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Since Radio Birdman skipped Philadelphia on their current U.S. tour, only their second ever, and since their show here last year was the best gig I saw all year, I decided to make the trek I-95 to Baltimore and boy was it worth it. If anything, they were even faster, louder, more intense and tighter than they were last September with perhaps the fact that they already have a short U.S. tour under their belt and were halfway through a second one being a factor. Nevertheless, we got all the classics, some songs from last year’s comeback album Zeno Beach and a few surprising but very welcome cover choices (BLUE OYSTER CULT’s “Hot Rails to Hell” and THE KINKS classic “Til the End of the Day”). Openers Awesome Color, an instrumental noise-rock trio, also impressed, while The Mishaps combined garage rockin’ punk with a bit too much ‘70s hard rock stylings for my liking.
Having never seen Tortoise before and having scant knowledge of their back catalog, I was nonetheless extremely impressed with their energy, musicianship and ultimately their ability to hold my attention with their exclusively instrumental jazz-rock (some would say “post-rock”) as well as their ability to do all this while constantly switching instruments.
This was my second time seeing The Notekillers and like the first time, they were great. Theirs is a much noisier take on instrumental rock and as such, it’s easy to see why THURSTON MOORE is such a fan of this legendary Philadelphia band’s early material, so much so that he put it out on his own Ecstatic Peace label.
Yep, it’s the second week in a row that this one is on my list. It’s the fourth consecutive great New Pornographers Lp and while on the surface they keep going further and further away from the buoyant garage energy of their incredible debut Mass Romantic, this is still undeniably them with CARL NEWMAN’s great sense of melody, NEKO CASE’s heavenly voice (boy would I love to hear an album of just her singing Newman’s songs) and DAN BEJAR’s typical quirkiness to mix it up a little.
I’ve liked this album since I first heard it earlier this year, but when I played it again yesterday, it really hit me. This is the best hardcore punk Lp (well it’s really a double) that I’ve heard by a newer band in a really long time. Imagine a faster, catchier, more streamlined version of later BLACK FLAG with POISON IDEA’s JERRY A on vocals and you’ll have some idea of what you’re in for here. Despite these obvious precedents, it feels very current as if they’re one of the bands taking this now almost thirty year old (!) genre further into the 21st century. The average song length here is between five and seven minutes with some clocking in at nine (!), but yet it’s never boring and feels quite right. Just stop reading this review and get it!
This is an absolute must for fans of this great New York hardcore band. It’s a DVD that includes a documentary chronicling the history of the band along with a live set of the second night of their two reunion shows at CBGBs in November 2004. While I didn’t attend the reunion shows, I did see them play many times during the ‘90s, so this DVD brought back those memories. Also included is a video for “Broken” and a CD that includes the audio portion of the live set.
I’d been looking for this one for years and finally came upon a copy thanks to the internet a few days ago. If you’re wondering, Paul isn’t a real reverend (as if the title of this record doesn’t give that away), but rather he was the lead singer of SHEER TERROR and is currently the singer for JOE COFFEE. Anyway this record, much like ROBERT POLLARD’s Relaxation of the Asshole or others by PAUL STANLEY and ELVIS PRESLEY (_Having Fun with Elvis on Stage_) contains nothing but Paul’s between-song banter. It’s incredibly hysterical, but not for the easily offended, to say the least. Paul is an equal opportunity offender and as such this feels like listening to a descendant of LENNY BRUCE and other comics of that sort. Paul has a real gift for baiting the audience and as long as you don’t take this too seriously, it’ll crack you up. There were only 500 made (and on green vinyl), so good luck finding one!
Yet another fine Lp from Lowe, this is in fact the fourth one in a row during his late-career renaissance that started with 1994’s The Impossible Bird and has continued through such gems as 1998’s Dig My Mood and 2001’s The Convincer. If there’s any complaint one could issue, it’s that this Lp is too similar to his early ones. However, I can counter that with the notion that consistency is to be commended and if you’re a fan of Lowe’s brand of country and soul along with his adult-oriented themes, you won’t be disappointed.
My favorite Joni album and also one of my favorite albums of all-time, this is Joni’s high-water mark as far as I’m concerned. One of the few times where an artist’s commercial breakthrough also happened to be the best album they ever made up to that point (PRINCE, who is a huge Joni fan, also pulled this off with Purple Rain in 1984), this is just an embarrassment of riches and the template (along with CAROLE KING’s Tapestry) for many female singer-songwriter albums that followed in its wake. None, however, were able to blend Joni’s sense of melody, the incredible mix of longing, vulnerability and defiance in her lyrics and her fascination with jazz that would come to the surface on later albums.
“Help Me,” “Free Man in Paris” and “Raised on Robbery” are the most well-known songs here and all are great, but also check out my favorite “Car on the Hill” along with the great one-two combo of “People’s Parties” and “Same Situation”, the first song segueing perfectly into the second and enveloping the listener in their grasps.
For years I’ve been a fan of their albums Alien Soundtracks and Half Machine Lip Moves, which were both reissued on CD on the Touch and Go label. However, this 1982 album had been out-of-print for many years, so I didn’t hear until I ordered the reissue from Noiseville and boy am I glad I did.
At times, this has way more in common with the proto techno-metal (some would say “industrial”) of later acts like MINISTRY (from Twitch onwards) than with the more experimental and abrasive STOOGES meets STOCKHAUSEN feel of their earlier albums, but that’s not a bad thing. It just shows how influential and ahead of their time Chrome really were. To prove this point, the industrial/speed metal-inspired New York band PRONG would cover the title track on their Beg to Differ album from 1990. After this, they would break up the following year, though several posthumous releases were issued and HELIOS CREED went on to a lengthy solo career.
I heard this song on WXPN’s Y-Rock show the other night and I really liked it, so I seeked out their MySpace page. Unfortunately this song isn’t streaming on there, but you can hear four other great tracks in the vein of DOVES, INTERPOL or EDITORS, all belying the fact that this band hails from Somerville, MA and not somewhere in the UK.
