We dug Melchior's most recent full length, Assemblage Blues, like crazy. It was a wild collection of garage pop, and really our first proper exposure to his noisy chaotic outsider songstyle. We played that record to death, so were super psyched to get in this new single, and it's a doozy, much darker and lower key than that record. The A side offers up moody brooding verses driven by a woozy low slung bassline, which explodes into a dizzying psychedelic organ driven chorus, the song super catchy, and maybe one of our favorite Melchior jams yet. The B side is another brooder, that sounds a little bit like a more fractured lo-fi Cardinal if that makes any sense, the same sort of stately pop vibe, but here it's all lush darkly dreamy vocal harmonies over dizzyingly looped guitar figures and has us reassessing what we said about the A side, cuz the B side is also one of our favorite Melchior jams yet. Guess that means this is most definitely recommended!
Further down the rabbit hole goes Dan Melchior! Slow Down Tiger is the latest sonic adventure of continuously deconstructed pop for the occasional collaborator with the beloved chanteuse Holly Golightly. That said, for those looking to his lo-fi garage pop quirks, Melchior does have an album on Castle Face due out in the summer of 2014; but we gotta say that he can continue to produce these long-form weirdo collages for as long as he wants! "Tongues" rolls out with an eerie, hypnotic sitar-n-electronics loop that grounds a series of media samples / spoken word snippets from a variety of sources. The fine people down at the Starlight Furniture Company (you should really see their storefront on Mission Street in San Francisco, they really DO sell furniture! really cheap stuff, too!) have mapped out many of the sources including BBC broadcasts about poll tax riots in the UK less than three decades ago, as well as Russian and Chilean poets, obscure film clips, and some cultural lamp-lighters who shine their philosophies of curmudgeonliness and traditional lore on those who care to listen. As Melchior cuts the power on the tape loop machine, a ghostly guitar drift trickles through the shadows, dripping in equal parts with maudlin syrupiness, inky depression, and overdriven spring reverb. The vocal readymades continues to dot this landscape of guitar dronescape as dreamy allusions to those Delia Derbyshire dream-reciting experiments from the early '60s or the delightfully subversive tract of daytime soap collaged by Daniel Steven Crafts some 30 years ago. The flipside "Hospital Poem" is a desolate piece of lo-fi minimalism for chord organ and electronics, evolving into a heartbreaking, loner meditation that in all likelihood takes up the theme of Melchior's wife's cancer and her ongoing struggle with the disease. Great. Great. Great.
This latest full length from garage rock iconoclast/legend Dan Melchior is a definite departure from recent releases, in that not only is it the first solo record on which he doesn't play everything, and collaborates with a revolving cast / sort-of back up band, but also, it's much more song based, and somber, due in no doubt to the fact that his wife Letha (who played in the late great Ruby Falls, and is an amazing musician and artist in her own right, not to mention a super rad person!) was diagnosed with cancer several years ago, and the two have been struggling to deal with all the ramifications, from struggling to pay medical bills, to facing the mortality of a loved one. And it call comes through on the Backward Path, with Melchior as the brooding troubadour, the songs darkly melancholic, sweetly melodic, his distinctive croon wrapped in acoustic strum, and wreathed in a lush tapestry of atmospheric ambience, whirring drones, woozy lysergic shimmer, some of the tracks downright psychedelic, others spare and lovely, a stripped down garage pop psych folk that feels timeless, sonically, and emotionally, and of course, the whole record is musical love letter to his wife, which only makes it that much more beautiful and powerful.
The other cool thing, is that the record's proper (love) songs are separated by short interludes, sonic experiments, reminiscent of Melchior's record on Kye, brief abstract tone poems, each a chunk of experimental psychedelic ambience, drifting guitar strums suspended in hazy blurred shimmers, soft swirls of FX, skeletal spirals of muted melody, all of which perfectly balance the songs proper. Way recommended. And of course, you can (and should!) donate to the Letha Rodman Melchior cancer fund: http://melchiorfund.blogspot.com/
While Dan Melchior is probably best known for his Broke Revue, and for playing with Billy Childish and Holly Golightly, we've been digging his solo records quite a bit, the weirder the better, with the recent C.C.D.E. Music being the weirdest so far, at least until now. The Heron sports a sticker proclaiming this to be "more experimental" and is on a label called Limited Appeal. Couldn't be more appropriate cuz this stuff is pretty far out, freaky and psychedelic, but not like garage rock psychedelic, more sort of tripped out WTF? psychedelic, with much of the record sounding more like the Shadow Ring, with Melchior delivering deadpan spoken word in a thick English accent over all manner of strange noises, freeform fuzz and warped electronics. FX heavy percussion drives much of the record, that slips from tangled glitchy weirdness to space acoustic guitar strum to dirgy noisy psych to crunchy riffy plod, replete with fluttery woodwinds. Melchior's vocals are also sampled and sliced and diced and looped into the background music, adding still more weirdness, and his wife Letha delivers some spoken word as well, their vocals constantly tangled up and morphing back and forth. We're generally not huge fans of spoken word, but the Shadow Ring style vocals kinda sound cool here, especially with all the sonic weirdness going on in the background. There are bits of atmospheric ambience, and collaged textures, and some moments of truly sublime beauty, which do balance the more unhinged audio experiments, and free wheelin' abstract psychedeic freakouts. Stick around for the closer too, with its rad harmonized guitars and minor key melodies, buzzy and psychedelic and really super cool.
LIMITED TO 231 copies, each one stickered and hand numbered. Housed in a diecut jacket, with a printed inner sleeve and printed insert.
We still really have no idea who this Dan Melchior guy is. We first discovered him via a split with SF jangle poppers the Fresh & Onlys, his side of the split a huge surprise, knocking us for a loop, and turning the previously unknown to us Melchior into a serious aQ fave. His recent lp for Siltbreeze Assemblage Blues only helped seal the deal, but where that record seemed custom made for Siltbreeze, seeming to tap into the twisted psychedelic side of Melchior's sound, and focusing on the noisier tripper more fucked up songs, this new one definitely sounds more in line with the tracks from that split single, a woozy, super melodic, shuffling, acoustic guitar flecked garage pop, hints of that classic sixties sound, plenty of weird distortion and lots of reverb, but here used sparingly, and in the interest of crafting an incredible collection of quirky lo-fi pop.
Opener "Summer In Siberia" is fuzzy and jangly, with a perfect main melody, and a killer soaring sixties style chorus, the guitars warmly distorted and crumbly, Melchior's vocals delivered in a heavily accented British brogue, the production weirdly blown out and in-the-red, while the following track is a moody minor key chunk of quirky lo-fi outsider pop, super catchy, but strangely haunting and minor key. "Squalor On Sunday" is a pounding blast of psychedelic garage rock, with some super weird vocals, wheezing organs, crunchy guitars, all wound into a noisy blurred stretch of fuzzy washed out jangle. "Catbird" is a dour atonal dirge, the guitars careening from speaker to speaker, the vocals sung/spoken, the vibe reminds us of Purling Hiss, the same sort of classic rock beholden hookiness, but here, but as beholden to the most twisted of the nineties NZ pop, and actually, much of the record sounds like it could be some long lost Xpressway or Flying Nun record from the nineties, total perfect pop, but all twisted up and turned inside out, creating a fuzzy dreamy din, all psychedelic and warped but without losing any of the poppiness or hookiness. Somehow this new full length manages to be the perfect mix of that poppy split single and the way weirder Siltbreeze record, resulting in a gloriously skewed, cacophonous fuzzy psychedelic garage pop masterpiece that we can't seem to stop listening to.
After the twisted avant collage experimentation of the recently released Slow Down Tiger lp, Dan Melchior returns to the garage rock sound he's more well known for, on this, his first for John Dwyer from Thee Oh Sees' Castle Face label, and while it's not so nearly warped and way out as Slow Down Tiger, it's still pretty freaky. Sure there's crunchy jangly guitars, and actual proper song structures, but there's still all manner of weird noises, strange effects, some songs lurch to a stop, like in the strange spoken chorus to opener "A Wizard Doesn't Need A Computer", other tracks are rife with psychedelic popisms, like on "Night Of Fear", where Melchior is channeling sixties flower-poppers The Move, but filtered through a thoroughly fractured modern garage pop filter, and others are just straight up blown out old school garage rock pounders, like the urgent distorto crush of "Rip It To Pieces". Like on all the other Melchior records, he can't seem to deny his experimental side, so drum machines pop here and there, multiple vocal lines tangled into unlikely harmonies, riffs are blurred into extended distorted drones, reverb and echo are slathered on everything, but all of that weirdness is somehow corralled into the service of some seriously great songs, that most definitely do sound right at home on Castle Face.
The joy of reviewing this first proper full length from Letha Rodman Melchior is tempered by the sad fact that Letha passed away recently, after a lengthy battle with cancer. Beloved by all who knew her, she chronicled her illness via a hilarious and hilariously warts-and-all blog, detailing every facet of her illness, and her struggle to beat it. Musicians and artists and friends all over the world, rallied around her, playing benefit shows, to raise money to help with her hospital bills, and while she had been making art and playing music for decades (Andee's old band toured with her old band, Ruby Falls, way back in the nineties), her marriage to Dan Melchior, a musical force in his own right, brought forth a new bout of productivity and collaboration, culminating in this, the heartbreakingly beautiful, and fantastically fanciful handbook For Mortals, a joyously uninhibited collection of ultra personal musical vignettes, hauntingly lovely landscapes of piano and clarinette, laced with mysterious squalls of soft percussion, deep shimmery drones, whipping-wind-like swirls, breaking glass, a little bit chamber music, a little bit musique concrete, a series of strange sonic collages, fusing woozy, distorted, dream pop, to fractured avant murk, buried melodies and music box like warble. Some tracks unfurl lo-fi jumbles of found sounds, loopy percussion, swirling FX, others hushed, pastoral ambience, choral vocal harmonies and field recordings. The songs are laced with glitched out electronics, occasionally wrapped around stately piano threnodies, other times blossoming into wild sprawls of crumbling, distorted noise. Here and there, ramshackle ballads dissolve into equal parts hushed piano, recordings from the hospital (the beep of a life support machine surfaces on one track) and creaking machine like clatter. Handbook For Mortals is a heady, heavenly mix of twisted, mad scientist avant noise, and hushed, delicate, home brewed songcraft, a gorgeous bit of sound art, that has now been transformed into a beautifully bittersweet, and heartbreakingly poignant threnody.
R.I.P Letha. You will be missed.
From the Joyful Noise Label:
All the traditional melodies and musical conventions have been stripped away leaving the bare bones of an epic noise-rock opus. It is relentless, it's loud, it's mathy, it's symphonic without being rigidly structured. I'm not sure that melk could properly be considered a 'noise' band, because this is not shapeless distortion. Beneath the pirouetting curlicues of feedback and the convulsive pulse of the drums--there is a geometry and there is a message.
In the bizarre musical world of Japan's Melt Banana, seven inch singles are hedgehogs, and MB's got a whole mess of em, most WAY out of print and long unavailable. So finally, all of these long sought after hedgehogs, all released between 1994 and 1999, have been gathered up, gussied up, digitized and released on one single compact disc. 13 Hedgehogs featuring all of MB's tracks from the singles "Hedgehog", "It's In The Pillcase", "Untitled (Piano One)", "Eleventh" and "Dead Spex" as well as their tracks from splits with God Is My Co-Pilot, Discordance Axis, Pencilneck, Target Shoppers, Stilluppsteypa, Plainfield, Xerobot, and Killout Trash. Phew. 56 tracks of maniacal squealing and squeaking, stop-start, ultra dense, mega complex confusional punk / grind / pop / whatthefuck! So ridiculous and so totally amazing!
Geeze! Can't believe it, this must be the most melodic, "normal" (ahem) album from Japan's Melt-Banana yet, but it's still ALSO totally spastic and unhinged and extreme. Actually the more melodic, non-hyperspeed elements here make the other stuff all the more insane sounding. There's (only!) 18 caffeinated tracks on this disc, chock-a-block with bug zapper guitars, thrashing drums, and yelping vox, of course. But also: catchy hooks, sing-a-long choruses? Yes. It's been four long years since their previous album, Cell-Scape, and we guess we'd forgotten just how listenable that one was, surprising us at the time too. Melt-Banana had taken their trademark manic Boredomsey hardcore sound and tamed it just a bit. Well they do that here too, turning in a speedy, spasmodic pop-punk masterpiece that sounds something like the Ramones or Green Day bouncing off the walls in a bizarre experiment somehow involving chipmunks, crack cocaine, and computers... ok, dunno what that means either. But the point is, this is making us crazy in a good way, it's as if the more "conventional" Melt-Banana becomes, the more paradoxically disturbing they really are. And if you really want pure old school M-B HC noisiness, well there's a batch of shorter, seizure-like songs on the second half of the disc (tracks 11-17) that should do the trick. Well worth the wait.
Out of print for a few years now at least, the third album from these frenetic Japanese spazz-mongers has just been repressed on vinyl!! We originally reviewed it back in 1998 when it first came out, giving it the following brief but enthusiastic write-up: With every release, you wonder how Melt Banana is going to make their records just as fierce and brutal as the last without indulging in banal formulas. Yet their sound has evolved into complex shards of Dadaist hardcore played with hyperkinetic precision. One of the highlights on this album is their insane collaboration with Mike Patton and the rest of Mr. Bungle on "Area 877 [Phoenix Mix]"! Highly recommended!
To that, what need we add? Perhaps about those shards, yes shards is the word - splintered shrapnel of yelping vox, wiggly guitar, octopoid battery, all spinning around in a blender at 100mph. Everything you like about Melt-Banana, Charlie delivers!
We were looking back at our review of the last Melt-Banana record we reviewed, Initial T., which we listed way back in 2009, and yeah, it was just an ep, but even then we were bowled over by how these masters of grinding math pop / noise rock, continued to reinvent themselves and surprise us with every record. The surprise that time was a dramatic shift, into a sound more electronic, one that at the time we described as sounding like a sped up Deerhoof, or like Fuck Buttons. And goddamn if they haven't taken that sound and pushed it even further, transforming their sound, which was already insanely unique, and ridiculously difficult to describe, and literally unlike ANY other bands out there, into something even MORE. Just the first track alone should convince you, it's a total mind blower, a dizzying collision of a million different genres, and so many seemingly incompatible sounds, brilliantly woven into some total next level electro-metal-grind-pop weirdness, that manages to be both the weirdest thing we've heard from M-B, which is saying a LOT, and possibly also the catchiest! That track bears some in depth description, since it pretty much sets the template for the rest of the record. Opening with some glistening kosmische shimmer, some field recorded waves lapping on the beach, some swirling heavily effected guitars, those guitars gradually coalescing into some seriously crunchy riffage, laced with thick sinewy bass-lines, kick ass drumming, weird sound effects and wild FX, before splintering into insane mathiness, the song swinging wildly from indie rock groove, to mathy psychedelic tangle and back again, those super distinctive ultra high chirped vox, before the song breaks down, the guitars locked into digitized loops, peppered with blasts of metallic guitars, more swirling sci-fi FX, some wild double kick drumming, that drumming getting more frantic and chaotic, slipping into full on metal briefly, before launching into a final burst of mathy psychedelic noise pop. It's insanely complex, and impossibly dense, and how the fuck do they cram all that into just 4 minutes? No idea, but we LOVE it. And we won't say it gets weirder, or better, cuz that's not really possible, but it DOES stay that weird, and that good, which is a feat in itself, frenetic, hyper, chaotic, mathy, metallic, poppy, crazy catchy, confusionally fractured, some songs slipping into impossibly soaring epic electronic flecked majesty, others collapsing into dizzying grind-pop freakouts, still others getting all avant experimental WTF? Boredoms style noisiness, and even still others exploding in gouts of wild electro-punk jangle-metal weirdness. A few songs find dreamy guitar shred devolving into long stretches of field recordings, or blossoming into super melodic pop experimental video game krautpop, what a fucking amazing and totally weird record! After all these years, Melt-Banana continue to confound, confuse, inspire, freak out, inspire and blow us the fuck away. Every M-B record is so good, it's hard to proclaim this as their best yet, but you be the judge, cuz, really, we're beginning to think it most definitely is. So totally and absolutely recommended!
It's been almost 2 years since we last heard from Japan's mighty Melt-Banana, our favorite purveyors of manic spastic grinding ultra complex math pop, and we were all ready to just write a generic review saying how we loved them but what else could we say, their sound hasn't changed that much, but then we threw this on and the opening track blew our fucking minds. Not sure why exactly, big buzzing bassline, all sorts of weird almost electronic sounding guitar parts, it almost sounds like a super charged sped up Deerhoof, the song soaring and epic, weirdly produced, processed, almost dance-y actually, and when the song kicks in it's just incredible, wild and catchy and frantic and heavy and so goddamn good, the sound lush and expansive, maybe like Melt-Banana doing their best Fuck Buttons or something. Whatever it is, it's just about the most delirious 2 and a half minutes we can remember.
Both the cd and the 7" are short short short, as in 5 minutes, but lots of parts and radness jammed into those 5 minutes and 3 songs. The second track is a bit more classic punked up MB, but that one too is more poppy and twisted and bouncy and electronic than we remember. The last track is another warped tangled pogo pop grind jam that RULES. Shit, maybe we've just been away from these guys (and gals) and just forgot how amazing they were. Regardless, this is just about the raddest 5 minutes we've rocked out to in forever!
It's been WAY too long since we've seen Melt-Banana live, they are definitely one of THE raddest live groups ever, sonically brutal and precise and manic and impossibly complex, their stage presence unbeatable, the whole band bouncing around wildly non stop, the guitarist perpetually clad in surgical mask, the vocalist a tiny whirling dervish, it's pretty awe inspiring, and wild pogo pit inspiring too.
So this killer live set might tide us over, the sound is incredible, you would never know it was a live record unless you were told, and might not even believe it then! They are in fine form, the record opener is awesome, about as slow as they get, a killer midtempo jam, all freaked out effects and processed vox, lots of buzz, squiggly guitar weirdness, all set to the frenetic drumming, before the band launch into a burst of lightning fast hypergrind, insanely manic and frantic and frenzied, the vocals a staccato chirp, the drums spastic and chaotic, the guitar though, spitting out incredible riffs, then all sorts of impossibly tangled squelches and glitchy fragmented melodies. The songs blow by in a blur, which makes the slower tracks all the more powerful. "Cat And The Blood" is a droned out prog jam, all wooshing synths, and surprisingly restrained vocals, and muted guitar squiggles, before once again spitting out a handful of manic metal grind microjams before finishing off with two epics (4 and 5 minutes respectively), first "Last Target On The Last Day" a gorgeous tripped out space jam, super atmospheric and heavy, long drones, and warm swirls of synth underpinning an almost doomic groove, finishing off with the super atmospheric and cinematic "Humming Jackalope, Waiting For The Storm", all Theremin-like melodies, clouds of cymbal sizzle, washed out bass rumble, and streaks of total Tangerine Dream like synth shimmer before finishing off with a burst of white noise crunch. Phew. Epic and incredible and heavy and wild and wonderful. Definitely don't miss MB next time they come to your town, and check this out to remind yourself what you've been missing.
Latest blast of squeak and skronk and blast and grind from these ultra cute, but totally dangerous Japanese pop punk grind craziness. This is the perfect way to experience MB, two ultra short, but still impossibly complex blasts of chaotic grind pop. Like getting beaten to death with a big fuzzy sack full of bunnies, cute but still fierce and freaked out as fuck. Or imagine being eaten alive by a gaggle of glow in the dark, rainbow colored cartoon characters, painfully cute, anthropomorphous fuzz balls, all soft and cuddly, but with sharp fangs and a truly deranged look in their eyes. NO ONE sounds like Melt-Banana, well okay, sometimes Fantomas does, but when they do, we just wonder why they're copping MB's style. We love Melt-Banana.
Super limited 5" vinyl, released on HG Fact (the same label that releases all the Corrupted records!).
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Fans of Japan's Melt Banana know that they're always great at doing covers. On their side of this split 7" they do "Monkey Man" by Toots And The Maytals. Really. And of course they sound like they're on 45 even when they're on 33 like they always do, super hectic, the least-mellow reggae you've ever heard. Some of us thought it was a cartoon theme or music from an ad for a kid's toy or something. There's also a Melt Banana original called "Operation: 3rd Attack" on here, with some turntable scratching, that's equally wild.
The flip side features US ska act Big D And The Kids Table, they do an original and a Ministry cover ("Thieves")...there's got to be some novelty value in that. Actually, we *think* they're a ska band. But even their original sounds more like a metal or hardcore band with a horn section than your typical ska stuff. So, kinda cool too.
Here comes a great new San Francisco band making some melt worthy washed out pop. Right at home on Underwater Peoples who have also released records we love by folks like Ducktails, Julian Lynch, Air Waves, and Pill Wonder. They for sure have the kodachrome soaked old cassette recording C86 happening, but there is something nice and subtle about their delivery that sounds so refreshing and earnest. We love how much of a daydream haze these songs put us in, synth pop that is less about beating you over the head with the sounds of synthesizers and more about casting a spell of timeless daydreams and melancholy memories. If you've been digging folks like The Art Museums, Puro Instinct, Memory Tapes, and Holy Shit then for sure you should jump all over this Melted Toys debut. It's some of the best dreamy and druggy, hazy and seductive pop that we've heard in a long time!
We've been fans of this local dream-gaze band since their first ep a few years ago. Then besides a split 45, we heard little from them. We were psyched to see them open for Italian synth-prog cult Sensations Fix this past September, because we had heard they had a new full length out on Underwater Peoples, we knew we needed to stock. But then something unexpected happened. The band imploded, cancelled their appearance at that gig and broke up. Not sure what happened, band drama no doubt, we were bummed for sure. But as it turns out, we then discovered that our new and cool next door neighbor Ole was actually in the band (or until recently, had been) and had copies of their first full length - and final - recording in hand to consign to us, probably because it won't likely get promoted too much since the band is done. Which is super too bad, because this record is so amazing! But at least, we finally get to hear it and share it with you.
Burnt out dreamy hazy pop jangle, pastoral and romantic, melancholy and bittersweet, but kind of druggy too in a sun damaged LA way. Foggy daydream break-up songs that carry a worn and faded sadness of distant memories and unrealized dreams. Reminds of our favorite bands on Creation or Sarah Records, The Field Mice, Weekend or House of Love, even bands like the Great Unwashed or The Three O'Clock, super catchy, compelling and crushing heartbreak pop perfect for rainy day or really any day listening. Our current autumn soundtrack for sure. Limited stock!
As thriving as the garage rock scene is in San Francisco, it's important to note there is some pretty amazing pop being crafted in these parts as well. We loved what we heard on the debut 12" by Melted Toys on Underwater Peoples that we listed a few months back, so we were super excited to get a brand new track of their low-key, yet so infectious breezy and subtly washed out pop.
Dominant Legs, we first heard when they opened for Girls at a breathtaking show at the Swedish American Hall a couple years ago. In fact, the band's main man, Ryan Williams Lynch is one of the guitarists in Girls, and there has always been something about him on stage that made us keep our eyes locked on him, as we knew there was something pretty special about his presence. Along side Hannah Hunt, and a full band with super strong chops, they create such a wonderful version of 2011 boy/girl cuddle-core. Think Belle & Sebastian meets The Softies doing Roy Orbison covers.
Released by the French label, Atelier Cesium, the 7" comes with a digital download.
Writing as many reviews as we do each week, trying to sell records to the people who will like 'em, we really appreciate it when a band makes it easy, as in this case, like, by being from Japan. And from the early '70s. Playing acid folk. And then they've got a cool name like Melting Glass Box. All that really remains is for us to tell you if is as amazing as it seems it might be - and it is.
Of course, though they're pretty obscure, you may have heard of them already, as this 1970 album has quite a deserved rep among connoisseurs of Japanese psych stuff - though it's mysteriously given short shrift in Julian Cope's Japrocksampler book, though he does praise albums by another band, Five Red Balloons (Itsutsu No Arai Fusen) from whom comes the main Melting Glass Box guy, singer-songwriter Takasi Nishioka, who is the pretty sharp looking denim clad hipster gent in the Melting Glass Box cover photo. MGB was a one-off studio project (though Takasi made many albums with Itsutu No Arai Fusen, and a bunch of later solo records as well) that also featured folks from such crucial underground Japanese psych acts of the era as The Jacks, Apryl Fool, and AQ faves Blues Creation. There's three members of proto-metal heavies Blues Creation on board here, actually, including Iommi-esque guitarist Takeda Kazuo. Not that this is at all heavy, it's actually a mellow, melodic record, quite gentle and pretty and placid, the lazy la la la's of their folky flowerpowered pop punctuated with such surreal details as the sound of shattering glass that startles the listener halfway through the lead off track "Anmari Fukasugite". Likewise, electronic FX, tape speed manipulations, ethnic instruments, and some stinging acid guitar licks are sparingly stirred into the mix throughout, this album one of many interesting, dreamy details and odd arrangements, but that still succeeds especially due to Takasi's balladic songs, that are so very melancholic and emotional - even though we can't understand the lyrics. We bet Masaki Batoh and Ghost grew up listening to this record!
Definitely a thrilling reissue that all of us here at AQ are digging, it's been getting a LOT of in-store play. Nicely done, too, by the Erebus label, with liner notes, original sleeve shots, and discographical information in the cd booklet.
Another killer batch of sixties style power pop jangle fuzz from this aQ fave, with another out-of-time, heartthrob, Teenbeat, pin-up cover photo, featuring Melton in his ubiquitous leather jacket, this time with no shirt on, gold chain, and a bat slung over his shoulder, as he wanders though some very Paleolithic looking foliage. Kind of like Matthew McConaughey as garage rocker? It's hard to say how much of that part of Melton's schtick is a put on, it hardly matters, but it really does play into the whole retro psych vibe, with this latest, Outside Of Paradise, another gem of fuzzy, reverbed, echo drenched garage pop, that literally sounds like some lost sixties/seventies psychedelic holy grail, from the songs, to the sound, literally nothing betrays this as anything but an actual Nuggets style artifact.
And like the last Melton record, as well as his records as Bare Wires, Melton once again demonstrates an impossible knack for classic, timeless songsmithery, with pretty much every track here a total garage psych earworm, and while there's little here that distinguishes most of these songs from the rest of Melton's catalog (which is not a bad thing AT ALL), he definitely continues to hone his songwriting chops, and his skills as an arranger, delivering some of the catchiest, well crafted tunes yet, with the sorts of hooks and choruses most groups would kill for, not to mention some subtle string arrangements (check out the title track, and "Take My Hand") which lend a dreamy, baroque gravitas to the fuzz and crunch, and makes for what might just be our favorite MM record yet!
Regular readers of the list know how much we love local fuzz pop jangle garage rockers Snake Flower 2 and the equally fuzzy and jangly Bare Wires, both fronted by Mr. Matthew Melton, a long haired, leather jacket clad rocker, albeit one with a pop heart wrapped in prickly fuzz, which is precisely what we find so magical about Melton's songwriting.
Crunchy, fuzzy, buzzy, reverby, blown out, catchy and hooky and melodic, sounding almost like the musically wiser big brother to the current crop of lo-fi garage poppers like Thee Oh Sees and the Sic Alps and Ty Segall. Melton's songs just sound more world weary and experienced, there's still a youthful exuberance, but it's a bit tarnished, a little gritty and grimy, and it just suits the sound and the songs.
Still Misunderstood collects early tracks and demos from Melton that predate both Bare Wires and Snake Flower 2, and while it seems even back then his songwriting was fully formed, it is still developing in some ways, the influences of early rock and roll is way more obvious, the Kinks, the Who, the Flamin' Groovies, sixties and seventies garage pop, big choruses, clean jangly strum, tambourine, simple pounding drums, swirling wah guitar, a little psychedelic, a little lo-fi, but awesomely propulsive and fuzzy and rocking. At times it almost sounds like some obscure lost gem from the late sixties or early, some out-of-nowhere reissue of some band from the Midwest's only (unreleased) record, which only reinforces the timelessness of these tracks, and reaffirms Melton's position as one of our current favorite songwriters. Dig it!
OK pay attention because this is confusing. The first twelve tracks on this disc are the first time on cd (the vinyl is out of print) of the soundtrack to the film Tropic of Nipples. Participants include noted rockcrit / Blue Oyster Cult lyricist Richard Meltzer, Guided By Voices head honcho Bob Pollard, the legendary-since-the-'70s noise outfit Smegma, and something/one called Antler.
In various permutations these folks cobbled together a soundtrack that's equal parts GBV-style fractured pop and totally annoying declamatory utterances (like the Nihilist Spasm is also wont to do) over a bed of random noise.
*However*, this cd also issues some material never before available, notably six tracks of Meltzer's punk band Vom, who were SO GREAT! Releasing one record in '78, they played an absolutely rippin' Voidoids-Richard-Hell-style, fiery three chord punk. So great, boy are these guys due for a proper reissue. (Maybe Peter Buck will do it, he's reportedly their #1 fan.) Other extras include a song Pollard wrote with the late Jim Shepard.
Worth the price of the disc if you like the three VOM samples below. If you're not into those, I can't strongly recommend the rest of the material here.
Twenty-six songs! This used to be a mere ten. Yes, "26 Songs" is an expanded reissue of the out of print "10 Songs". Recorded live to 2-track in 1986 by the line-up of Buzz, Dale, and then-bassist Matt Lukin (who later defected to Mudhoney), this was indeed 10 songs from the mighty Melvins' earliest daze, when their Black Flag / Black Sabbath meld was at its most obvious, potent, raw (and fast, some of the time!). Utterly essential heaviness in other words. Did we say "mere" ten? Not really, since every one of those ten songs is forever embedded in the mind of this Melvins fan. "#2 Pencil" -- so doomy and vile a song. "Snake Appeal" -- the guys rip through what could be an old Corrosion of Conformity thrasher. "At A Crawl" -- well, that's the Melvins right there. Etc., etc. And, like Ipecac's reissue of another early Melvins classic, "Gluey Porch Treatments", there's a bunch of garage demos and alternate takes added on to make Melvins fans salivate, as you can compare multiple, grungier, faster takes on "10 Songs" songs (and some other tunes you'll recognize). The disc winds up with the drug-addled ramblings of their old pal "Hugh" as an added bonus (which means that this disc, despite the title, really features "only" 25 actual songs). It's just too bad the new cover design for this new version is so computer-done and busy and typical of recent Melvins packaging (forget the flowers, guys!). We much prefer the stylish simplicity of its earlier incarnation(s). But, the extra tracks certainly make up for our aesthetic quibbles about the graphic design!
MPEG Download: "Easy As It Was" [/audio/melvinseasy.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Easy As It Was" [/audio/melvinseasy.m3u]
MPEG Download: "Grinding Process" [/audio/melvinsgrinding.mp3]
Hard to believe the Melvins are still around. And that they STILL don't suck. After like, what... 200 albums? Equally hard to believe that they have somehow morphed from one of the most difficult and gloriously difficult bands to ever sign to a major label (outside of the Butthole Surfers) into purveyors of super kick ass, head banging stoner Stooges stomp rock. But hell, we're not complaining...
And who cares if this is release #1 or #201. Or how many bassists they've pile up in their "morgue" (like Spinal Tap was with drummers), it still packs a mighty wallop, and gives us just what we've come to love and adore and expect from the Melvins, almost too much so, but more on that in a minute.
A Senile Animal is the first "true" Melvins album since 2004's Pigs of the Roman Empire teamup with infrasound specialist Lustmord, and sees the Melvins circa 2006, aka Buzz & Dale, join forces with the equally chaotic duo of Jared & Cody, otherwise known as Big Business (Jared also ex-Karp).
Together as the (new) Melvins they are bigger and badder than ever. With the power of THREE vocalists, TWO bass players, and most excitingly, a DOUBLE DRUM attack, a sort of hybrid drum kit manned by two different drummers!!
We haven't seen it yet, and heard they share cymbals or hit some of the same drums, or maybe hold hands while rocking out, but however they get it done, it WORKS. BIG TIME!
This record will definitely hit the spot for those of you craving more of that heavy / catchy sludge pop, found on past Melvins classics like Houdini or Stoner Witch. In fact, a lot of A Senile Animal sounds like it was just plucked from those very same sessions. Not a bad thing mind you. It's just that some of us, especially after the gorgeous fucked up heavy weirdness of Pigs of the Roman Empire, imagined that the Melvins might have been headed down a much more twisted and fucked up musical path. And while that is not necessarily the case, we're not too disappointed. In fact this disc's got most of us too busy rocking out and banging our heads and air guitaring and flailing wildly about to even notice.
And we sure as heck can't wait to see the crazy drum kit thing everyones talking about, and to have our asses thoroughly kicked by the NEW Melvins, not so much a quintet as much as a POWER-POWER trio! Fuck yeah.
Ah, the mighty Melvins, we've been into 'em for longer than we care to admit (put it this way, some of you reading this weren't yet born when we were first freaking out over the absurd heaviness of Ozma). They can do no wrong, or when they do "wrong" it's 'cause they meant to (i.e. Prick). Fans know that the Melvins don't need any help from anybody when it comes to making fucked up sounds. Pretty much every album of theirs has got at least totally WTF? track on it. They even have a few ENTIRE albums that confusionally consist of nothing but, such as the aforementioned Prick. So, imagine if the Melvins DID get some help, or rather, don't imagine, listen to this new all-remix album and hear for yourself! That's right, what could be cooler than the Melvins? How 'bout the Melvins screwed and chopped (if only! they should have gotten Swishahouse involved) by a bunch of other extreme/avant music mavens? Check it out: Eye Yamatsuka, Christoph Heemann, V/VM, John Duncan, Matmos, Lee Ranaldo, Merzbow, David Scott Stone, Panacea, Sunroof!, Kawabata Makoto, farmersmanual, Void Manes, RLW, and $peedranch! Dunno who Void Manes is (sounds black metal) but the rest of 'em are well known experimental/electronic/noise artists you're probably all familiar with. Not sure if the Melvins themselves picked 'em, or Ipecac did, but it's an impressive roster, just the folks to remix the Melvins catalog in gonzo, Plunderphonics fashion. No, these aren't "normal" remixes. Rather than having just a single song to play with, the participants were apparently asked to take a whole Melvins album and turn it into their "own" track.
Maybe you're wondering, is this noisy? Yes. Starts off that way certainly with Eye from the Boredoms' "Washmachine Sk8tronics". Endlessly chugging guitar riffage, gobs of distortion and shrill garbled electronics. Good grief, by the time you get to the end, which brings in the sounds of skateboards, it's hard to imagine who among the other remixers could top this, or how. Cleverly, the next track takes a totally different tack, Christoph Heemann's quietly droning "Emperor Twaddle Remix" being an abstract and (mostly) lovely respite from the noisy shenanigans that start up again on the very next cut, V/VM's "She Chokes Her Dying Breath & Does It In My Face", which proves that anything current noiseniks like Wolf Eyes and Shit & Shine ever did, the Melvins did it first, provided you listen to 'em with the assistance of V/VM. This sounds more like Merzbow than the latter track remixed by Merzbow himself, whose contribution to this disc is equally distortodelic but perhaps more rhythmic.
That brings us to track 4, the aforementioned John Duncan mix, which for the first time on this disc sounds like could actually be something from an actual Melvins album. With a heavy percussive onslaught and droning guitar, it's like an extended intro to a real Melvins song, but then when you think the rock is gonna kick in, instead you get low-end heartbeat pulsations and high-end electronic sizzle. Again, whomever programmed this disc did a fine job, 'cause that segues quite nicely into the clicks and cuts techno makeover that the Matmos boys do for the Melvins on "Linkshander". Heck we all might like techno better if it ALWAYS had the ominous doom-drone thing going on in the background, and spacey sci-fi effects, that this track does.
Lee Ranaldo's "Eggnog Trilogy" starts off with the first easily recognizable Melvins material on here so far, including even snippets of Buzz's vocals. This takes over from Duncan's cut as the track that sounds the most like it could be the Melvins themselves, but at the same time clearly isn't entirely. And, gosh, there's plenty more highlights, we'll not describe them all, except to say that Panacea's "electroclash" remix indeed sounds like that (rad!), and Sunroof! succeed in transmuting the Melvins into something that sounds more like their own hazy shining dronemusick, lovely.
Most of the remixers delve into the realm of digital glitch and out-and-out noise, with a small minority opting instead for calm and quiet. Tape speed manipulation, pitch shifting, extreme distortion, sudden edits, that's mostly the modus operandi here and the Melvins can take it, somehow keeping their unique musical persona intact. Though it will be challenging, trainspotting Melvins fanatics can have good fun trying to figure out what songs and/or albums each track is plundering.
Lastly, we can't review this without mentioning that a good friend of ours first heard the John Duncan remix while riding in a Lamborghini speeding through the Italian Alps -with- John Duncan. How cool and/or strange is that? While you might not be listening to this in a luxury sports car, more likely in your own home, we're sure you'll get a big kick out of it too, along with all the other remixes...
The Melvins, an often great band who are nothing if not self-indulgent, release this supposedly live cd on Mike Patton's Ipecac label. It's basically just one hour long track (with a split-second feedback coda occupying track two), being mainly a noisescape
At last it's here: the third in the trilogy (preceded by 'quiet album' "Bootlicker" and uh, 'Melvins-y album' "The Maggot") of Melvins records over the past year. An unholy trinity to be sure! This is obviously the 'wacky' record of the bunch, with the quotient of cover songs and guest stars at an all-time high. To name names: Leif Garrett (singing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" god help us), label boss Mike Patton, David "Jesus Lizard" Yow, Jim "Foetus" Thirwell, Bliss "Pain Teens" Blood, Kevin "Brutal Truth" Sharpe, and folks from Tool and Helmet, among others. Damn. Whoops, forgot Hank Williams III. He's on here too. Jesus. Is it good? Well, we haven't actually heard it yet. We're scared. But I think we've already provided enough information for any rational music consumer to make their purchasing decision. ...No, okay, let's put it on...hmmm...yep, it's fucked. It seems like the Melvins are asking the musical question, "Why, why, why?!". The liner notes try but fail to explain the inexplicable, although they do reveal that Beck was also considered for a collaborative role on this album--but fortunately for us, Leif Garrett's management was easier to deal with!
We love having this disc to put in our "Holiday Music" section when that time of the year rolls around. But it's great anytime of the year, a definite Melvins classic.
Well, they're here. Melvins fans, giddyup. Seriously, what to say? The four classic early Melvins records newly reissued on these two double lp sets (why'd they do it like that? dunno) are all ESSENTIALS. Back on (remastered) vinyl for the first time in 15 years, they're too old to have much in the way of reviews from us previously, when originally released, so we figured we'd have to write new ones, and we could, heck we could go on and on about 'em. But really, most folks who are likely to buy these already know what they're all about, right? And if for some reason you are a fan of sheer heaviness, and buy records, and these AREN'T in your collection, then, well, all we can keep it simple and say YOU MUST BUY THESE!
This paring brings together the Melvins' "holiday" record (at least, we always put in in our holiday music section when that time of the year came 'round, and it always sold!!), a four song ep from 1991, originally released on 10" vinyl, that featured three short rippin' tracks on the A-side (including the mighty "Hog Leg"), and an epic sludge drone fest on the B-side, "Charmicarmicat", over 12 minutes long, that sounds more or less like the blueprint for the first Earth album (though that was released the same year, so it can't really be). Meanwhile, 1992's Lysol, excuse us, for legal reason they're now calling it Lice-All, another fucked up Melvins classic, that features, along with several originals, covers of both Flipper (they do "Sacrifice") and Alice Cooper (not one but two songs!) all sounding perfectly Melvins-y.
Includes download!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The Melvins court controversy with the title and Kozik artwork (fluffy Hitler bunny, anyone?) of this new release. Dunno if anyone will care, what people really should care about is that it's a pretty good record, albeit a kind of "odds and ends" collection rather than a real "new" album: the disc is composed mainly of covers and reworked versions (new and improved! it says here) of older Melvins songs. So it's in keeping with the past two Melvins releases, their covers-intensive "The Crybaby" project and the reissue of their early classic "Gluey Porch Treatments" (the title track of which gets redone here, in fact). The covers, done without any guest help unlike the star-studded (ahem) "Crybaby" album, number three: a fantastic version of "Voice Of America" by The Wipers, a cover of "Missing" by Melvins bass player Kevin Rutmanis' old band The Cows, and an appropriately spacey take on Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive". Meanwhile, the versions of the Melvin's own songs, while not absolute improvements on the originals, are interesting and worthy. Chalk another one up for the Melvins comeback that started with "The Maggot" and "The Bootlicker".
Fact: the Melvins are one of the best bands ever, and continue to be one of the best bands ever.
Fact: the Melvins are always awesome when it comes to doing covers (their version of "Candy-O" by The Cars from Ozma being our favorite, closely followed by their version of KISS's "Going Blind" from Houdini), usually "making them their own" 100 percent.
Fact: they've just released a disc that's all covers, with some guest vocalists, and the song selection is quite eclectic to say the least, occasionally obscure too, including one that maybe only folks from San Francisco will freak out over - they do a song by the Pop-O-Pies!!! Cool.
Our only complaint about this, really, is that with the presence of the guest vocalists, some of the covers, while totally spot-on or otherwise interesting & well-done, maybe don't sound as much like the Melvins as we'd like - if Buzz woulda sung 'em all, we'd be even happier. But it's a quibble.
So, what more do you need to know? Well, the dang tracklist, perhaps. Here it is:
1. "Warhead" by Venom, featuring Scott Kelly of Neurosis
2. "Best Friend" by Queen, featuring Caleb Benjamin of Tweak Bird
3. "Black Betty" not by but as performed by Ram Jam
4. "Set It On Fire" by the The Scientists, featuring Mark Arm of Mudhoney
5. "Station To Station" by David Bowie, featuring J.G. Thirlwell of Foetus
6. "Attitude" by The Kinks, featuring Clem Burke from Blondie
7. "Female Trouble" by Divine
8. "Carpe Diem" by The Fuggs
9. "Timothy Leary Lives" by the Pop-O-Pies
10. "In Every Dream Home A Heartache" by Roxy Music, featuring both Jello Biafra and Kevin Rutmanis (formerly of both the Cows and the Melvins)
11. "Romance" by Tales of Terror
12. "Art School" by The Jam, featuring Tom Hazelmeyer of Halo Of Flies
13. "Heathen Earth" by Throbbing Gristle
Wow, quite a diverse & cool selection, eh? If you're a Melvins fan, you probably want this (unless, perhaps, you hated The Crybaby, which also featured a lot of unlikely covers/collaborations). 'Cause after all, heck, everybody does love sausages!
Mike Patton re-issues his Melvin buddies' awesome "Gluey Porch Treatments" album from 1986 and for this we are thankful -- it's nice to have a cd of this godly album all on its own, instead of merely appended to the "Ozma" cd (even though that version is still available for those who want to make their Melvins dollar go further--however, as added value incentive, this stand-alone "Gluey" includes the previously unreleased "garage demos" of the entire album!...thus making it an essential purchase for true Melvins fans even if you already have the "Ozma" cd!). Now, the Melvins have made a lot of records, some better than others, but let me tell you that this is one of the best. Heck, if they'd only made this one record they'd still be one of my all-time favorite bands, it's that good. This is the one that, prior to masterpieces like "Ozma", "Bullhead" and "Lysol", really established their unique Black Flag-meets-Black Sabbath heavier than thou sound.
My god these boys are prolific! Last week a live album with Fantomas, now a new not-at-all-"ambient"-despite-the-title studio full-length. And the past 3 or 4 years have seen just as many Melvins releases. If after 1999's disparate trilogy of The
Huh? We've never reviewed this classic Melvins album, their 1993 major label debut on Atlantic Records, though we did review the live version of this album they released on Ipecac much later, in 2005. Time to rectify the situation!
Houdini destroyed any doubts anyone could have had about the Melvins "selling out", it was pure Melvins through and through, tracks like "Night Goat" and "Hag Me" were just as fierce and devastating as anything they'd done up to then, "Hooch" and "Lizzy" as heavy and rockin', and the likes of "Sky Pup" and "Pearl Bomb" utterly as eerie and puzzling and weird...
How the heck did the freakin' Melvins get signed to a major? One word: Nirvana. And it was a more direct connection than just another "grungy" indie band getting swept up in the major label alt-rock signing hysteria of the era, as the Melvins and Kurt Cobain were old punk rock pals from their Aberdeen, Washington days. And indeed Cobain appears as a guest on a couple of the tracks here, including the finale, "Spread Eagle Beagle", a song in the glorious Melvins tradition of truly WTF? album-closing tracks, over ten minutes of echoing abstract percussion.
Oh, and this album features their harrowing, heavier than thou cover of "Going Blind" by KISS, which even moreso than some other songs they've covered, sounds like it was written FOR the Melvins.
Maybe the reason we never reviewed this before (besides the fact this album's release predated us doing "the list" anyway) is that we had to figure that any/all Melvins fans must already have this. But if by chance you don't, good grief, get it! And if you're NOT a Melvins fan, but would like to be, here's a great one to start in on.
It's kind of a dinosaur move, isn't it, releasing a live version of one of your classic albums later in your career? Didn't B.O.C. or Journey or somebody pull that one recently? But of course, this is the Melvins, the lords of surreal sludge grunge weirdness, who've ruled for years and shall never stop ruling. Which means they can do whatever the heck they want to do. So a live album devoted entirely to songs from their 1993 major label debut Houdini (a fan fave, if you ask this fan), recorded last year with Trevor Dunn (Fantomas/Mr. Bungle) on bass, why the heck not? And it delivers the Houdini live experience quite nicely, changing up some things a bit (song lengths, tempos, arrangements, track sequence) but not much really. "Night Goat" is even dirgier, "Going Blind" still the heaviest Kiss cover ever, and "Spread Eagle Beagle" remains a mindbending finale, undergoing further electronic mutations this time around. Overall though, these versions are nothing too radical, just a visit by Melvins circa 2005 to the material of Melvins circa 1993. It is a nice way to get reacquainted with an old fave. Guaranteed after hearing this you'll want to pull out Houdini and take it for a spin again too, feeling all fresh and new (or pick it up for the first time if you have never heard it before!!). So fans will want to check this out for sure, but we're of course more excited to hear whatever's upcoming from the even newer Melvins lineup featuring the two dudes from Big Business...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Seven-track live disc from these hard-workin' rock madmen. Includes renditions of earlier faves like "Boris" and "It's Shoved" as well as more recent material.
The words "Footloose and fancy-free and out of school" come from your speakers, beginning the disc and thusly, we embark on the career of that "juggernaut of pummel" known as the Melvins.
Here is a collection of "never heard before" (demo, live, rehearsal) recordings dating back to 1983! Remember 1983? I do...ugh! Anyways, a "pre-Dale Crover" line-up (which includes a young punk-ass named Matt Lukin on bass, you might also know him from another little band, Mudhoney?) bashes and thrashes it out with songs and tone reminiscent of Flipper / Bad Brains / Fang / Poison Idea / Black Flag -- this is NOT to say they sound like they are emulating the aforementioned legends, we're just saying that the Melvins, at such a tender age and still without the "other greatest drummer" Dale Crover, pretty much came into this world screaming and wailing. Buzz Osborne definitely is / was / is blessed / cursed as a "5-string motherfucker". Word. The liner notes by Buzz go on about how they were hacks at the time, but LEGIONS (after listening to this) will attest to "the power of the riff" that a (pre) King Buzzo packed at the age of 20 somewhere in Shithole City, WA (or maybe it was the town next to it?). This release is packed with all the fury and "pent-up-ness" that only comes from growing up on the outside of "cool" or "rich". (Well, it speaks to me, anyways...) There are songs on here that show up shortly after -- and many years later -- down that ugly road of "former bass players"...
It's refreshing to hear (punk) rock like this right now. There are even funny moments of (drunken?) banter on here that will make you laugh and think back and reminisce (or not) on your own "destruction ride" through your late teens/early twenties, etc. The actual sound on this thing is incredibly solid too, for something from the "golden age of hardcore".
A must own, if you will. But you already knew that, didn't you?
Won't go into too much detail here, since if you're not already a bit obsessed with the Melvins, you're probably not gonna need a 200 page book about em. But thos of you who ARE into the Melvins. WAY into the Melvins will definitely need this. Over two hundred pages of artwork, photos, tour diaries, discographies, interviews, stories, inserts, ALL the artwork from all their releases and more. Also includes a greatest hits cd. Odds are you have most of it, but there are a few surprises. Definitely super cool and gorgeously laid out. And of course, limited!
Y'know, the Melvins have been one of our favorite bands for so long we practically take 'em for granted. But when a new album comes out, it's still pretty exciting. Almost like it must have been in the '60s when, like, a new Beatles LP would be released, that's what it's like for us and the Melvins... except heck the Melvins have been around now for, like, 100x as long as the Beatles' whole career lasted.
So, yes, yah, yay, it's a new Melvins! Again on Ipecac, which means it's yet another Melvins cd with the front cover on the back and the tracklist on the front. You think they'd be over that by now, but the Melvins are all about being quirky now aren't they? Well, being quirky and HEAVY. And we're pleased to report that Nude With Boots is plenty heavy! As expected, though with the Melvins you also have to expect the unexpected too. But from the get go, Nude With Boots hammers it down, maybe a bit more uptempo rockin' than typical, lead-off track "The Kicking Machine" being just that, ass kicking that is, a hooky slab of classic rockin' riffola. Replete with chunky guitars, catchy vocal choruses, and splattering percussion to spare. The next track up, "Billy Fish" is another big, bangin' number. And then when track three, "Dog Island" hits, though, it's CRUSHING. And you realize that the album's only getting started. That song's 7 and a half minutes of herky-jerky slo-mo heaviness, creeped out and melodically fist-waving too. Yep, this is shaping up to be a quite satisfying Melvins experience, one that so far stacks up with the likes of Houdini. No kidding.
How do they do it? The Melvins have such an *authoritative* sound. Heavier than thou for sure. Distinctively untouchable. It's like they have access to better stuff than anyone. Stuff? Dunno, gear, drugs, organic vegetables, whatever it is that makes them sound like they do, the Melvins are in a league unto themselves.
One not so secret weapon: Buzz's always amazing, melodic yet gritty vocals, which we realize sound like Gene Simmons crossed with Ozzy Osbourne. And, as well, his usual cryptic, imagistic lyrics.
Furthermore, there's simply so much geetar badassitude on this album, Buzz blasting riffs and sweet licks all over the place, and of course Dale's drum fills are sweet (and punishing) too. We defy you to try to listen to this album and not a) air-guitar b) air-drum or c) at the very least, headbang. Maybe even sing along! If you can figure out the words that is.
Of course, along with the rippin' rock, this also has its copious share of abstractly wacked weirdness, ambient interludes like the 1:05 "Flush" ferinstance. Or the atmospheric moody SUNNO))) styled murk of the cleverly titled "Dies Iraea". Or the bizarre bludgeon n' scrape of "The Savage Hippy" and the even more out there "It Tastes Better Than the Truth", a twofer in the extreme tradition of Melvins album-enders, the latter practically sounding like a chaotic Khanate on a ketamine bender. Or Wildildlife...
So, sometimes it almost sounds like this is a uber-produced Ozzy or Alice Cooper album from the '80s or '90s that's been taken over by the real inmates of one of the padded cell insane asylums that those two cartoon characters always were checking into/outof (on the album covers anyway, rehabs in real life), hard rock pop that's been utterly warped and weirded out...
Maybe it's just as well that Melvins never got as huge as pals Nirvana during the Grunge years. They had a major label dalliance, yes, but survived it, and are still with us to crank out what's simply the classic rock of our generation (with a heavy dose of weirdness). Nude With Boots makes you remember, oh yeah, ROCK MUSIC. We love rock music. Damn, it's good. We've been really into the rejuvenated Harvey Milk lately, a Melvinsy band for sure, but you've gotta give it up to the originals, the one and only Melvins. All hail.
Well, they're here. Melvins fans, giddyup. Seriously, what to say? The four classic early Melvins records newly reissued on these two double lp sets (why'd they do it like that? dunno) are all ESSENTIALS. Back on (remastered) vinyl for the first time in 15 years, they're too old to have much in the way of reviews from us previously, when originally released, so we figured we'd have to write new ones, and we could, heck we could go on and on about 'em. But really, most folks who are likely to buy these already know what they're all about, right? And if for some reason you are a fan of sheer heaviness, and buy records, and these AREN'T in your collection, then, well, all we can keep it simple and say YOU MUST BUY THESE!
Ozma, from 1989, is the one that first turned us on to the genius of this band. Nonsensical lyrics, Black Sabbath meets Black Flag heavosity like nothing heard before (yeah, Flipper, yeah Gore, sure but Melvins took it to another level). Dale's drumming, Buzz's vocals, sheer brilliance. Bullhead, from 1991, was maybe even better, and heavier, really, somehow. Among other great tracks, it's got the song "Boris", which inspired a certain band from Japan. 'Nuff said.
Includes download! Which has a bonus track!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Got a handful of these not-so-cheap new Melvins singles, not sure what the occasion is for this release is but we know anyone named Kevin Willis might not be so happy about the cover photo.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
2 cds for the price of one. Every track from those monthly 7"s that you couldn't get hold of cos they sold so quickly. Of course, this too is limited. Oh, AmRep.
Well, if you're a Melvins fan you know that not only do these weirdos still make awesome albums (their most recent, The Bride Screamed Murder, we raved about when it came out a year ago) but they also still utterly slay live. With, what, almost 30 years of experience, they are as potent as ever. We just saw 'em live the other day, on the first evening of a two-night stand here in SF, doin' songs from Houdini, Lysol, and Eggnog, and boy their current 2 drummer line up sure packs a wallop. And guitarist/vocalist Buzz still looks striking in his mumu and outlandish 'fro. The Melvins are a heavy band of world-historical stature and we expect 'em to keep on rocking for at least as long as their forebears KISS!
So, as fans, of course we're curious about this new live album, and expectations are met, performance-wise they're on top of their game. The real question surely any fan has, is just what songs get the Melvins/Big Business treatment, there's 13 tracks here mostly showcasing the best of their more recent material but also digging into their massive discography for a few old faves. The first five tracks are Big Biz era stuff, from 2008's Nude With Boots (this recording comes from that tour) and 2006's Senile Animal, then they reach waaay back for an epic rendition of "Eye Flys" from 1986 opus Gluey Porch Treatments, followed by "Tipping The Lion" from 1996's Stag (a good choice, just 'cause we hardly ever pull that one out to listen to, but this makes us want to), and then it's back to Senile Animal stuff, four in a row, before, wha? a voice and drums version of "The Star Spangled Banner", that's right. They were feeling patriotic, apparently. Or just wanted to fuck with people, more likely. Then, for the grand finale, they offer up an anthem of their own, a crushing, extended version of "Boris" from Bullhead (1991), which will remind you why the band Boris chose that name!
If you're a Melvins fan from way back, but haven't acquainted yrself with their modern double drummer incarnation, this should convince you it was a good idea, and that they've still got songs to compete impressively with past "hits", a few a which you get to hear here as well. And if you're not a Melvins fan, well obviously live albums like this aren't intended for you anyway, so why are you still reading this review?
