to frazzle the feeding frenzy mosh-sharks then pelting their faithful with bits of over-grown tuna to accompany their cheap speed and beer. Even the unacquainted will probably be aware that they vaguely fit into that bracket of gormless genius whence Butthole Surfers and Happy Flowers et al emerged filthy and spitting sideswiping pieces of corn in the early eighties. Hence tunes called Making Money From Goths Is Easy, Dance Parties = Dickhead Fest, Rat Face And Buffalo Ass (a tribute to Stivney Bators and GG Allin?) and You Sir, Can Fuck Off. Essential then. For about twenty minutes.

- Stu Gibson

Wolfpack Unleashed
Anthems Of Resistance
Napalm Records

Full debut from outstanding Austrian thrashers wields one mighty hammer-throb of magnificent METAL that combines passion and cleverness with a melodic clarity that adds to some seemingly random clarion call for heavy fucking music that isn’t neutered by posturing nu-metallers and emo’s who have more urge for the embryo and umbilical cord than the simultaneous adrenalin and anaesthetising surge of glories such as this. Riffs rampage with the clinical precision of battlefield surgeons, suturing swiftly and deftly with the patience and finesse amidst the in-coming fire and out-going body bits. Musically as a whole Metallica reign in bloody supremity here, though gladly that be the pre-‘Black Album’ masterstrokes of war, waste, breakdown and isolation with martial might. Which isn’t to belittle the full honours that this majestic standard bearer deserves, for this is a sweeping, orchestral, cinematic cannonade – an instant classic as a saying that should be slayed goeth.

- Stu Gibson

The Besmirchers
Besmirch And Destroy
Steel Cage Records

Ten tracks in fifteeeeeen minutes should herald a ‘way to go!’ or at least a polite ‘hurrrah, what ho!’ from this excellently named album in expectance of the equivalent of ‘Motorhead’ from ‘No Sleep Till Hammersmith’ or Zeke’s entire existence, especially as they feature past members of Cretin 66 and The 440’s. Centred on front-deviant Lenny Mental (himself ex-of the equally well-named Sophistifucks) and barred, if not black-listed as a result of notorious stage, and presumably, off-stage, back-stage, behind, and in front of, bars antics this is as primal as you can get, both in the heroically cretinous Big Muff sound and subject matter with songs such as Pussy And Smack, Daddy’s Little Fuckhole and Dead Fuck Girl. Call me a curmudgeonly cock-jockey or something but such controversy should be backed up with scum-thing suitably shockingly good on the music side as with other gleeful dark-side ditch-dwellers from The Heartbreakers to Zeke, oh and the bloody Stooges too, which they only really get around to doing on the few awesome-ettes I Always Let Her Down and the all-too-possibly literally break-neck Unlucky At Love and Heroin Doll.    

- Stu Gibson

Various – KNOCK OUT
…in the 8^th round!
Knock Out Records

As the primo-brain celled of even the most hairspray-enhanced punk, psycho, trash trolley-dolly, tosser, tanked-up stud-shouldered twat amongst us should tell this be the 8^th compilation from Germany’s Knock Out Records. A twenty-two track trawl through back-street basement squat-speed punk with a bit of pop-edge (the glam-Strummer / Replacements style of Vanilla Muffins and the Generation X crossed with Monroe / McCoy of Sexmachine ) and ska thrown in (ie Bad Boys and Sondaschule, who really are quite terrible). There’s plenty of brawnaboogie (Oxymoron, Bonecrusher – think Lanternjack, Sleazesters, who weigh in at three tracks), a touch of Oi! with Hard Skin and demented psychobilly from Up To Vegas, whose vocalist has such a similarity to Demented Are Go’s Spark it’s quite uncanny, or a total cop. Or a personality he’s forgotten about on his travels. Far and away the best things here though are Whiskey Daredevils AMC Hornet cow-punk boogie and Deadline’s Love Song, oh and Bonecrusher, who simply and rather admirably suck all the rock out your balls, guts and soul and cram it back through you eyes and ears bigger and better, and possibly a touch bulkier too.

With bonuses of an interview with Social D members and a coupla vids, notably The Meteors not a bad little scamp to take off the market stall, at all, guv.

 - Stu Gibson