Sweet Summer Sass: The Motherlode of Reviews

Entrance/ Prayer of Death: Blakeslee

“Children of god playing musical chairs…” wails Guy Blakeslee (formerly of The Convocation Of) on “Silence of Crowded Train” with a behind a dizzying swirl of strings, rolling bass, electro-exploding Stooges guitar patterns, and flattened but keynote drum flourishes. It’s not unlike a bastard child of Blue Oyster Cult, Hawkwind, and the Mars Volta, all amped up art meets rock’n’classicism, the number of the beast going bump in the night in the vacated suburbs demolished in the red dust, which is helped and nurtured by Paz Lenchantin (A Perfect Circle), whose violin and vocals round out the performance. The Eastern market jangles, ala Morocca and sweeping India and orange linen and saffron bedecked space station (Pitchfork media reports the album was inspired by The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Charley Patton, and “the daily death-vibrations of the Modern World, which seems to be suspended in a State of Total War”), form a conveyor belt of sonic sleepwalking that pulls listeners across the landscape of “Requiem for Sandy Bull,” then “Valium Blues,” with its charismatic without being cocksure marvelous modern volatile venturing unleashes wide open spaces, like a post-drug twilight fueled by gyrating guitars and more Eastern escapades. It feels like a hollow ground undulating and quivering, a devil-shaking mass of epic proportions, a black ember phosphoresce with a blood-red underbelly. Finally, “Valium Blues” offers some respite; imagine Greg Dulli’s voice lightening up until is airy as a hummingbird’s wings, turning Mahavishnu Orchestra into a hard-driving psychedelic blues and boogie swagger, with metaphysical longing all entangled in it. It’s the kind of album I expected to overturn 1969, just decades late on arrival. The stripped down countryism of “Prayer of Death,” southern Baptist bowelled and full of epiphany and afterlife affections, is actually quite majestic, like Jeffrey Lee Pierce prayers had he fronted Jefferson Airplane. Eerie, off-kilter, and earthy all the same. Don’t worry; the dark corners of “Lost in the Dark” quickly enfold you minutes later.

Worth three potato chips.

Flatbush/ Seize the Time!: Koolarrow

Like Tina Turner belted out, I want to howl “Flatbush City Limits” up and down the dusty streets of the La Raza graffiti-loaded barrio, but oops, this band is way more Bad Religion meets Atari Teenage Riot meets Los Crudos than funky soul sister. The overall vibe is: get off your ass and get ready to fight for freedom, yanquis mofo, because the time is ripe and ready for the good guerra. There’s a unbending, unyielding politico agitation via songs like “Serve the people,” “All Power to the people,” and “AK-47 for Self-Defense.” The overall sonic patterns don’t have the same rigidity: there’s hellish hardcore, speed freak metal/industrial breathlessness, noise shredding, and rare seconds of funk in the fatigues, even a sing-along softness in “Community Organizer.” But, the actual result is like guesswork: what comes next twists and turns on a dime, making every measure the ultimate seizure of creativity, which would make Mike Patton proud, I suppose. If you dig the Dillinger Escape Plan and The Locusts’ post-modern pirate values of seeking and destroying the master-narratives of song structure, then this is your game plan, a feisty fist to the mirror of reality, where the shards falling to the ground become the map of the territory. You can try and sing along if you can catch up with the nitro beats in the stifling Philipino heat. This is where the charred hopes become re-fleshed, not just refreshed, in the single-minded hope and agitation of Joe Strummer strung-out teenagers.

Worth two and half potato chips.

Arma Secreta/A Century’s Remains: Smith 7 Records

Likened to Cursive, for their torrent of emo clatter and clank, with drums that pulse like re-vamped punk-funk, and vocals that earmark the soul of modern man as both intelligent and incomplete, so music “connects the point in-between” the thought and the action, I suppose, or between the voice and the vendetta. “Seque/Debris” is a headlong rush into this cocoon, and “Sweater Weather” follows-up finely, letting the bass frolic and focus the skeleton framework of the song. Too bad the lyrics are on the high school poetry workshop meal plan: “though we are apart we stand together/if I am yours then you’re mine forever.” Not exactly images to bolt down the vibe of the sonic slyness of the band. The drummer is a shredder, the vocals, unfortunately, should be shredded, which is too bad. “Little Snow Ninka” keeps up the Jawbox/Seam/Modest Mouse template, all variety and non-trad rock quirkiness: One part mood making, one part flexibility and finesse, one part harmony in their heads, one part extended jazzbo timing. “Pyah” takes no prisoners, reminds me of 1998, the post-grudge wide-open years, the whirling patterns of master musicians bedding down with the alienation of punk amplifiers, at least the lines get better: “vultures and wolves disguised as kids we thought we knew.” I really thought that bands like the Hives and White Stripes, with their ramshackle and ready steady proto-primitivism had eradicated this style forever, but bands like Ever We Fall, Since by Man, and Arma Secreta have formed the underground sound barrier that keeps away the slugs of last century’s easy baby step style. This is a cascade of music task mastering, men guilty of simply knowing too much too soon, or letting the rock fall behind the silk-screened, skillful sonic palate. It is engaging, just a little too sophomoric on words and Einstein on grooves.

Worth two and a half potato chips..

Christien Kiefer/Czar Nicholas is Dead: Camera Obscura

Although the spare tone poetry of this album is well worth listening to, the Russian revolution part totally slips by these ears of mine. This is far more like an film score for a Wim Wenders film that a sonic cabbage stew, Ural mountain dreaming, and the leftover dead whispers of Chekhov, Gorky, Rasputin, etc. It is supposedly meant to evoke tundra, which in a way it does with its gray and somber pacing and spacing, and echo the “ornate towers” and “blood-soaked” snowscapes.” Yet, unlike the work of David Julyan, who brought the frozen arctic to a trembling, transcendent, almost aerial foreground in film scores like “Insomnia,” Keiffer isn’t quite as adept at providing a sense of drama or movement that would make the scale of the work more gripping and alive. However, that being said, tracks like “Kalmykov (Poppies) does feel like an exploration of the mystic fissure point in Russia East/West dichotomy, without or without the fall of the Czar as the keynote event: lovely harps and crushed snow footsteps and a disembodied ghost voice slowly ebb and flow into gossamer thread that envelops a listener’s cerebrum. The sad-eyed, folk-mustered “On Suffering Grief” bears a certain weight too, in funereal-like laments, while the almost ethno-ambient “The Firing Squad” peels back a certain harrowing discordance underneath the waves of muted drums, Velvet Underground string-scapes, and antique Chinese bells. Is it the equivalent of a vignette? Perhaps. For fans of Labradford.

Worth two and a half potato chips.

Reducers SF/Raise Your knuckles: TKO Records

Stylistically wedged between the tidal wave of U.S. street epitomized by the Generators and Dropkick Murphys, though I even detect a little of Radio Birdman on tracks like “Knocked Out,” the Reducers SF have that brazen, fisticuff-styled, barroom disaster approach that is fall of jumpy energy but an iron-clad musical approach. The lyrical landscape is mired in urban decay and detritus: “the crowded streets/the filthy beats/the cops patrol/but the alleys still, they fucking stink” which sounds like Detroit than San Francisco, which calls itself home to the band, but hey, a gruesome underbelly is all the same, no matter the street corner names. But unlike the most Oi-esque band call to arms, while on “Carry On” there’s a rebellious new world order edge that decries “companies erupting like there was no end in sight/a dot-com here and a million there,” that testify to a time when America can drive SUVs as empty buildings glare and MBA’s serve beers and CEOs pump gas, no prototypical hooligan sloganeering, and the pace of “Out Tonight” is actually folky and anthemic is a way that embodies a less poetic and much more angry version of the Pogues. “Never Break Me” turns up the velocity and zips through rebel song rioting; imagine Stiff Little Fingers going from 45 to 78 on the turntable, breathless and breezy but has a similar vibe. Still, true to both bands, the beer goggles are never far away. “The Night,” littered with warning of dark shadows and knifings, even manly monsters, offers up a lurking musical propulsion too, repeated on songs like “Troubles and Pain,” animated and wired by both sore hearts and unyielding souls too. “Over the Edge” waxes nostalgic, evokes the era of high schools, boom boxes, 7-11 hamburgers, and the familial aspects of the beaten, dragged down streets, where a strong beer and 20 friends can be a shoulder to lean on and a nuclear family under the rotten neon moon and empty “bullshit philosophy” thrown out by hypocrites, whereas “Hired Hand” is self-effacing and bracing, admitting that “I’ve never amounted to much good/I never wanted to be president,” as if simply being a man and eking out a living is enough for satisfaction, at least today. There’s something to be said for the scale of this h, fired-up debate, where the integrity can bee measured by man’s willingness to confront both his insignificance and significance in one beer from a stolen mug under the radio waves of bent antenna and beat up truck, as “Joke’s on Me” suggests. By the way, the Pogues comparison becomes flesh on their cover of “Broad Majestic Shannon,” a hidden track, which just might reveal their tender side.

Worth two and a half potato chips.

GG Allin and Antiseen/Murder Junkies: TKO Records

The sullied devilcock master and “outlaw scum fuck” known as GG Allin comes alive in southern rock gore fest fits and screams on this reissue that remains one of his trademark releases, but oddly enough, it seems fairly tame years later, more myth than fomenting cataclysm. Compared to Japanese mayhem noise rock, or ghastly Swedish death metal, or even most Antiseen records, this seems like a walk in the gutter park. The songs, whether “I Love Nothing” and “99 Stab Wounds” are gnarly, for sure, but have a kind of amateurism that sounds like any angry drunk in any American city with hate rock foaming in his broken teeth. His sex and violence cant, like “Cock on the Lose,” “Sister Sodomy,” and “Rape, Torture…”, etc, is easily erased by the total clit fire power of Nashville Pussy these days, and his overall repugnancy is really not exactly entertaining or even threatening, which is the point, really, since his whole persona was Iggy Pop 1972 meets Chainsaw Massacre freakfest meets post-rock tirade. It was in, anti-entertainment, a schlock-fest of too human proportions. Early John Waters meets Richard Kern and repellant transgressive cinema in the back alley of the mind, self-hate and body torture for popcorn. It’s old fashioned rock riffage with vice, vice, vice and blood, feces, and cum-soaked adages like “always remember, violence pays.” Basically, it’s Kiss or Ted Nugent, but more grisly. The person you love to hate, in full color, complete with demon seed and fertilizer bomb throat.

Worth one and a half potato chips.

Broken Bottles/Suburban Dreams b/w Broken Bottles 7” TKO records

With true and tried 1980s Orange County punk verisimilitude that matches the vigor and intent of early Social Distortion, Broken Bottles paints the self-destructive but poppy Posh Boy sensibilities in dark reds and thick blacks. Referencing Johnny Thunder rock posters, the band delivers fuzzy, snot-rag infested, angry-young-thing sonic fists to the “white picket fences” and numbing sidewalk bliss of middle-income USA. The backside of the single sounds remotely Pixies-like at first, then heads back down Mike Ness dark corners of the night, though I’m not sure that mentioning the “80’s Club” and “dancing to the 80’s music” does besides make them look really young, and me really old. But, just like Emilio Estevez in “Repo Man,” they’re still drinking in the streets, looking for post-hardcore, tattooed California dreams in all the wrong places.

Worth two and half potato chips.

Ciril/Pink Cave b/w Metal Postcard: Vinyl Dog Records

This has vibes that encounter elements of the Birthday Party, Pop Group, and post-punk in general, a kind odd trashcan aesthetic art punk heavy on atmosphere and off-kilter timing, not to forget tortured, dramatic vocals that wail, huff and puff, and gurgle. It’s understated and musically expressionistic, with just the barest guardrail of musical prowess and form, yet the effect is well armed and eerie enough to make you listen again. “Metal Postcard” is even more unbent than Siouxsie Sioux’s original, and again, the ingredients are far from overwhelmed by a production value that places minimum emphasis on wrapping the dynamic in gauze. The feeling is harried and hectic, bare and unadorned, as it should be. Think metallic poetry written by demented tortured victims of De Sade.

Worth two and a half potato chips.

Hank III “Ruby Get Back to the Hills” b/w Antiseen “FTK” 7”: TKO Records

Antiseen unleashes “Fuck the Kids,” an ode to all the misfits, losers, and freaks who are the dirty shits that annoy all the PC queers and sexless emo kids. It’s ribald rock, par for the Antiseen course, guttural and gunked up, a 1970s blast of dirty rock and punk sneer and bile. White trash vendetta rock for new millennium with its pathetic sanitized lameness. In turn,
Hank III catapults his half dirty diesel honky tonk mixed with metal mash-up “Ruby Get Back to the Hills,” an Antiseen song, with its lyrical nod to the maverick 1970s horror flick “The Hills Have Eyes.” The country is like a greasy fist, the metal is crunchy and unsheathed, and the overall effect is like listening to an 18-wheeler jack-knifing over your ear lobe. Good times.

Worth two and a half potato chips.

Thor/Devastation of Musculation: Smog Veil

The tongue-tying title still has me guessing. Does he mean masculinity devastates, or does he mean, the threat of emasculation devastates? Anyway, though this is far less campy and indie lathered than his last outing, which included the input of alt-rock big haired guitar slayers the Melvins, this more trad rock adventure, replete with soaring wizardry-lined guitar solos and dramatic fog machine concertos de metal mythomania, is actually more likeable because it really does feel like unrepentant cock-rock embraced in Heavy Metal (print version, not festering genre) comic fantasyland. The tunes are professionally scripted and manly scented, and “Return of Odin’s Son: even boasts a duet with slightly flat-voiced Dawn Hatchard, while “Cold White Ghost” is actually tender tune of ballad proportions. It is not the kind of nod and wink Meatloaf arena goofing that hipsters might be attracted to, but it does appeal to the thunderbolt beer drinkers and underground warrior castes that can’t wait for Lita Ford to return to her thrown. “Abandon” also switches tactics, envelopes a pop sensibility that wouldn’t be out of place on mom’s iPod, that is, is she was raised on Rush and Great White: “You can grit your teeth until they bleed…but please don’t abandon me.” There’s a sense of longing and loyalty that is both human and heartening, a naked poise is often absent from Thor’s mask. Maybe it is due to Thor’s longtime stage life, or his longtime work in cinema, or his inner truth cycles, but what is so compelling about this is the sense of sincerity, which so when he says “we live by the sword and die by the edge of the blade” on the final cut “Tale of the Wolf/Warriors of the universe” its unfeigned, because to Thor, the warrior “analogy,” as creepy English majors like me will call it, is actually a flesh and blood dictum to him. There’s nothing shaped by hollow-bodied, pretentious irony and fakery, he is become legend, an unsmirking prince of purity in a time of dishonor and betrayal. To some, it’s the stuff of 12-year olds unleashed in Spencer’s Gifts with Conan wet dreams, so others, it is the way of the hero unbound.

Worth three potato chips.

Greg Laswell/Through Toledo: Vanguard

Though this reminds me both of James Cooper and Tim Easton, singer songwriters with slightly off-center vocal approaches and interesting instrumentation that walk the line between sellout slouching and artistic adventuring, Laswell has a knack for creating an adultish world still rife with a love for messy feelings and music. The guitars are brash in the right places, like “Worthwhile,” which actually hints at the peak days of Dinosaur Jr., for buzzing guitars create a cloud that vocals, and the stripped down, nearly paradoxical lyrics, as “to be worth my while. I’ll stand still…” mirror the musical cacophony barely kept at bay, like the song is threatening to break its own nets, but never in a violent way. This is definitely the kind of “thinking young man” songster style, though less poetic than an offspring of David Byrne’s almost flat and neutral business lexicon that fits like a condom in the gestalt of Mojo and Uncut in a big way as they await the new Jesse Malin album. It’s not angtsy but gray, not passionate but patient, not staking or marking a new territory but reworking the territory with massaging hands with a little dirt under the nails. “High and Low” would be a prime example: the phrasing is both familiar and foggy, a touch of old school 1970s Tom Waits, a nod to Radiohead, a shoegaze workshop on musically lush diary days. There’s something both slippery and grounded, as if the songs are really meant for TV backdrops, a counterpart to visuals of 30-something people groping coffee and seeking truths in the drizzle (I not being facetious here, since he does write “whisper till the coffee comes/whisper until the film starts”). He plays most of the instruments, minus a violin and bass snippet here and there, provides notations like “How to Write a Song” just in case we are waiting for triggers and pointers, and otherwise makes ProTools feel like a room full of conjoined twins, half jazz-leaning indie rockers and classically trained geek hipsters. So, lyrically the stuff is expensive potpie, really, but a bit ingratiating, I have to admit, begrudgingly.

Worth two and a half potato chips.

Perish/Our Sin: Anko Records

Like Bleeding Through, Atreyu, and hosts of others who mix metal enjambments with heart-stopping emo emotions with punk tension and techno hi-wire acts, Perish tries to break the mold but just ends up reinforcing the same mold, which is not to say they are totally cliché, for they do it really well, but simply put, it’s not new ground. “The Sound of Trains” is a swell example: it’s got the dramatic vocals underlying bouts of shrapnel throat roars, tempo changes in all the right places, and a nimble guitar unleashing the curvilinear patterns that make you swim in monster-sized, snaky Gibson universe. “Heart Cuts Glass” does not veer from the path, so it all comes full force like fluff metal, no super hard edges, no real venom, no brain bludgeoning speed, just a cruising Laguna Beach of all the sacred forms set down by Venom and Iron Maiden. Again, it should make all the Hot Topic kids squirm with pleasure, especially when the lyric “holding so tightly to my sin” unlocks the possibilities, which is the point, right? There’s even an acoustic Cure-esque side on “All in Vain,” all dark mascara and despondent angels. Get your hair gel ready!

Worth two potato chips.

Mitra/All Gods Kill: Idol Records

Featuring both the powerhouse torso of Speedealer (more brazenly known as REO Speedealer) and the sizzling hydra head of Billyclub’s former singer, this feels like the Melvins cohabitating in a slum house with the Melvins, and is definitely the heaviest thing that Idol Records has unleashed. Amazingly thick as lava for only one guitarist, songs like “Dead to Rights” has a tumbling intensity bound to flail any Roller Derby queen. Then the Sabbath kicks in and lumbers like a noise-infested buffalo through fields of fire on “Your New God.” The approach is nothing like the slippery surf sludge of stoner rock, where the Blue Cheer and pychedelia always held down the forts. This is much angrier, as if the vocals of Negative Approach were welded onto the head of more metallic Antiseen then sent down to get shit-kicked in the Lone Star state. It actually reminds me of 1990s lone star bands like the American Psycho Band, the kind of bands that make their songs a dirty wallpaper for clubs like Emos. “Things Are About to Get Ugly” really do summarize the modus operandi: a fistful of hard riffs, a tom-tom primal pounding, preachin’ mayhem vocal stud’n’froth, and enough swampy rhythm to make all the chain-smoking, tattooed grandma sway and swell. Then, of course, “Medicate Me” goes for bullet train velocity, smashing all the previous style and manner, which raises its head minutes later on the boogie metal “War Horse,” a ZZ Top meets Rob Zombie crush groove. They father the destruction real swell, baby.

Worth two and a half potato chips.

Lisa Germano/In the Maybe World: Young God Records

Having written her first mini-opera at age 7 on the piano, and after early years alongside John Mellancamp, Simple Minds, and the Indigo Girls, it’s no wonder that Germano ended up subterfuged as a bookstore clerk in Hollywood while dabbling with David Bowie and trying to figure out what to do with her career after being jettisoned from 4AD. Well, luckily, she’s found a home on the very tiny but much lauded Young God Records, known primarily as the home of Michael Gira and the Angels of Light. Germano’s world is a very fractured, post-modern place, not borne of simple melodies and lines stolen from clichés the size of Ohio. It’s at once frightenly candid (“I wake up cold and I want to get off/but everyone says your tired”), like Kristin Hersh at her best, and it is supremely frustrating when it does not conform to our sensibilities of what a song should be and do, not unlike the Fall or Pere Ubu, though much more low key and classically trained in approach. Lyrically, it’s like she’s delving into Shakespeare’s “”A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” especially on “In the Land of Fairies,” then into the scattered neo-surreal poetry of Wallace Stevens on “In the Maybe World.” There’s no solid ground for Germano, its all loss and losing, a place where modern machinations lead to a Eraserhead-inspired gypsy dance of the sacred and profane, where “simple feelings have to go/all this tired love couldn’t flow,” and the sometimes hollow pretensions of art offer what little architecture we have to keep us sane. Her strongest tracks, like “Into Oblivion” and “After Monday” (which actually reminds me of Tori Amos, don’t smirk…), with its steel drums and bells mixed very low, feel tender and icy at the same time, offer a cool softness to the touch, as if this distance if the only way she can retain a kind of resolve, a way of moving forward even as the heart wants to black out. It’s not easy listening music, at all, and it makes the kind of intelligent choices that I suppose Tom Waits has to make about how much is too much in terms of instrumentation, and it never feels burdened by the process, as if the form were the poetry. The songs are still about her strung-together words, the way she skips, and sometimes falls, between the spaces and breaths. It can be harrowing, it can be numbing, but is a world of her whole making, which is unique and rare as a lost lotus.

Worth two and a half potato chips.

Bury Your Dead/Beauty and the Breakdown: Victory

First the pun and the alliteration is fitting, seeing how this band is both muscled like a hyena/werewolf and intelligent to boot, coughing up copious allusions at play here and there (like titles including “Mirror, Mirror…” [on the Wall], “A Glass Slipper”), which may or not be the handwork of lyricist coworker Melissa Bruso, add an element of inverted and tortured fantasy to this otherwise heavy duty metal munching. There are no pretty boy angles and crooning, no smeared make-up and emo emulsion, just thick, pounding, nightmare band terror-stricken etudes that admit, “I’m afraid I might hurt you.” No wonder they are heading to the join armed forces with the Family Values tour this summer, bolstering the ranks of Korn and the Deftones, and though they do have the well-aimed bile of those bands, they do lack their inventive wherewithal of their skull-smashing neighbors. This is mostly a one-way street of duress and dousing, a churning, volcanic spew that is as frenetic and gnarly as it is rather routine in this post-metal decade of sin. Powerful and menacing, but also rather stiff as Rock Em Sock Em robots on fire.

Worth two potato chips.

5ive/Versus: Tortuga

This is basically a remix added re-release of a split album done with kid606, though now featuring the knob-turning handiwork of J.K. Broadwick, who has worked with Godflesh. It’s a semi-epic kind of naked and ugly concept rock, all shuddering distortion motifs and broken jazz drum riffing, which is pared down almost as far as Joy Division in a sense that it is more pregnant with tone and pacing than flickering wrists and prog rock prowess. For instance, if you, instrumentally speaking, lust for godheadsilo more than ___, you know, something slightly laying on the back side of the beat and totemic, limber, and lunging, not succumbing to the more postured, though perhaps more adept, cinematic expressionism of Explosions in the Sky, then this is your meal ticket. It drives and drives and tumbles and stops and surges and drives more, then becomes the vortex, then becomes the vortex spillage, then becomes the spout, then becomes the eulogy for lost time and bodies…or a gray passage through time zones, earmarked by endless eddying and drifting cushioned by noise embers, like the Dead Man soundtrack by Neil Young, where just as you think things have petered out, the last comet trails have danced, or the ashes are caked in orange no more, there is still motion and movement, a reckoning of the infinite, the glory-void-hole of guitar memories. “Soma Remix Stage 2,” at over eight minutes, is a fine unspeakable (words seem to be inoperable here) liftoff to remember, mirroring each of those tendencies. Worth the whole package on its own.

Worth three potato chips.

Yonder Mountain String Band/Self-titled: Vanguard

With slightly slick pop bluegrass sheen, Yonder comes down from the mountain with a handful of tunes that are Appalachian in spirit but not exactly rotted and leaning porch territory. On “Sidewalk Stars” they bemoan the fact that “you love a tragedy…can’t go back that’s much too far” and the plaintive vocals outpaced by streamlined and jittery banjo pickin’. “I Ain’t Been Myself in Years” snakes around the same approach, a sort of midway point between rousing postcard rustic Last Train Home tuneage and early Old 97s hoedowns, and just like the lyrics attest, the feel is “so soft against my ear.” There’s something a bit neutered and safe about it all, or maybe it’s just modern Nashville echoes, as felt on “How ‘Bout You,” which does appeal to “the old lights of the radio/nowadays I just don’t know,” which I’m sure Alison Krauss would nod in agreement, but their alternative still seems rather watered down pine tree piety. Still, their pure as lightning instrumental kicks shine on “Fastball,” but clock in under two minutes, like a teaser, whereas “East Nashville Teaser,” with its cheap hotel cityscape haiku and “heartbroken wind at my door” nods towards ramshackle urban promises come and gone under the tutelage of vice and regret. “Just the Same” switches out singers, but the motifs of blindsided fools, midnights, and mommas stays the same. However, real radio pop bluffs its way into “Classic Situation,” which sounds like adult alternative radio all the way home, like that tune “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” rewrapped and resold in the same hollow pretense. Unfortunate. This is far away from Chet Atkins vaults of vinyl, and not nearly as cheeky, self-possessed, and raw as anything marked Bloodshot or No Depression.

Worth one and a half chips.

The Johns/In Tune: Anko Records

A sub super-group, replete with members of all the “The” bands, like The Grabbers, the Bleeders, and the Crowd, among others, The Johns offer up razorblade, though almost pop goodness, a lively rock’n’roll jetstream that feeds from the trough of the Real Kids and just about any band on TKO records, though with a slight bubblegum wink on “In Tune” that turns to studded steam on “Crapped Out,” which drops words like litigation and United Nations into the crapped out hard-ass mise-n-scene. There’s nice gnarly tension between literate and lousy. It has all the pump and pride expected from a scene that can trace its way all the way back to the teenage testiness of the Zeros and their angsty adrenaline in the late 1970s. “Wanna Die” has some venal venting that matches the beat-up, cigarette ash smeared couch lounging and lust-driven loathing of the title, especially the refrain ‘You think you’re pretty, I say you’re pretty, but you’re not.” It’s sonic graffiti of dead end punk souls, all in smatters and tatters. In all, the three songs are hectic and heroically unheroic, a trouncing, bitter saga played out in mere manic minutes.

Worth three potato chips.

Hour of the Wolf/Power of the Wolf: Limekiln

With vocal wolf calls that resemble the salad days of DRI’s pre-metal passover, these bunch of musical marauders bridge the livid land of old-fashioned hardcore instincts with the rock’n’roll suicide of the Catheters, a balls-out analog angst fest that remains catchy all the same, like exploding veins that feel good even as the blood smatters. Sure, there’s a nifty dose of well-timed hand-claps on “Spit it Right Back” to remind us they have some fun smashing down the walls, but the vengeance rock still looms everywhere. Even better, buried beneath the tumult and pandemonium, there’s slicing and skidding elements of surf guitar that rises up like a helter skelter rogue wave on “Black Blood Transfusion,” just in spurts, almost too fast to catch with your damaged ears, and it surfaces again on “Turn You On,” “Wild Man,” and “Burn It”; these tiny bursts feel both spectral, moon and knife-blade ridden, and trembling psycho hollow-bodied; imagine Dick Dale taking jabs splitting nails and spitting blood with young guns full of scary sweat scarred cum. To top things off, the hidden track is “Fix Me,” a fuzz-caked, ornery rendition of Black Flag’s classic, which is actually the weakest step they take on the album. Short, spontaneous, and unmasked, it’s true to form, but feels like walking in the shadows of the giants rather than a potent stab. I can see the Budweiser and pain pills smashed underfoot right now.

Worth three potato chips.

Blood Meridian/Kick up the Dust: V2

Although singer Mathew Camirand admits the style of Blood Meridian is “all about that sloppy dirty 80’s/early 90’s punk blues/Americana stuff” that might fall somewhere between the Black Keys and early Whiskeytown, this falls short of the mark, by miles, not even coming close to the country and cat-fish frat punk of Camper Van Beethoven or Uncle Tupelo. This is just fairly low key, jangly, uninspired stuff, mostly drivel dressed up in raggedy Americana shirtsleeves. Just about any Bloodshot band does a better job of putting punk’s weasel-in-a-bottle intensity and untamed wit with country’s back porch late-night swagger. “I want to hold you and read your thoughts/Buy you flowers when you are down in the dumps,” he sings, half-heartedly. An organ lays down a flat carpet vibe, the drums are perfunctory in most places, and the style echoes teenage moping, without the doping. This is really open-mic night coffee house neighborhood poetry with the words scribbled on napkins and enough slow and droopy rhythm to dull us into tears. Even the religious/political venting of “Soldiers of Christ” tries desperately to be a minor Neil Young snapshot of a world in disarray in the name of the Gospels, but it just really feels awkward and self-amputated. Sincere? Perhaps. Talented? Maybe. Enrapturing? Not even close. Dig out your Donovan records…

Worth half a potato chips.

The Epoxies/Self-titled: Dirtnap

Actually, this is re-released material from 2001/2002 (old Dirtnap 7” vinyl releases), but no matter, since it blasts from the past with electric fury and new wave morphing modulations that land between Kim Wilde, Missing Persons, Tubeway Army, and the Alley Cats. They took the world by storm, replete with oddball striped shirts and skinny tie costumes, laser lights ricocheting in live barely controlled live show pell-mell reckless robot rhythms, and sing-along slurping. “Need More Time” is instant gratification: catchy, hyper, but rooted in 1980s LA mutant pop, all tasty freeze of long ago charm and wit. “Molded Plastic” meets Servotron on their own terms, though with less fierce trashcan Casio clanging, plus its refrain “I’m made from more than plastic” is a call to arms in the age of fake food and body parts. I swear the chorus calls of “Beat My Guest” are lifted from Adam and the Ants, which is fine by me, for the punch and drive of the song is infectious. “Synthesized” is on par with the rest, a better produced, even, um, slick restatement of all things brilliant about the Silicon powder keg pop unleashed by a few key chords, style stalking, and retro-ring leading. “Clones” is a taut wrap-up, slower, but with no diminished force fields. If you had to buy one Epoxies disc, this pretty much sums ‘em all up, in one brief and uncomplicated foray.

Worth three potato chips.

Cult of Sue Todd/Kelsey Grammar Loves Us: Self-released

At best, such as the song “Another Song About the Snatch,” the frenetic and rootsy fever of Cult of Sue Todd is like a lighthearted version of early Gun Club or Old 97s, all whoop-ass speed stirring up gravel roads and disembodied honky-tonk mutterings, or, as on “Myth of Dire,” a banjo and piano dotted landscape of ghostly but not ghoulish intentions. “50 Cent” tries the same approach, though with much more poppy manifestations, still speedy, though loopy lyrically and hair flopping fun-installed. Imagine bubble gum chewing tobacco and cigarettes. On the other hand, they seem like lightweight Sebadoh on the first tracks (“Ex Boyfriends” and “Chatterbox”), all ramshackle and rickety lo-fi drifting antics, tattered and taunting, but ultimately anti-climatic and a weird unwired way to wind up the album. “Fake Off,” on the other hand, is an almost charming blend of Mexican horns, skittering new wave keyboard blips, references to Superman, and though still on the lo-fi side of the technique, it’s not obvious or self-conscious this time. In hindsight, one could really delete the first half off the record, which is a near yawn-spiel, and stick to the tighter, more driven, more Spoonish or Interpolish (or The Happiness Factor) second half, which by the time of “I Won’t Send Anymore Letters to the South” abandons the country noir lite for a bustling and lean gray minimalism, very post-punk in gesture (note the Joy Division or Tones on Tail bass and flat booming drums on “Gnome”). So, although the personas of the songs don’t meld in a tight circle of satisfaction, and the overall feel is more piecemeal than piercing, there are enough songs to make you nod in keen and inspired approval.

Worth two and half potato chips.

The Rosewood Thieves/From the Decker House: V2

Though the band seems to have a split-sense of loyalty to the land of both New York and the West Coast, their music seems perfectly in tune with mid-period Kinks, Byrds, and the newer rustic proclivities of tunesmiths like Peter Case and the Mike Scott and Waterboys, especially on tacks like “Los Angeles” (“I got some friends in L.A./telling me to head out that way/because I am in love with the sun”) which could be easily confused with the recent musical forays of Mike Scott, that is, if Scott concentrated on vitamin D anthems instead of wailing British Isle winds. With a line-up of helpers as hip as a Silverlake cocktail lounge, including lads from Whiskeytown, Devendra Banhart, Vetiver, and the adroit and semi-famous Bob Dorough, who penned “Conjunction Junction” and other notable non-hits for Schoolhouse Rock, this ensemble, led by Erick Jordan, does a fine job of mustering past legendary sounds. This first two tracks, including “Back Home to Harlem” (remember that split land loyalty!) are gracious and rollicking, with a slight Hispanic rhythmic nod in places, but does it feel anything like the pulsing pavement of New York’s black and Dominican neighborhoods (where I went to college)? No. Which makes it, I suppose, very Anglo, but still somehow endearing, like Ryan Adams “New York,” which sounded like a peon to the Saturday Night Live Band. Then its back to Mike Scott again on “Cold in the Country,” all isolation, loneliness, and longing (“soon we’ll be together/I’ve been alone for all these years”), even the droning final blood gurgle of the keyboard is very “A Rock in the Weary Land” era Waterboys, while “Diamond Ring” has a hat-tip to the Beatles, and again, the isolation is fraught with more frustration, door knocking, pent-up need and blame (“You are just like the rest”), though there is a little gypsy circus moment I like, ala Tom Waits. And speaking of gypsies, Jordan actually name drops “gypsy cabs” in “Doctor,” a very Brooklyn thing to do, while the song is all mid-1960s Bob Dylan. So, while there is not much original zest in this melting pot of sounds, there is still something appealing, for it’s well done, not over-baked, or too cloy, just don’t expect the wheel to be reinvented anytime soon.

Worth two and half potato chips.

The Worldwide Inferno Friendship Society/Red-Eyed Soul: Chunksaah Records

Somewhere between lounge, soul, Latin, ska, and rockabilly, this musical unit of a million different faces is fresh, to some point, and sometimes just a bit overly staged and theatrical, especially on tracks like “Brother of the Mayor of Bridgewater” and “Your Younger Man,” though I like to note that early to mid-1980’s Britboy romance on the sleeve soul pokes through on “Velocity of Love” (think late Jam/early Style Council to General Public to Joe Jackson). If John Hughes, you know, the teen movie mogul maker of “16 Candles,” etc. could have scripted this band, he would have, all framed in stupefying good looks, earnest edges, and harmless conceits. In a time of total recycling and repackaging (just like the Smoking Popes tried to resurrect the Smiths), it’s no wonder that the UK pop brigade, with it sharp suits and tight sweaters and slick horns and bouncy rhythms, would come back in full fad force. There is, however, a noted ode to Paul Robeson, who fifty years ago was one of America’s most famous, and radical, black singers, and the song’s mix of surf, rockabilly, piano, and bells is an inchoate and boisterous blend of anger management and teaching history to a generation of iPod couch potatoes. There is no rest for this bunch of musical hybrid hyper-blenders, all skillful and agile, and although not lacking in verve, they often lack in understatements, becoming mad and zany post-punk narrative spinners from the likes of Dave Mathews rather than Tom Waits.

Worth two potato chips.

Jeffrey Lee Lucas/What We Whisper: Antebellum Records

Not unlike the voices of Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan, Lucas’ deep and pregnant signature style, all foreboding and somnolent, is the kind of music that makes you want to keep a glass of bourbon nearby. “You Knew it Well,” with its allusions to the devil and misdeeds, is not exactly uplifting, instead focusing on betrayal and disappointment, while “Fall in Love Wrong” stays true to the methodology, an atmosphere of shadow and steel guitar woe inundating the listener like soft but pain-inscribed punches to the heart. For those who like the listless, drawn-out, smoke-encrusted poetry of the Tindersticks, this will seem like a walk in heaven to you, though without the staginess. “Just like Moths” enters the same cocooning void, “Let’s take a long walk/I do not know where, Lord I don’t care/I’m restless…” The hushed velvet underpinnings of Wendy Allen help balance many of the songs, adding a kind of prayer that soothes the dark places long enough to feel a kind of hope and trust, however allusive. To add some variety to the overall sponge of near icy despair, a slightly inverted Mexican beat invades “Griftos Muertos,” and Posada’s skeletons dance in the leftover graveyards of a thousand poisoned hearts. The string arrangements of “In the Stars’ Whirling” offer touching spirals that recall John Cale without the pretension, while the mythic sparks and stars, like flecks of mica nailed to the sky, can’t seem to guide the narrator back to shore. There’s a sense of being so close, yet so far away, and the cosmic irony of it all is devastating, though a bit strained. Thick and black as a pile of coal, the overall vibe of the album does, however, offer some embers to pick up and carry into the fissures of our lives, but they simply may not be enough for most people, who might consider this overly bleak and buried.

Worth two and a half potato chips.

The Creature of the Golden Dawn/An Incident at Owl Creek Bridge: Get Hip

Named after the infamous short story by Ambrose Pierce read by millions of American high school lit heads, the Creatures… offer a no-fuss rendition of garage rock, all Cynics meets the Troggs in the snot-infested universe of campy B-films. They do honor to classics by Them, 13th Floor Elevators, and Small Faces, never rebelling against the forms, never being too Lincoln Log stiff, never being too stompin’ surreal. It’s just caveman-meets-1960s-northwest-frat-and-bar rock that the Lime Spiders would have raised a fistful of Fosters to in the deep dead end of an Ozland night, or thrift store clad, Lakeside Lounge NYC hipsters would recognize as jukebox gems. “Little, Little Lies” is the telltale form incarnate, traditional speed purged of sly syncopation, choruses that sound like a hive of nasally bees, and guitar parts hoisted above the ruckus with the whir of barely balanced chainsaws. “Tried So Hard” is the Ramones/Dave Clark Five retro-pop moment, a sad-eyed gamble at sincerity and nostalgia, “tomorrow is down/today is alive/with games and goodbyes/your number has finally been called.” The overall production is loose-knit and skeletal, a bit too trebly when it could have been jugular, but the baby baby heartaches feel that much more undressed, fumbling, primitive, and real, I suppose.

Worth two potato chips.

End of a Year/Sincerely: Revelation

Supposedly inspired by Washington D.C.’s infamous Revolution Summer (Marginal Man, Beefeater, Rites of Spring, etc.), and even recorded by chief DC engineer Don Zientara, this actually feels more like Hot Water Music, since I don’t remember any of those DC bands have such a tricky drummer or expectant emo gestures. Sure, “Beleaders,” with lines like “something’s missing, there’s something missing/I can’t name it/I can’t place it/but I know it is gone” sounds like the word slinging hollow-feeling vibes of Guy Picciotto during the Reagan years, when the punk scene was trading Crass tattoos and studded belts for punk protest drummed up social actions, “Meese is a Pig” T-shirts, and musical messages that took nothing for granted anymore, those twentysomething years when language itself didn’t seem to build new trust or faith, though they kept trying. “Darnel” engulfs like a storm, abrasive and yearning, trying to both placate and irritate, “we took steel wool to our brains/but the memory stays.” In turn, “Harrison” follows the same course of action, forming a key bridge between bent down swarming vocals, poems that sound like strife and measurement of solace, and rhythmic kicking, jutting, and tweaking while they name drop the “lesser talented George Harrison” while bemoaning the fact that it may take a stabbing to be famous. The rest of the songs are equally breathless, replete with notations like “listen to Botch “Man the Ramparts” and Swiz “Dimluck” or even Lungfish, as if the band is forging a musical hyperlink or footnote, or maybe just an amped up conversation with all these other songs from another era that drive these young men to pick up a few left field chord structures and roar in a stream of consciousness, pointed but not always poignant ramblings, sometimes in huge cataloguing parallelism, like “Aboveground Petals,” which is a litany of “something’s….to be said for a young man’s body….to be said for a putrid basement.” They have chemistry and earnestness on their side; still, whether they can keep up the pressure remains to be seen, but it’s a powerful statement that echoes releases on Initial a few years back, when bands were looking to art-damaged agro, not just machismo stuffed nosedives into backwards-ass regression.

New Salem Witch Hunters/Self-titled re-released: Get Hip Records

Twenty years after this Cleveland, OH garage rock monster raised it head and released this on Herb Jackson Records, this slab of vinyl is back, this time on Get Hip, and full of eerily prescient and note-perfect derelict rock’n’roll. Imagine a dirty scoundrel version of early Three O’Clock, though no need for nice pressed clothes or fabulous fountainheads of paisley perfection. This is more raw-nerved, though it never loses its spacious pop mastery, like the Flamin Groovies, and the delicacy in places, like moments of “Headed for a Change,” with it references to fallen kings, is a tender balance between being a two-headed dog and a mushy wandering bard. “Love” is more titanic, a cataclysm of screams, speed, and soulful, sexed-up seduction, whereas the Flamin’ Groovies vibe reappears on “Falling,” a bouncing pub rock relic, whereas line likes “when your bellybutton touches your spine/you know you are hungry” from the track “Jeno’s Day (of Big Decisions)” seems apropos of Roky Erickson’s LSD rumbling, and the guitars feel almost as menacing. A Lyres style pops up on “Government Acid,” all ratty and keyboard driven and anarchic in spirit, while “At the Border” is a self-imploding merry-go-round of trad garage rockisms and “I Wanna Be Your Lover” is lo-fi leftovers, a B-side from the “Falling” 7”. Fit for rock’n’roll undertakers.

Worth two and a half potato chips.

Sinking Ships/Disconnecting: Revelation

Their label tries to connect the dots between this band and Chain of Strength, Avail, and Strike Anywhere, even 7 Seconds, underscoring that Sinking Ships is both hardcore and heartcore, where melody does keep tethered to the pit-bull ferocity and tough-skinned speed trials. So, it moshes without being metallic, signaling a kind of approach that Bad Brains tinkered with twenty years ago, making a full-bodied, smart but not smarmy hardcore template that didn’t produce just another round of speed metal maniacs. There’s a knack for guitar gestures that take chances and wrangle with expectations, the choruses are still painted thick and heavy as five gallon containers, and the claustrophobia of cold-hearted cities and cemetery skylines can be felt in every direction, as the lyrics state in angry pipes of fueled by anger, impatience, but resilience too. There are no second chances in these songs, it’s all blurs and frenetic pacing, a nitro intensity pervades it all, and there are the usual slow moshdowns when the drums lay down the NYC style ricocheting tom toms, but tracks like “Ghost Story” do break the mold a bit, offering respite through a well-pieced together, thunderous, perhaps Leatherface-inspired poetry of personal struggle and salvation. It actually harbors some breathing room, a momentary nod to life-giving instead of life-battering forces. However, “Deadlocked” reverses that trend, ending in less than 40 seconds, like a nuclear bomb hiccup. When they admit, “There’s shadows of a different time hanging over our heads,” it’s true for those of us who remember the first few rounds of hardcore in the 1980s, and whereas the black jeans and tattoos have become more required than riot causing, the honesty is appreciated. They have good intentions and indeed are trying to steal back the night from the fakers, but nursing nostalgia might not be enough to fill in the gaps for a future force of punk pioneers.

Worth two and a half potato chips.

Mad Tea Party/Big Top Soda Pop: Self-released

Well, this actually resembles the antics of Texas old timey pranksters Asylum Street Spankers, harkening back to an eclipsed era of main street parties, popcorn munching gangsters, starched collared clothes, and tin toys. There’s a kitschy, rootsy innocence to it all, so imagine the world of David Lynch but minus all the darkness and weirdness, well, most of the weirdness, and leave the snowflake and polished surface surrealism, which would seemingly describe “Space Repair,” or better yet, imagine the world of Peewee’s Playhouse, replete with the Del Rubio Trio, though with a hokey pokey country underbelly in places, which evokes the cadence and hollerin’ of “Whistle Pig”. In fact, recently I was listening to an old Phranc record, and it would seem that Mad Tea Party might be following a kind of similar aim: there’s something post-punk and late-1970s Jonathan Richman in each pleasure and folksy fandango like “Box of Kittens,” which means that although there is the toyish glee of miniature instruments and kitty frolic, there’s also something theatrical and ironic too, perhaps unintended, perhaps the entire point. Then again, maybe “Music Makers,” (which adopts and adapts a 1874 poem) if shaken and stirred, like backyard shuffleboard and ragtime lemonade-zest jazz with kazoo in tow, is really nothing more than a snapshot of great-grandpa’s time and place, or maybe it is a sly wink under the cover of 78 rpm styling. I’ll let you decide, but in the meantime, enjoy.

Worth one and a half potato chips.

Greg Graffin/ Cold as Clay: Anti

Graffin’s second solo stab is a different beast than his first, a pared-down, song-in-the-creek type of venture, featuring the likes of Jolie Holland and the Weakerthans behind him, but for all his sincerity and scope, his gravel’n’nasal-poked voice, perfect for the zenith hardcore of Bad Religion, doesn’t always fit the John Steinbeck-esque (“to spend the day like a farmer in debt…”) folk, bluegrass, and rural rock, which might fit Last Train Home or the V-Roys a bit better. This is not to say that he doesn’t have a knack for his subject matter, though I’m not sure that “the generals died by assassins/ the battalions dispersed on the fly,” has a well-worn patina that one might expect from a song called “Rebel’s Goodbye,” which feels a bit stiff, and his spiritual stab at “Talk About Suffering,” with its allusions to “trouble here below” and “the gospel train is coming” doesn’t even feel as cathartic and converging as Bruce Springsteen. I can’t quite peg where he goes astray, where the numbers don’t fall in line, where the colors begin to blur instead of coalesce. Instrumentally, they are appealing, well-honed, but lack springing footsteps and grange halls lone light bulb Friday night harkening. Maybe there is a structural self-conscious at play, as if he is trying to inhabit the songs, rather than let them take hold of him, or a psychic distance, that despite his honesty, just doesn’t let the material, whether it be about an Okie farm, labor camps, or soothing sermons, feel like the genuine articles. They’re not cast-offs, or straight-jacketed by style, it’s just, well, flat as a dust-caked salt lakebed. Too bad.

Worth two potato chips