Up until this album Bay Area pop couple Mates Of State have pretty much stuck to their trademark approach of portraying two sweethearts gazing gooily into each others' eyes singing heart-shaped pop songs to each other. Back in 2000 their first album My Solo Project, filled with terrific bright pop tunes, was a sugary shot in the arm for the jaded stone-faced indie crowd. With their subsequent albums Our Constant Concern and Team Boo, although Jason Hammel and Kori Gardner's mutual adoration remained unquestionable, their behavior became something of a one trick pony -- y'know when your best friend won't stop fawning over his/her honeypie in your presence. You roll your eyes and think, "there they go again!" You just wanna shout, "stop being so damn cute!" Their emotive boy/girl vocals atop organ and drums instrumentation could sometimes be somewhat one dimensional. But despite some of us having a tummyache from all the buttercream frosted earnestness, we held our tongue. Heck, clearly many folks haven't had a problem with their lovey-dovey-ness. Their fans are pretty diehard. But we've just felt that they had the potential for more, and would get around to it sooner or later. On Bring It Back we hear the duo blossoming! Instead of public displays of affection (with the exception of the back cover photo and the re-creation of an old ABBA photo inside), their personal bond makes itself felt in less obvious ways -- two tunesmiths on the same wavelength, not only exploring it together but also inviting their musician friends along on their refreshing hook'n'harmony filled adventures (adding other vocalists, horns, stringed instruments, even some kazoo and didgeridoo!). Old fans, don't you fret. We're not talking any radical changes... just a bit more going on, more polish, embellishments and such. Despite both the (in our opinion) somewhat misleading grainy cover photo that makes the couple look like some '60s Serge Gainsbourg pop duo and the abovementioned '70s ABBA photo replica, today's Mates Of State are far from retro Euro-pop sounding (specifically of the French or Swedish persuasion). No, it's simply sunny California emo pop filling up this their most deliciously composed and crafted, not to mention prettiest album to date!
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"My Solo Project" is the nearly perfect debut album from the San Francisco duo of Kori Gardener and Jason Hammel. The Mates of State's super catchy arrangements for '70s organ, drums, and boy / girl vocal harmonies are a warm, almost groovy take on the bittersweet emo-pop championed by PEE, Rainer Maria, the Get Up Kids, The Anniversary, and Superchunk. Fans of those groups will be amazed at how strong and sure this record is. After only a handful of live shows, and absolutely no press support to speak of for Mates Of State, we've sold many many copies of this album -- an impressive feat in any respect! This is one of those records that customers ask about every single time we play it. You should expect more great things from Mates of State in the future!
Rejoice! For here is the second full length album from the local duo Mates of State. We've raved on and on about their debut, and are happy to report the new album is equally wonderful. This is just shiningly-great power pop that is remarkable not only for
Somewhere along their three record history, the Mates of State boy / girl team of Jason Hammel and Kori Gardner got married. For a band with emo roots singing their signature love songs with triumphant giddiness, this turn of events seems awfully adult of them, signalling that they might turn towards settling down, raising kids, and slowly growing old. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that; yet Mates of State is a project that yearns for the energy of youth and the providence of love. For better of for worse, "Team Boo" the couple's third album stays the course set by the previous outings, with the lovely boy / girl vocal harmonies belted over the cute but oh-so-clever chords from a vintage Yamaha organ and drum rhythms that meander through time changes as freely as the spirited vocal deliveries. If you've ever had the pleasure of seeing Mates of State live, their stage presence is entirely wrapped up in their mutual gaze upon each other, as if they had just fallen in love with each other all over again as they walked on stage and belted out these passionate love songs with a remarkable freshness. They've been touring almost constantly for the past several years; and this lovesick gaze remains the same. The romantic in me wants to believe that this is indicative of their love for each other; but like all emo (or in the case of Mates of State, post emo) bands, the ability to emote is crucial to success. It could all be a fairy tale for Mates of State, but it's quite a magical one.
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Hurrah! A fan-pleasin' Mates Of State documentary shot by director (and M.O.S. fan) Thadd Day and the band themselves. It follows the pop sweethearts out on the road and into the studio (for the recording of their last full length Team Boo). Live clips capture them in the Midwest, Austin, Toronto and Japan. Keep your eyes peeled, maybe you'll spot yourself in the crowd! Also included on this dvd are a photo gallery and a couple of videos for their songs "Fluke" and "Ha Ha".
We first heard these seminal French synth poppers on the awesome So Young But So Cold compilation from a while back. Their contribution, "Disco Rough" (included here), was definitely one of the highlights, dark and driving, a little bit krautrocky, driven by a pulsing synthesized bassline, the whole track peppered with all manner of glitch and squelch, and laced with tinkling chime like melodies, lots of noisiness, grit and grime, and most surprising of all, HORNS. A twisted combo, but one that sounded pretty great together.
Les Visiteurs Du Soir is the long overdue reissue of the group's classic 1981 album, originally released on Celluloid, and while the above description of their "Disco Rough" single, pretty much applies to their sound as a whole, the group were pretty inventive, and injected the new wave sound of the time with all manner of warped and twisted innovations, adding soaring strings, or xylophone, strange sonic combinations that definitely helped the band stand out. Opener "Paris, Tokyo" has a killer horn part, and is doused in clouds of descending electronic streaks, and the arrangement, as it is on many of the tracks here, is downright PROG, and with a different sonic palette, who knows, this might have been a whole different kind of record, the sound slipping into weird horn flecked chugs, blasts of baroque poppiness, angular, intricate melodic tangles, and more. And heck that's all in the first song. "TV Night" is a bit cold wavey, a little darker and dronier, with blurred swaths of keyboard shimmer, over throbbing low end synth pulse, and when the vocals come in, the synths and vocals lock into a progged out stop / start stutter, not to mention the busy drumming, and the weird distorted male vocals, oh and more horns of course! "Jungle Hurt" is another good one, with ELO like cellos draping moaning melodies over the sultry vox and the percolating synth grooves, dramatic and epic...
We could go on for sure, track by track, but needless to say, fans of previous Medical reissues (Axxess, Tony Carey, Drinking Electricity, Dalek I, Guyer's Connection, Lou Champagne System, etc) or local reissue label Dark Entries, will flip for this! As always, extravagantly packaged in a heavy full color jacket, pressed on 180 gram opaque grey vinyl, with a printed insert, with interviews and liner notes. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, each one hand numbered!
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Mathlete's indie jangle lo-fi behavior with analogue synths, and earnest / sensitive boy vocal whine recalls the Land Of The Loops and a lot of the happy-go-lucky aesthetics of Darla.
The Bay Area dreamy pop duo of Jaime Borschuk and P.F. Dumanis are back with their third full length. While the first two were delivered to our ears on cd, this one comes spinning on wonderful limited edition vinyl. Only 250 were pressed, so act fast! All These Days starts rolling in gentle fashion with "Fleeting", a lullaby tempo'd number that brings to mind the drowsy blanketing embrace of Yo La Tengo or Low. Wistful verging on downright melancholic. Then they get the toe tappin' and guitar strummin' on the considerably more upbeat second tune "Can i Love You Yet?" It's definitely more like what we recall from their previous releases. However, the bright burst of springy sunshine swiftly give way to the autumnal feel of the opening track, as the pair brings things back down again for the next tune. They stick to this slower, somber pace for the rest of the nine songs. While we certainly dig The Matinees' peppier side, on this album they prove to be just as engaging treading the more shadowier paths of pop.
The indie pop garden continues to blossom in the Bay Area! The Matinees' sophomore full length catches a ride on the fleeting warm sunbeams that visit SF around this time of year. Bask with us in some really good girl/boy sung tunes. On songs such as "Mission Beach" they're very much in the vein of Quasi, and take a more reeling whimsical spin more akin to Fiery Furnaces on "Fair Weather Friend". As for their drowsy pop rendition of David Bowie's "Modern Love"... well, we're not quite sure how we feel about that, but the rest of the album sure sounds sweet. Much more polished and composed than 2007's Sleepy Seeds. The album was recorded and co-produced by Greg Ashley, and features guests from local pals Love Is Chemical, Scrabbel, Invisible Cities, and Agent Ribbons.
If The Matinees might look and sound a bit familiar to you, it might be because you're already familiar with the individual members' other musical endeavors -- local bands Blue Period, Plan To Pink and The Bright Grey Wing. The SF duo make old style jangly indie pop, and by 'old style' we mean the girl/boy sung college radio delights of the early '90s. If you dig Unrest and the many other Mark Robinson fronted pop combos, you'll probably welcome The Matinees's debut album which made us think they were not so distant cousins of Mr. Robinson. Nice and sweet.
If your pajama party guest list included Ween, Beck and Lou Reed, it might sound something like this. We have a sneakin' suspicion that lots of pot was involved in the creation of this music. It's a very very off-kilter blend of folk and rock. Things go off on weird tangents that seems very much the product of a mind, uhh, well-baked. If The Mattoid does not smoke the weed, we sincerely apologize, but you listen to these six songs (c'mon, one of the songs is called "Tinkli Vinkli"... wha'?!), and tell us you don't think the same thing!
Dan Matz of Windsor For Derby offers two tracks of solitary, singer / songwriter tracks with him, his guitar, and a couple of guys adding harmonium and melodica drones on one song. Pretty as some of the recent Windsor recordings, but no where nearly as intense as his Michael Gira collaboration.
We've been getting tons of requests for this, and after many attempts at contacting the band, we've finally got copies of their full length vinyl debut!! Maus Haus is a local San Francisco experimental pop six piece group, whose analogue synth-driven sounds lend themselves to comparisons to bands like Hot Chip, Stereolab, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Aavikko and Grizzly Bear. They're sure garnering a popular following with floor-filling live club gigs and word-of-mouth buzz!! But Maus Haus also mine a more off-kilter chamber pop sound that often forays into adventurous noirish British jazz territory that set the group apart from their perhaps better known contemporaries and influences. Whipsmart lyrics, soulful harmonies and tightly shifting musical arrangements (pensive harpsichords, far-off flutes and hypnotic saxophone hooks weave throughout) aptly display the group's fine-tuned musicianship and makes this local band definitely one to watch! Each LP comes with a mp3 download card for those who are vinyl-impaired! Very Recommended!
Two new songs from this local Oakland sextet who are not afraid of tight and compositionally complex pop epics. Like a mix of Aavikko's energetic synthetic pop, Grizzly Bear's vocal harmonies and Liars urgent avant leanings, Maus Haus are probably amongst the hardest working local musicians and it shows! This white vinyl 7" comes with a download card for both songs plus three other brand new tracks from their Sea Sides EP. That's a lot of bang for your bucks!
Here we have a collection of unreleased tracks, lost songs and rarities from weirdo outsider lo-fi pop-smith John Maus, who was originally more of an Ariel Pink sideman, and who thus shared much or AP's sonic worldview, but it quickly became evident that Maus was his own sort of twisted genius, and quickly established himself as quite the iconic "singer/songwriter", one that seemed to eclipse AP for many folks around here, and it's easy to see why, even here. While many of these tracks were left off of records, and some are from super early in Maus' career, they still display his warped mastery of low fidelity cable access VHS late night synth pop balladry, "North Star" sounds like Scott Walker fronting later period Blue Oyster Cult and performing on Stairway To Stardom, while "The Law" sounds like yacht rock via eighties new wave via bedroom 4 track downer pop. And "Castles In The Grave" is like a Bollywood version of John Maus, and might be the best track here. The great thing about Maus is not just his ability to create these weird out of time, worn and faded pop sounds, but to imbue them with impossibly catchy hooks, and the sort of ear worms that continue to burrow brain-ward long after listening. There is some serious goofiness here (like the sub-Sparks "This Is The Beat"), but for every moment like that, there's another that's darkly sinister, or lush and sultry and dramatically brooding, or impossibly catchy and dementedly poppy, and while John Maus is definitely an acquired taste, it's one we acquired long ago!
The year is only just beginning but there have already been some amazing new records released that we're pretty sure will end up on our favorites of '08 list. This new outing by the enigmatic John Maus is one of them and it might just be the most engrossing and addicting albums we've been hooked on in a long time!
Best and barley known in the past as being loosely associated with the Paw Tracks family (Animal Collective, Panda Bear, Ariel Pink) Maus has made a record that will make his name definitely stand on its own. As he's created one of the most fantastical, bizarre and engaging pop records in recent memory. Warped bedroom pop with a flair for fantasy, wrapped in old fucked up synths, deep slowed down vocals, cosmic beats and a singular unique vision. Like OMD on codeine or early home demo recordings of The Cure captured on an answering machine tape that's been dubbed over way too many times. Or imagine a soundtrack to a lost early '80s movie made by both John Hughes and John Carpenter, as romantic teenage life intersects with magical apocalyptic doom! Love Is Real is as creepy and mystifying as it is heartfelt and endearing. As catchy as it is unpredictable. Out of nowhere the synths will rise to crazy loud levels or Maus will let out a haunting scream, and even after listening to this album hundreds of time as we have obsessively already, those parts still jump out, scare, startle and thrill us every time we listen.
Start to finish the album is impeccable. Songs lead into each other perfectly, the pacing is dead on, and every single track on the record belongs where it is and has a weight of its own. Whether it's sounding like the muddiest version of a Psychedelic Furs track or tapping into a bizarre drugged out cosmic disco excursion or having a freaked out panic attack, the record pulls from so many directions while always sounding like a completely other universe. This is what fantasy sounds like when the world around you is falling apart. Totally amazing!
Yeeeay! Finally out on vinyl now. Packaged so nicely too with the cd's shiny silver cover transformed into classy white on white (Even the vinyl is white!), but still with that original awesome full color sexy robot painting smack dab on the front cover! Now we get to play this in our bedrooms and jump up and down and lose ourselves in this amazing record all over again! Here's what we said when we heard Love Is Real for the first time....
The year is only just beginning but there have already been some amazing new records released that we're pretty sure will end up on our favorites of '08 list. This new outing by the enigmatic John Maus is one of them and it might just be the most engrossing and addicting albums we've been hooked on in a long time!
Best and barley known in the past as being loosely associated with the Paw Tracks family (Animal Collective, Panda Bear, Ariel Pink) Maus has made a record that will make his name definitely stand on its own. As he's created one of the most fantastical, bizarre and engaging pop records in recent memory. Warped bedroom pop with a flair for fantasy, wrapped in old fucked up synths, deep slowed down vocals, cosmic beats and a singular unique vision. Like OMD on codeine or early home demo recordings of The Cure captured on an answering machine tape that's been dubbed over way too many times. Or imagine a soundtrack to a lost early '80s movie made by both John Hughes and John Carpenter, as romantic teenage life intersects with magical apocalyptic doom! Love Is Real is as creepy and mystifying as it is heartfelt and endearing. As catchy as it is unpredictable. Out of nowhere the synths will rise to crazy loud levels or Maus will let out a haunting scream, and even after listening to this album hundreds of time as we have obsessively already, those parts still jump out, scare, startle and thrill us every time we listen.
Start to finish the album is impeccable. Songs lead into each other perfectly, the pacing is dead on, and every single track on the record belongs where it is and has a weight of its own. Whether it's sounding like the muddiest version of a Psychedelic Furs track or tapping into a bizarre drugged out cosmic disco excursion or having a freaked out panic attack, the record pulls from so many directions while always sounding like a completely other universe. This is what fantasy sounds like when the world around you is falling apart. Totally amazing!
Not to be confused with the John Maus who was in the Walker Brothers in the '60s this John Maus has been making warped baroque pop in the cozy confines of his bedroom in Minnesota for the last several years and is best known for his contributions to Ariel Pink and Animal Collective offshoot Panda Bear. Maus is one seriously prolific songwriter who until now has kept pretty much all of his own songs to himself. "Songs" is a collection of some of those dark pop offerings recorded at home over the last few years. Channeling the spirit of Ian Curtis and using vintage electronic equipment, Maus's songs evoke a hazy kind of daydreaming but with a much more morose slant. His deep voice got us thinking of folks like Calvin Johnson, Scott Walker and on the first track he's a dead ringer for Robert Smith. Dark weird pop done right!
Love Is Real, the last record from warped lo-fi popsmith John Maus, is an all time aQ favorite, a dizzying trip into some alternate reality FM radio, where the Cure recorded on answering machines, OMD crafted pop hits on broken tape decks and malfunctioning 4 tracks, a cosmic beat laden dream pop drug trip that managed to be as catchy and irresistible as it was baffling and totally and insanely demented.
Needless to say, we were super excited to discover there was a new John Maus record, the strangely titled We Must Become The Pitiless Censors Of Ourselves, a record that got even stranger when we discovered there was a song called "Cop Killer" on it. Naturally we assumed it was a cover of Body Count's infamous banned jam, so we played that track first, and besides being surprised that it was in fact an original, we also ended up being totally blown away by what might be the sweetest, most dreamily twisted John Maus track EVER.
A broody, almost torch songy ballad, all woozy synths, and big eighties drums, Maus delivering the bizarrely provocative lyrics in his best warm velvety croon: "Cop killer, cop killer, Let's kill the cops tonight, kiiiiiiill them, cop killer, kill every cop in sight", and then the delirious refrain "Against the law" repeated over and over in a tangled storm of intense pulsing synths. The sound lush and explosive, thick and softly blown out, a serious shot across Ariel Pink's bow, a definite challenge for the warped lysergic lo-fi pop crown, a challenge that's gonna be tough to answer. Especially considering that the rest of the record, is just as good, if not as immediately catchy. But catchy it is. "Matter Of Fact" sounds like Maus channeling Devo through his cracked eighties FM pop filter, with some equally baffling lyrics ("Pussy is not the matter of fact"), and some gorgeous hazy synth ambience. "Streetlight" is total eighties new wave pop with the delay and echo effects cranked, the vocals careening wildly through dubbed out clouds of delay, while underneath synths pulse and rhythms groove. "Quantum Leap" is haunting and gorgeously gloomy, Maus the consummate crooner, his deep dramatic vocals bobbing atop thick bouncy basslines, handclap percussion, and lots of swirling sonic murk. "...And The Rain" is another darkly dramatic dream pop doom synth dirge, all rainy late night ambience, and again cloaked in thick swirls of soft focus distortion and blurred echoey shimmer, every track seeming to constantly grow more and more washed out and effects drenched, constantly on the verge of total collapse, but somehow, the more tripped out and damaged they sound, the more pretty and poppy and dreamy they become, a fantastically fractured collection of twisted outsider gloom pop that really has no equal. About as close to a perfect pop record as Maus is liable to get, assuming you like your pop buried in buzz and all blurry and druggy and woozy and warped. Which we most definitely DO.
After The Dagger last list, our latest vintage-sounding (but utterly brand new) true, trad metal obsession comes in the form of the debut disc from Finland's Mausoleum Gate. You'd be forgiven for thinking this album came out years and years ago, like in 1985, 'cause it's rocking, twin guitar NWOBHM influenced stuff, with heavy nods to '70s Deep Purplish prog too, featuring lots of keyboard (Hammond organ, Mellotron), songs about Gypsy Queens, and better yet, Demon Droids - in fact our fave cut here, maybe favorite metal song in a while, is indeed "Demon Droid", how can you not love it for the title/concept alone? It's a kickass tune, too, and we also dig how the vocalist throws in some wordless "Aaah aaah aaah aaahs", nice touch. Speaking of the wailing, commanding vocalist, we're pretty sure he must have one or both hands permanently locked into making the "invisible oranges" gesture, or Dio-esque devil horns!
Cliches abound, perhaps, but they're delivered with panache. Like fellow Finns Lord Fist, Mausoleum Gate sure have got the spark, and conjure an entertaining, none too serious "evil" atmosphere, perfectly captured by the cover art. You can practically smell the brimstone. Also they ROCK. Moreover, you really don't often hear this sort of doomy/proggy/rocking combination (at its most doomyproggyrockingest on the nearly 12 minute closing epic, "Mausoleum Gate"), so it's a ton of fun for fans of the likes of Iron Maiden, Rainbow, Priest, early Savatage, old Heep, Dio (and Martin) era Sabbath, and other demon-pact class acts of yore.
Originally released as super limited cd-r's back in 2008, these killer slabs of twisted, outsider fuzz-pop black-gloom weirdness/genius are finally available again, now on the kvltest of formats, the cassette! Two cd-r's on a single tape! Here's what we had to say about I Am The Mausoleums back when we first reviewed it on New Arrivals List #276:
You think Wold and Velvet Cacoon know a thing or two about buzz and distortion, well, those guys have nothing on the Mausoleums...
It's hard to even quantify how blown out and buzzy the sound is here, it might make more sense to reference Japanese noise music cuz this almost sounds like straight up super distorted speaker melting N.O.I.S.E., on the surface at least. Until you notice a roiling whirlpool of blackened riffing and howled vocalizing, just beneath all that harsh hiss and brutal buzz. It's almost like Ildjarn or Beherit recorded by Masonna and produced by Merzbow. Blasting and relentless, face melting fury, guitars so distorted they sound like they might crumble into jagged shards, drums that sound like bursts of white noise, but all deftly shaped into riffs and songs and chunks of seriously scalding blackened metal.
But then the band will unleash something like "Cicada", a gorgeous loping slowcore jam, again doused with delay and buried under a layer of distorted grit, but strangely lovely, with a bit of melancholy twang mixed in.
Or the freaked out blackpsych blast of "Joan Of Arc" a track that sounds like a dense slab of pure black buzz and howl, until suddenly a gorgeous chunk of indie jangle surfaces, still dripping with distorted buzz, but so goddamn dreamy and melodic, like an even more distorted damaged My Bloody Valentine, the drums and cymbals so corroded and decayed, they balance out the dreamy jangle. Elsewhere, riffs are dipped in molten hellfire and pushed all the way into the red, crumbling distortion is draped over lilting minor key guitar, strange Greg Ginn-ish angular guitars are twisted and melted down into more black buzz...
And while the majority of the record is some of the filthiest, blackest buzzingest metal you'll ever hear, the buzzing blackness is split up by all sorts of unlikely and not that black jams, the strangely skeletal Stereolab-ish post rock of "Lenin Not Lennon", the creepy black electro (replete with strangely Beatles-esque guitar) of "Insignificance", the metalized buzz wrapped Neu!-isms of "Running Through The Reeds", the warbly organ flecked garage stomp of "I Guess I'm Like A Prince, Maybe" and the Spacemen 3 like druggy drone of "Like A Prince", all seemingly out of place, but when listened to as a whole, seem to perfectly balance the extreme brutal buzz of the rest of the disc.
Maybe too fucked up and far out for most metal heads, but folks into super damaged heaviness, and freaked out whatthefuck metal will dig this BIG TIME.
And here's what we had to say about Blackened Fawns Cleanse The Earth With Fire back on aQ New Arrivals List #288:
The long overdue return of aQ faves The Mausoleums, whose last record was a confusional swirl of grim black buzz and weird jangle pop, blown out bliss and thick dense noise. For this second record, the Mausoleums seem to have turned down the buzz (just a bit) and turned up the pop. That's right. POP. Not that there wasn't pop all over the last Mausoleums disc I Am The Mausoleum, but the opening track on Blackened Fawns Cleanse The Earth With Fire, "Livelihood", is a gorgeous organ drenched slab of crunchy distorted shoegaze jangle. And we're not talking about the new wave of "metalgaze" that so many metal bands seem to be glomming onto, this is just glorious and resplendent and soaring, shimmering blisspop nirvana, the guitars jangly but washed out and fierce, the melodies sprawling and sun drenched, the sound crumbling and gloriously distorted. In fact, one song in and we're thinking it well worth the price of admission.
But it doesn't take long for the band to dip back into their other true love, the next track, "The One Who Sees", finds the band returning to a furious blackened buzz, howled vocals, pounding drums, insect like riffage, but even then, the sound is still rife with disembodied pop jangle and soaring guitar buzz, an impossible hybrid that sounds way better than it should. The next track is neither, instead a dense processed soundscape of soaring guitar feedback, little curlicues of buzzing melody, looped stuttering drums, dizzying minor key strum, all tangled up in a gloriously seasick hypnotic whirl.
"Thief" begins as straight up pop, like some super distorted Pavement outtake, or lost Sebadoh jam, all fuzzy jangle and simple propulsive drumming, until the vocals come in, a super distorted black metal shriek, bringing with it another layer of buzzing blown out distortion.
And so it goes for the rest of the record, careening from glorious shoegaze distortion drenched buzz pop, to in-the-red lo-fi black metal crunch, but with those two various sonic strains constantly bleeding and leeching into the other, resulting in the record's finest moments, the impossibly dense, epic, majestic guitar drone shoegaze blowout of "Old Woman In The Woods", impossibly heavy, yet gorgeously melodic at the same time, the strange distorted folky raga buzz of "His Reward", the frenetic ultra distorted surfy twang of "Skeletal" and finally the brief closer, "The Bees", a lovely chunk of overdriven steel string Appalachia that near the end explodes into a brief blown out buzz-drenched burst of looped digital fuzz.
The return of the Mausoleums! Well, not so much a return, it's not like the man behind the Mausoleums went missing, for the last several years, he's actually been working alongside us right here at aQ, but for whatever reason, the Mausoleums as a musical entity had remained silent, which was definitely a shame. After two obsessively loved cd-r's, we had been hankering for more.
Those cds, sadly both out of print (any labels tuned in that might want to reissue those on cd or vinyl, really SHOULD!), were a confusional mix of super distorted buzzing blackness, crunchy blissed out shoegazey pop, jangly post rock, and whatever other sonic weirdness Mr. Mausoleums felt like mixing in. On Just A Certainty, the first new Mausoleums record in 3+ years, much has changed, it's a much more cohesive record for sure, but all of the above sounds are glaringly absent, no jangly indie pop, no buzzing blackness, no dreamy shoegaze, instead, The Mausoleums have crafted a gorgeous disc, of lo-fi, murky mesmer, that manages to fuse fuzzy folk with mantric hypnorock, looped ritualism with druggy psychedelic space rock, buzzing dronemusic with abstract lysergic drift.
The opening track "Destination III" is a bit of Appalachian style folk, but wreathed in a prickly swirl of crunchy static, the recording so muted and muddy, the notes bleed into each other, the folky fingerpicking transformed into a fuzzy chordal swirl, dripping with reverb and delay. "Negation" is another bit of folky strum and stomp, but even more muted and washed out and indistinct, the vocals and guitars tangled up under layers of hiss and hum and whir and thrum, there seem to be drums too, but so buried they become a muted pulse, all woven into a weirdly rollicking chunk of murky dronefolk. "Swimmin In A Sea Of Sand" displays the other side of the Mausoleums new sound, one that fuses the drugged out hypnotic repetition of groups like Spacemen 3 and Wooden Shjips, with the alien trancelike audio ritualism of Zomes, a looped buzzy guitarscape that could go one forever.
"Doomed/Where You Go" continues that same sort of lysergic dronerock, with the drums almost punching through the murk and mire, but remaining more of a distant throb, while the muted buzz is laced with spidery melodies and hushed whispery vox, a tripped out buzzy bit of hypno psych rock for sure. "Gypsy Moth" might be our fave, a hazy, gauzy layered landscape of pulsing organs, dreamlike loops and all manner of overtones, it may be just an interlude, but it will have you completely entranced.
The last three tracks are longer, and allow The Mausoleums to stretch things out, and get way spacier and psychedelic, "Psychic Overthrow" is like a space rock jam reduced to it's core elements, a churning sea of pulsing, reverb drenched riffs, roiling endlessly, bleeding into each other, creating one epic and organic psychscape, while "Opposite Shores" sounds like some old school psychedelic garage rock, but recorded underwater, all the sounds washed out and blurry, the drums propulsive, but still buried beneath layer upon layer of fuzz, this jam the poppiest of the bunch, with some cool Eastern sounding buzzing guitar leads wound into the shimmery swirl, and finally, "H774119" offers up a Mausoleums style stab at new wave, programmed drums, buzzing synths, hypnotic and krautrocky, sounding a bit like a super raw, and WAY more fucked up Stereolab, dark, dreamy, druggy, and WAY psychedelic.
A rad to return to form, even though it's a decidedly different form, but it's one we like a a lot, maybe even better. Recommended for fans of Zomes, Wooden Shjips, Spacemen 3, Amps For Christ, Suicide, Stereolab and other masters of murky cosmic mesmer...
CASSETTE ONLY, AND OF COURSE CRAZY LIMITED!!!!
The Mausoleums are back with a new collection of hypnosis-inducing riffs and sonorous tape-saturated grit transmissions in tow. With this, their fourth outing, The Mausoleums continue to refine the ball-lightning-like blown out energy of their earlier missives' psychedelic black metal into a somewhat more dynamic nuanced approach consisting of heavy doses of fried amp guitar buzz, churning organ, bass and percussion. Even with the feeling of simplicity achieved via elemental reduction and experiments in fidelity shift, the result is equal parts fist-pumping and cerebral, like a foggy haze trapped in a perpetually ascending NASA shuttle. This album retains the feeling of claustrophobia and paranoia of earlier ones; yet, more than before, production accentuates mood, providing just enough space for the sounds to breathe and create texture and depth, particularly in the buried yet aggressively melodic, occasionally double-tracked, vocals. There's a strange sense of reassurance in the music; the knowledge of plant growth overrunning remnants of civilization, perhaps, while Hawkwind riffs warble on the last Victrola. While the Mausoleums have always felt like an unearthed, organic compost of sound, elements of rural black dirt psychedelia and even Appalachia drape like a shrouds of mist on this record more heavily than before, alongside wafting echoes and half-remembered dreams of other distinctly domestic traditions: Detroit Rock, Southern Blues, metal, and hardcore, among others. And the Mausoleums' dirt-under-the-nails approach extends beyond the sonics; in spite of the diversity of influences and implications of cross-pollination, the Mausoleums seem to exist wholly on their own terms, offering a compelling statement in support of the simplicity of homegrown songcraft, production, and maintaining a singular vision in an era of hyper-aware referential complexity.
No, not some quaint, lovey-dovey coupling between a waif-like chanteuse and her mustachioed beau-hunk. This is an Oakland minimal wave duo, whose emotional detachment through cold electronics and monotone vocals is hardly the stuff of romance. The former half of this duo is Max Brotman, who had released a pretty fantastic album of Sheffield-influenced synth-punk under the banner Brotman & Short. As good as that record (and this record is), we gotta wonder about the lack of imagination when it comes to naming his projects. Anyway, the latter is Mara Barenbaum, who records her Not Not Fun approved work of pop-surrealism as Group Rhoda. Let's hope this is not some one-off collaboration, as Brotman really seems to bring a sense of clarity and structural direction, and Barenbaum has plenty of weird-girl cards up her sleeve at any given time. The two come up with some choice synth-pop sequences on vintage gear reflecting a Chris Carter / Clock DVA sense of robo-funk. One of the rare outings from Dark Entries of contemporary work, but easily lives up to rest of the label's impressive catalog.
Long overdue reissue of this legendary and mostly unheard early eighties Flying Nun artifact. Even Flying Nun obsessives would be forgiven for missing out on Max Block's sole 12" release, but odds are you're familiar with the members of Max Block, specifically Maryrose and Brian Cook, who first found themselves in a band together here, having previously done time in Above Ground (recently reissued and reviewed right here) and Scorched Earth Policy respectively, and eventually going on to form long time aQ faves the Renderers.
This lp comp collects both that long lost 12", as well as another, until now unreleased ep, The Max Block's sound a woozy art damaged punk, lots of angular jagged guitars, wild octopoidal drumming, dueling male / female vox, super active melodic basslines, tribal rhythms, swirls of spacey effects, the vibe droned out and propulsive, with whirring organs adding a strange almost circusy vibe at times, but usually reminding us of groups like The Ex and Pere Ubu, even Wire here and there, some tracks frantic and frenetic, others brooding and downcast, sounding like with some extra noise and heft they could've been Dead C jams, in fact the live tracks are downright noisy, but MB's sound is firmly on the pop side of the spectrum, although unlike many of the NZ bands of the time, their's was less concerned with jangle, and more with crunch, less twee and more tangle, slipping from noisy and dirgey to trance-y and minimal to crunchy, angular and chaotic. Awesome stuff, and if you dug the track on the recent Time To Go Flying Nun compilation we reviewed recently, you've probably been wanting more!!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, includes a download coupon as well!
When we listed the Maximo Park ep a few lists back, in the review we proclaimed that if only it had been a full length it would have been record of the week for sure. Well, here we are a few months later, and what do ya know? Maximo Park is record of the week. It wasn't a done deal though, not at all. That first four-song ep was so perfect, Interpol meets XTC, flawless angular pop, we listened to it non-stop. So much so that when we first threw this on, it didn't quite live up to our expectations. Those first four songs from the ep set the bar pretty high. Maybe too high. But like all great records, each subsequent listen offered us more, and revealed each song to be even catchier than the one before. A Certain Trigger has quickly become the pop record of the year for us. Hyperbole? Maybe, but we just can't stop listening to this record. As we've mentioned many times before, we fought tooth and nail against this whole new wave dance punk revival, but a good band is a good band. What can you do? And ya know, we dug Interpol, Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs, but hell if Maximo Park doesn't trounce them all. They do have "the sound", that sort of jagged off kilter post punk pop that will ensure that they get lumped in with the flavors of the month. But the songs here are so much more timeless sounding. Unlike the loads of bands just aping Gang Of Four, Maximo Park sound like their own band, sure they share some sonic elements, but they sound like they could have easily existed in 1980 as much as 2005. And they draw their inspiration not only from the obvious, Gang Of Four, XTC, Interpol, but also incorporate the moody dramatic electropop of Ultravox, the gloomy buzz and burn of Joy Division, and even bouncy eighties power pop, with super fuzzed out synths, kinetic new wave rhythms, and of course MP frontman Paul Smith's immediately engaging vocals. The songs are bouncy and poppy, but manage to be dark and minor key and edgy enough to give the whole record an intense emotional buzz. Two songs from the ep are present, our pop song of the year "Apply Some Pressure" and the XTC worshipping "The Coast Is Always Changing" (you can hear samples of both with the review of the "Apply Some Pressure" ep), but there are plenty of new classics that have been getting repeat play here like crazy. The massively catchy "Now I'm All Over The Shop" with its pounding piano and weirdly arpeggiated rhythm, and a vocal melody that literally gives us chills, like that one song on a mixtape that makes you want to either smash everything to bits or run across town to declare your true love. And then there's the bouncy XTC count-by-numbers pop of "The Night I Lost My Head" with its angelic background Oooo's and a weird stop start chorus, and the gloomy bass driven "Once, A Glimpse" with it's chiming guitars, tribal rhythms and guitar heavy refrain and the gorgeously languid "Acrobat" that sounds like an updated version of Ultravox's "Vienna". So pretty. All of A Certain Trigger is totally classic sounding, enough that it was tough to pick which songs to make sound samples for. So yeah, all you folks who froth at the mouth for every band that has any of that Killers / Franz Ferdinand / Bloc Party sound going on will probably love this record, but it's way more than just another one of -those- bands. Maximo Park are an amazing pop band, and this is an amazing pop record, with enough sonic precedents to make it feel familiar and classic, but enough new stuff going on and enough killer classic songs to make it one of our favorite new records. Period.
For a limited time, a bonus disc is included featuring 7 tracks recorded live in Japan!
Interpol meets XTC. What could be better? Not much if you ask us. Yet another band in the moody eighties new wave revival dance party (Futureheads, Killers, Bloc Party, Interpol, etc...) a genre we tried desperately to steer clear of, but what can we do? Band after band keep managing to take that totally played out sound and infuse it with new found energy, punk rock snarl and killer killer songs. The first track here "Apply Some Pressure" is easily the single of the year. Angular shards of guitar, insistent tribal drumming, and a hook that just won't quit. All topped off by a halftime, arpeggiated chorus that is absolutely PERFECT. One of the few songs of late that we just listen to over and over and over and over. But then track two is almost just as good, and it's then that Maximo Park's XTC worship becomes totally (and perfectly) obvious. Herky jerky rhythms over swoonsome guitar melodies, warm warbly synths and brainy lyrics (they even rhyme 'lost' with 'riposte'!). Tack on two more amazing tracks and you've got the most brutal tease of an ep in recent memory. Four songs in eleven minutes leaving you desperate for more More MORE. If this was a full length it may very well have been record of the week. As it is, fans of Interpol, the Strokes, the Futureheads, the Killers and all that sort of stuff should get all over this.
We went apeshit for Maximo Park last year and we don't regret it at all. A testament to the kickassnes of the 'Park is how much they still get played in the store. ALL THE TIME! For those of you who don't know what the heck we're talking about, pick up Maximo Park's A Certain Trigger (one of Andee's top 10 records of last year and a unanimous store fave) and then we'll talk. Lumped in with the new breed of dance punk, Kaiser Chiefs, Franz Ferdinand,the Killers, but for our money Maximo Park trump them all. Taking the influence of all -those- bands, Gang Of Four, Interpol, Ultravox, Joy Division, and most importantly XTC! And it's the XTC that really separates MP from the pack. The dance element is tempered by a huge swath of snarky intelligent pop, and it doesn't hurt that in the middle of a wildly propulsive dance punk rave up MP will unleash a hook straight out of XTC's classic pop songbook, taking everything to a whole 'nother level. Fun and funky, clever and quirky, angular new wave guitars, bouncy power pop rhythms and synths all over the place. The songs on Missing Songs, a collection of B sides, are slow growers, not as immediately catchy as ALL the tracks on A Certain Trigger, but they're the kind of songs that on repeated listens seep into your brain and end up superseding the 'hits' and becoming you new favorites. EXCEPT for two tracks from the first Maximo Park that were as immediately catchy as ANY song they'd written which were inexplicably left off the full length, "Fear Of Falling" and "I Want You To Leave", both bouncy and churning and choppy and punky and fucking perfect. With strange stop start arrangements, lush harmony vocals and impossibly off kilter and improbably catchy hooks. Even if this were a $15 single with JUST those two songs it would be SO worth it. But instead you get a whole batch of other songs destined to be you new favorites, as well as three demo versions of tracks from the full length!
We made the first Maximo Park record of the week and here we are two years later and it still gets daily plays. An impossible hooky combination of new wave swagger and classic dour pop, Interpol meets XTC is how we described it, and that was pretty much spot on. Maybe a bit more modern and a lot more caffeinated. So we were counting the days until this here disc dropped, and it's everything we had hoped for. Not as immediately as catchy, and a little bit more introspective, but after repeated listens, Our Earthly Pleasures has blossomed into THE POP RECORD OF THE YEAR. We sort of gushed endlessly about the first record, so you might just want to head over to that review (A Certain Trigger) and see what we had to say, and heck, while you're there, if you don't already own it, you might was well add it to your cart. All the folks who flip over stuff like the Kaiser Chiefs and Franz Ferdinand and the Killers will probably love this too. But the rest of you, who couldn't quite get into the whole new wave revival (like us) might just find yourself digging this anyway. It's more classic pop sounding than the current wannabe Gang Of Four sound... Smart pop, with killer hooks, crunchy guitars, playful piano, and some super clever / funny / wry lyrics. Epic sweeping melodies, killer chunks of fuzzy synths, some electronic squiggles here and there, but ultimately perfect pop through and through.
From the super anthemic "Girls Who Play Guitars", to the lilting minor key new wave miserablism of "Books From Boxes", to the sweeping dramatic epic-ness of "Karaoke Plays" to the surprise gem of the record "Nosebleed", tucked away in the second half of the record, featuring the unforgettable line "Did we go too far? Is that why your nose is bleeding?" that you'll find yourself humming to yourself all the time. Every track here is impossibly catchy, packed with hook after hook, amazing harmonies, clever turns of phrase, all wrapped up tight into some of the catchiest, most perfect kick ass pop we've ever heard. And if it even needed to be said again: POP RECORD OF THE YEAR!
No point in being coy or beating around the bush. Might as well come right out and fess up (as if the aQ list faithful didn't already know). We LOVE this band, ever since the Apply Some Pressure cdep released way back in 2005, and every record since. Sure, A Certain Trigger might be their best record, but we dug Our Earthly Pleasures BIG time. It was definitely a grower, but it didn't take long for it to end up a daily play. Same thing with Quicken The Heart, at first we weren't sure what to think, we're always sort of hoping that MP will return to the hyper caffeinated Interpol meets XTC sound of that first record and come up with another song that rivals the impossibly kinetic hook filled jam that is "Apply Some Pressure", but just like with Our Earthly Pleasures, after a few listens we no longer found ourselves wishing for that sound of old, we just let these new songs wash over us, and with every listen they blossom more and more, and now at least half of the songs here rank as some of our favorite MP jams. Jangly new wavey guitars, propulsive drumming, buzzy synths, and killer vocals, amazing melodies, and hooks galore. There's only bum in the bunch, and weirdly enough it's the first single, hearing that before the record showed up had us a bit worried, but now that it's here, we just skip that song (and heck, even that one is growing on us) and play the shit out of the rest of the record. Killers, Franz Ferdinand, Interpol, Kaiser Chiefs, Arctic Monkeys, Nine Black Alps, we love all those bands, but there's just something about Maximo Park that makes them our favorite.
We get so spoiled working in a record store, we know what records are coming out months before they do, and we sometimes get them a few days ahead of time, it does make you less excited, how you were as a teenager, but every time there's a new Maximo Park record, we find ourselves counting the days, and then heading to work on that Tuesday knowing that it'll show up sometime that day. That's a cool feeling, one we miss for sure, and one that is evoked by a surprisingly few bands. Needless to say, this record rules, if you're in the market for some smart, angular, new wave-y pop, you couldn't do much better than Quicken The Heart.
A few years back, there was a glut of bands doing that whole dance punk new wave thing, which we happened to dig a LOT: the Killers, Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, Kaiser Chiefs, but these guys were always our favorite, their debut full length A Certain Trigger remains one of our favorite records, even to this day, and their song "Apply Some Pressure" might very well just be the best song that whole scene produced. Check out the video on YouTube, it's pretty great as well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZrZ83tdW_k
We've dug every record since, and each one definitely had a handful of killer jams, although none was quite as good as A Certain Trigger. It had been a while since the last full length, and the vocalist released a sort of lackluster solo record in the meantime, so we were pretty much figuring they were done and gone, but then all of a sudden this new full length showed up, and it's actually super great, in fact, we're liking it more than the last few already. The title track could easily have come right off of A Certain Trigger, as could a bunch of these songs, which is positioning this as maybe our favorite since the debut, catchy and super rocking, a perfect balance of driving super rocking new wave and more brooding jangle pop jams, hooks galore, crunchy fuzzy guitars, just listen to the samples, you'll know right away if this is your cup of new wave dance punk, but between this and the Grand Magus, we're finding it hard to listen to anything else. (Well, Andee in particular might be the one listening to both back to back on heavy rotation...)
During a brief three years in the early '80s, Y Records enjoyed a roster of amazingly funky, post-punk groups that included The Pop Group, The Slits, Shriekback, Pigbag, and bafflingly enough Diamanda Galas (not taking on the typical guise of the label, mind you). Maximum Joy was another outstanding entry from Y Records, having been formed by Tony Wrafter after the dissolution of the agit-pop punk ensemble Glaxo Babies. Wrafter recruited vocalist Janine Rainforth, another Glaxo Baby in Charlie Llewellin, and the Pop Group's John Waddington. After a couple of singles, the band released Station MXJY under the production thumb of Adrian Sherwood. His dub inflected engineering worked perfectly to render Maximum Joy's jaunty punk-funk tunes as a sunny doppleganger of The Pop Group. Amidst Sherwood's tape echo and delay workouts, the band adventurously march through a taut rhythm section that tightropes between a militant funk and a doleful rocksteady swagger, while chicken scratch guitars map out the simple song structures and saxophone solos splatter across the stereo. It's a very good thing that this record has been reissued (complete with four excellent bonus tracks), as Maximum Joy were clearly a talented bunch who might have been forgotten otherwise. It's just unfortunate that Station MXJY is only available as an expensive Japanese import. Ouch!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another jam packed issue of THE punk rock rag. Dense with bands you've never heard of, scene reports from places you've never been, and ads for hundreds of records you didn't even know existed. A killer little chunk of newsprint that keeps punk rockers around the globe connected!
This month, scene report for Asheville, North Carolina, Spanish punk rockers the Webelos, Danish punx Hjertestop, an excerpt from a book in the works about the anarcho/crust scene, this time focusing on The APF Brigade, the Desperate Bicycles, more reports from New Orleans, pix from the Southkore Fest in Chicago, Texan punk rock photographer Bill Daniel, Swedish hardcore outfit Svartenbrandt, an interview with Disconvenience, the Rosenbombs, Up The Voltage as well as tons and tons of book reviews, record reviews, movie reviews, letters, news and columns!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Newest issue of this long running Bay Area punk rock institution. Still newsprint, still punk as fuck. This issue is appropriately the "Is Business Killing Punk Rock?" issue! With a huge article (just part one mind you) on DIY punk rock and the imortance of independence, with contributions from punk labels like Jade Tree, G7 Welcoming Commitee, Dr. Strange, 625, Havoc, Dischord and more. And of course loads of interviews with a bunch of bands / artists / writers we've never heard of: Soviet Valves (AUS), Suburban Death Machine (US), Frustrations (US), George Hurchulla, author of Going Underground: American Punk 1979-1992, as well as a bunch of cool excerpts from a forthcoming book by AQ pal and J-Church frontman Lance Hahn about Crass and all those anarcho bands, this time around, Icon A.D. and Dominant Patri, also a Vitamin X tour diary and finally an article about now defunct NY club ABC NO RIO.
And as always tons of book reviews, movie reviews, record reviews (only punk rock, and only independent labels), loads of letters, a bunch of columns (including a very metal one by former AQ mailorder monkey Elliott), punk rock news, scene reports (Greece, Czech Republic) and lots more.
Another blast of punk as fuck-ness from this Bay Area bastion of punk and DIY. This month, part two of the article Business And Punk Rock with contributions from the folks who run Fat Wreck Chords, Ebullition, Sound Idea, Razorcake, Give Praise and a bunch more, scene report: Poland with a list of loads of Polish bands, interviews with and articles about The Lawrence Arms, Imperial Leather, Magrudergrind, Boom Boom Kid (don't worry, we haven't heard of most of the bands featured in MRR either!), part two of the Vitamin X tour diary. tons and tons of columns, including one by former mailorder master Elliott, lots of letters, news, politics, book reviews, record reviews and MORE!
Ms Maya (pronounced May-ah) is a dear friend of Edison Woods' Julia Frodahl, and the two artists definitely are of kindred spirit albeit the former is a bit more heady, mystical and dusky than the latter. On the front cover she may bear a strikingly waifish resemblance to actress Mia Farrow, but her vocal delivery is strongly reminiscent of Kendra Smith, Rose McDowell and perhaps Carla Bozulich, particularly when she's singing the lower octave layers of her multi-tracked vocals. Y is comprised of four ethereal numbers steeped in shadowy somber atmospheres. String and piano tendrils wind gracely around her voice. Utterly captivating. The music may be slow creeping, but you should act fast because this release is limited to 500!
A surprisingly subdued direction for Ted Stevens' new project called Mayday. "Who is Ted Stevens?" you might ask. Well, you may better know him as the guitarist for considerably more aggressive emo-princes Cursive as well as the vocalist for Lullaby For The Working Class. Or you might've spotted him on the road with labelmates Bright Eyes. You might have also noticed the positive trend lately with members of the Nebraska / Saddle Creek Records family, of everyone helping everyone else out. Case in point? Look no further than this very album! There's plenty of familiar faces on Old Blood, some of which include the lovely Azure Ray, mister melancholia himself Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst, and some of Stevens' former Lullaby bandmates. This here's some fine, solemn and mature songwriting, check out the shadowy, dramatic beauty of "Captain". Might appeal to fans of Scott Walker or the Tindersticks (although Mr. Stevens' voice doesn't quite reach the deep deep theatrical depths of Stuart Staples').
Finally available on vinyl!
Damn. Not only was this here disc cooked up by a badass, totally STONED sounding R&B infused greasy garage rock n' roll band from Deeeetroit, featuring members of heavy hitters like the Black Keys (guitarist Dan Auerbach), Dirtbombs (bassist Troy Gregory), Outrageous Cherry (guitarist Matthew Smith), and the Sights (drummer Dave Shettler) but check the top billing - there's a bona fide, veteran black soul singer fronting this combo, maybe you've heard of him, maybe you haven't, but he was the real deal, Nathaniel Mayer. He had his first hit single, "Village Of Love", in the Top 40 back in 1962. We've had (but haven't yet reviewed) a pretty cool anthology of his '60s stuff, I Want Love And Affection, Not The House Of Correction. But that certainly didn't prepare us for this. Don't call it a comeback, this is something else altogether. Ol' Mayer didn't sound like this back in the sixties. We mean, yeah, this IS retro, but also totally something that could only be made now, the unlikely meeting of a versatile, veteran voice and young 'uns who grew up worshipping the Stoogesy rock action, who bring a fresh dose of fuzz and loose, laidback druggy psych to the proceedings that's pretty special.
Even more special though, is Mayer's marvelously ragged, hoarse voice. Weary and burnished with time - you can hear every one of his 64 years. Yet he's also totally in command of it, butter smooth one moment, croakingly gruff the next, belting out the James Brown style "owwwws!" like he coined the phrase. Yeah, the man can sing. And lyrically, he's all about sex and desire. Beggin' his girl. "Why Don't You Give It To Me?" Sometimes, "Doin' It" (which is a nearly 9-minute, wasted wild wahwah'd jam). In keeping with Mayer's phlegmy voice, the whole album is wrapped in a lo-fi murk, adding to the battered, bluesy, psychedelic mood. One that we might compare to some of the more soulful obscurities on that ol' Chains And Black Exhaust comp. The 1995 solo album by LSD casualty and former Funkadelic, Tawl Ross comes to mind as well.
And we'll remind you ('cause you DO read his site, right?) that this was Julian Cope's Head Heritage Record of the Month back in May.
Sadly, Mayer has passed away since this album first came out (it's a 2007 release, now here on vinyl), but there's a pretty cool posthumous album called Why Won't You Let Me Be Black that's just been released as well that we'll be reviewing soon on an upcoming list.
Damn. Not only was this here disc cooked up by a badass, totally STONED sounding R&B infused greasy garage rock n' roll band from Deeeetroit, featuring members of heavy hitters like the Black Keys (guitarist Dan Auerbach), Dirtbombs (bassist Troy Gregory), Outrageous Cherry (guitarist Matthew Smith), and the Sights (drummer Dave Shettler) but check the top billing - there's a bona fide, veteran black soul singer fronting this combo, maybe you've heard of him, maybe you haven't, but he's the real deal, Nathaniel Mayer. He had his first hit single, "Village Of Love", in the Top 40 back in 1962. We've had (but haven't yet reviewed) a pretty cool anthology of his '60s stuff, I Want Love And Affection, Not The House Of Correction. But we that certainly didn't prepare us for this. Don't call it a comeback, this is something else altogether. Ol' Mayer didn't sound like this back in the sixties. We mean, yeah, this IS retro, but also totally something that could only be made now, the unlikely meeting of a versatile, veteran voice and young 'uns who grew up worshipping the Stoogesy rock action, who bring a fresh dose of fuzz and loose, laidback druggy psych to the proceedings that's pretty special.
Even more special though, is Mayer's marvelously ragged, hoarse voice. Weary and burnished with time - you can hear every one of his 64 years. Yet he's also totally in command of it, butter smooth one moment, croakingly gruff the next, belting out the James Brown style "owwwws!" like he coined the phrase. Yeah, the man can sing. And lyrically, he's all about sex and desire. Beggin' his girl. "Why Don't You Give It To Me?" Sometimes, "Doin' It" (which is a nearly 9-minute, wasted wild wahwah'd jam). In keeping with Mayer's phlegmy voice, the whole album is wrapped in a lo-fi murk, adding to the battered, bluesy, psychedelic mood. One that we might compare to some of the more soulful obscurities on that ol' Chains And Black Exhaust comp. The 1995 solo album by LSD casualty and former Funkadelic, Tawl Ross comes to mind as well.
And we'll remind you ('cause you DO read his site, right?) that this was Julian Cope's Head Heritage Record of the Month back in May. This is actually a 2007 release (hey better to list it now than never) so maybe there'll be another one soon from Mayer and the boys, but we don't really know, since it was reported Mayer suffered a stroke earlier this year. Hope he's doing ok.
A strangely compelling album of outsider pop, dreamtime electronica, post-rock languor, and distant memories of '80s bombast. If this sounds either like something M83 might attempt or perhaps like something that just shouldn't work, that's pretty much where we were upon hearing Cut Up for the first time. But upon the second, third, fourth, tenth listen, Mayerling's cinematic orchestrations became all the more spellbinding. Ambient trails of luminous synth drones spiral around pastoral guitars that wouldn't be out of place on some Explosions In The Sky or Notwist album, until the urgent baritone vocals leap forward out of the mouth of Sylvain Bombled. His gruff, throaty delivery would seem more appropriate barking for somebody like Mudhoney... yes, we know that replacing Mark Arm is a blasphemous statement, but the late '80 / early '90s Sub Pop, cigarette'n'whiskey approach to throat jagged is very similar to Bombled unique croon. The songs however are not punk. These spacious, desolate pieces have the baroque emptiness of some of the latter period Scott Walker records, flushed out with the post-rock ellipsis of intertwining bass and guitar melodies constructing dark, brooding passages that could be right out of Mogwai's Young Team or Come On Die Young. Drum machines gird half of the tracks on the album, but even then it's little more than a click track, leaving all of the darkened riches to rain down on this moody album. Limited to 100 copies!
The Mayfair Set sound exactly how you would imagine a band made up of members of Blank Dogs and Dum Dum Girls would sound, AWESOME!
Equal parts gloomy retro cold wave and that reverbed sixties girl group sound, two great tastes for sure, the sound washed out and murky, the boy vocals buried beneath angular jangle guitar and simple drumming, the female vox all shimmery in the background on some tracks, way up front in the others, with the boy vox drifting off in the distance, brooding moody verses and soaring choruses, gothy cold wave basslines, lilting and sing songy jangle gives way to driving woozy gloom pop, the guitar lines are spidery and skeletal, the distorted drumming skitters and stumbles, locking into simple propulsive rhythms, holding things together, white the dueling girl / boy vocals drive most of these songs, surrounded by shimmering clouds of glitchy effects, warm whirring keyboards, the sound warm and washed out and dreamy, another one of those records that gets played like crazy every single day. No better recommendation than that! And the fact that's members of Blank Dogs and Dum Dum Girls...
"An ambitious, 50 minute feast of tight harmonies, powerful arrangements, fluid improvisation, and flat out great songs, that serves as a touchstone for twin guitar-driven, west coast styled psychedelia, soaring power pop, and blistering hard rock. The stature of Maypole has been muddied by the previous CD reissues, but this LP edition gets it right. Featuring state of the art remastering and pressing, a high quality full color "tip on" jacket featuring original artwork, and a full color insert loaded with lyrics, photos, and complete historical notes by Maypole founder, Dennis Tobell, this is the closest to 'classic psychedelia' Anopheles Records has delved in to date."
People have been freaking out about the Mayyors for ages now. Before we had even heard them, we knew we HAD to hear them, cuz that's what everyone we knew was telling us. Then we were lucky enough to get them to play our South By Southwest showcase, and whattayaknow? Everyone was right. They destroyed, wild and punk rock, and a little new wave, and s upper distorted and weirdly poppy, pretty much exactly what we could have hoped for. One person we knew even flew from another state JUST to see the Mayyors, and managed to see them play 8 or 9 times. And loved every single minute of it.
We got a bunch of these 12"s a while back, and they sold out in a heartbeat, before we could even get it reviewed. We got a few more, but then those too were gone in a flash. So the band finally repressed another batch, so now here's your chance, however fleeting to snag one of these 4 song 45 rpm 12"s, same as the first pressing, but now in plain white stamped sleeves, instead of the first pressing's gross dirt covered jackets, but it's the sound that matters, and the sound here is ferocious. Snotty, snarly, fuzzy, punky, noisy, catchy, druggy, crumbling ultra distorted guitars, wild pounding drums, yowled effected vox, tons of feedback, FX all over the place and THICK corrosive buzzing bass that drives EVERYTHING. Imagine maybe a poppier, less fucked up more new wave Rusted Shut, that same sort of chaotic noise rock, that while druggy, manages to be a bit tighter and a whole lot less on the verge of total collapse, while remaining awesomely chaotic.
The final track might be our favorite, the same sort of revved up Brainbombs style dirge, supercharged, and eventually growing more and more and more distorted and in-the-red, culminating in what might just be the raddest post-Buttholes drug rock noise guitar freakout EVER.
We did get a ton of these, but they'll probably go quick, and the band did say they would press more if this pressing sold out, but it could mean a bit of a wait if you don't grab one now.
