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10 Great 7”!
NoTe: as always all of my top 10s are non-hierarchical!
I’m finding halloween themed lists kinda redundant these days, so fughettaboutit! Let’s listen to some 7 inches!
You know it: teeny records are the crack of the vinyl addict world. A quick hit of music that goes straight to the brain and is over all too quickly. I’ve been trying to amass more recent releases to my shoeboxes of the things and here are some newly acquired goodies. Most of em were picked up from other bands on my band Leamers ‘ recent fall US tour.
The New Highway Hymnal – “Blackened Hands” b/w “Hey Kid (Gotta Run)” (Vanya)
This great new band from the Boston area just dropped a full length on Vanya recs which I’ll review soon, hopefully. I grabbed this awesome little taste at a show we played with them in a packed Allston basement, what a kick ass pair of tunes! Very bluesy, rock, sidestepping the cheese factor, a riff ripped straight from The Stooges and generally some badass ripped road boogie that lives up to the name. The flip has some blissout psych drone reminiscent of Forida’s Stranger Family Band.
Fedavees – Solar Flower (Primordial Sounds)
Cambridge’s Fedavees put out this hallucinatory slab on psych epicentre label Primordial Sounds and your drugged brain should be thankful.
First track “Self of Light” is a squished up overdrived, tremolo voiced trip out, really riding the waves of incoherence in and out, would go great with a few hits of 40x salvia. Flip side “Freedom Freezes Over” goes deeper and chuggier with kind of a early Buttholes flava to the psych, with a slow riding detuned bass over a beat that won’t stop. I could rock this track for 20 minutes longer at least. Rewind this for sure and hope they put some more out!
White Pages – Please Kill Them (Can’t Stand Ya!)
Yup those same punk chords that we all know and love but transcended with a bit more speed (I like this kind of stuff fast) with much less fuzz than you’d expect. Traces of early sk8, some Bad Brains, natch.. it’s just fuckin’ fun jumping around music that doesn’t take itself overly seriously and I’m having a blast with White Pages.
Whitman/No Babies split 5” “Here’s to denying our Existence” b/w “Morlocks Take Manhattan” (Folktale)
Pretty little 5” vinyl containing two little songs out on the prolific Folktale label, side A is Whitman which takes a bit of an oversweetly bucolic folk plod and shoots noisy bulletholes into it (phew) and on the B, a blast of joyous and exuberantly saxy noise n’ squall from Oaklands beloved weirdos No Babies.
The Growlers – “Uncle Sam’s a Dick” b/w “Drinking Songs For Kids” (
Bearing their trademark druggy n draggy sound The Growlers threw us another little nugget of so called “Beach Goth” on this 7” precursor to their new album. A side (I think!) “Uncle Sam’s a Dick” is a fairly fey protest song, some random disquiet lobbed at the gov from behind a cloud of pot smoke. On the flip, “Drinking Songs For Children” continues the dubby meandering and even swings part way through, in my opinion a bit more solid of a tune and though I loves my Growlers, this release doesn’t quite hit the heights of say the “Gay Thoughts” release from last year.
Red Mass/Duchess Says split 7” “Red Mass” b/w “Fire Baptized Species” (alien8)
Sure, this has been out for a while now, but I just got it, ok? This at a show where both Red Mass and Duchess Says where everybody was freaking out and I wanted to dance but my knee was fucked up due to a shitty clutch in my car so I’m sitting in the back at the bar watching everyone go completely unhinged for Duchess Says and of course I’m bummed because my fucked up knee won’t let me join the party. Suddenly in the middle of the madness someone pulls on my sleeve and it’s singer Annie Claude, just kind of like “hey how are ya, are you having fun?” in the middle of one of their numbers before vanishing and reappearing riding a giant parachute and half the stage backdrop over the heads of the moshing kids. I totally fucking appreciate that in a performer to be everywhere all at once but still never miss a beat. This enigmatic collab between D.S. and prolific psych-rawkin friends Red Mass exudes attitude, very frontal and easy riffs. Satisfatory shred and Choyce‘s sneering vocals cut some new earholes. A rn’r bottle rocket of a single.
Zoobombs – “Highway a Go Go” b/w “Zbonbilly” (Sya)
Tokyo’s Zoobombs are one of the most relentless, explosively energetic bands touring today, and tour they do, always seeming to venture further and further from their Japanese home turf. Bringing together everything that’s good about rock, r&b, psych and garage punk, every Zoobombs tour and album is a further refinement and evolution of their abilities. They give till it hurts, I was glad to nab one of these puppies at their recent North American tour, a red-line nugget of rock and roll on a slab of transparent red vinyl! Check out the slide solo mid way through the A-side!
Bandname & Shat Shorts split 7” – “Moving Weight/What’d You Do Last Night?” b/w “King of Surfers”
Philly’s party in a can Bandname team up with awesomely named Shat Shorts on this little screen printed gem. Side A belongs to Shat Shorts, with some random Ah-nold samples intro-ing a healthy slab of noisy, rhythmically dense hardcore, with strange and totally appealing fiddly bits that gives way to a riffy, faux macho ending. It’s a great and cheap head-scratcher that you can tell would tear apart a basement show.
Flip and there’s an uncharacteristically slow jam from Bandname that builds subtly with a Kinks vibe and two chord hypnosis rock until things get peaky around the three minute mark and weird sped up tape samples, staggering percussion and pie plate smashing concrete noise filters in to draw up an epic close. Great release!
D.R.I. – Dirty Rotten EP 7” Reissue (Beer City)
It feel so right to have one of these (green vinyl!) little pieces of history. At the time, one of the fastest bands ever heard. This, DRI‘s first ever recording was only pressed up in about 1000 copies in 1983 and has been out of print ever since! It’s a treat to hear the early era of the band before they cleaned up a bit (but still ruled!) Oh the tunes, eh? “I Don’t Need Society”, “Capatalist Suck” [sic] and “War Crimes”, the raw seed of the thicker, angrier music that would follow in later years. Buy one, it’s less than 5$! At the same time, why not donate to the DRI guitarist Spike Cassidy‘s cancer relief fund.. I’m sure there are those like me who helped survive teenagehood with the help of DRI’s music so give back a bit, fuckers!
http://www.spikecassidy.com/donate.htm
Scarlet Beast – Too Tired To Fight EP (Independent)
Bad ass retro hardcore punk from Montreal that hit the right vein with every track. Full of vitriol and anger and gang vocals, every breakdown is perfect for a fast highway drive, an angry morning or a drunken moshpit.
