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This is the one of the best garage punk albums I’ve heard in a long time. Jay has played with THE REATARDS, LOST SOUNDS and currently TERROR VISIONS, this is Jay’s first full-length solo record. He plays all the instruments and it’s a 16 song, 28-minute adrenaline rush all way throughout this fine disc. His MySpace page lists his influences as THE RAMONES, THE ADVERTS, URINALS, WIPERS, WIRE and BRIAN ENO. That’s pretty accurate as he even does a faithful, but totally revved up cover of The Adverts’ “We Who Wait” that bests the great original! This came out in late 2006 but will probably my record of the year. I love it.
On the first listen, I didn’t like this at all. It seemed like maturity and time (this is their first record in 14 years and their first without drummer PAUL HESTER, who tragically took his own life) had taken their toll on NEIL FINN’s incredible melodic sensibilities as well as the band’s energy. By the third listen, I realized that this is one of the records that unfolds with every listen, much like a mystery novel unfolds the further into it one reads. Though this is definitely a more “mature” work, it’s never boring. In fact, it’s excellent, substantial music for adults (I generally refuse to use the AAA designation, though I just did) that anyone who likes this band as well as NICK LOWE’s recent records or the recent DON MCLASHAN solo record Warm Hand should enjoy. Highlights include “Pour Le Monde”, album opener “Nobody Wants To”, new single “Don’t Stop Now” and especially “Heaven that I’m Making”. However, this is definitely meant to be listened to in its entirety. Just don’t expect “Something So Strong” or “Locked Out” here.
Yes this Brooklyn-based band has been getting a lot of blog love lately, to be honest, I was more interested in this album because it’s a song-by-song reimagining of BLACK FLAG’s seminal Damaged album. The songs are rendered unrecognizable with ethereal female vocals (often repeated or looped), weird electronic effects and other things that more in common with experimental indie rockers like ANIMAL COLLECTIVE than with anything that HENRY ROLLINS, GREG GINN and company ever did.
So yes, this album will offend purists who come looking for faithful covers, but I think it really works. The overall effect is hypnotic, droning, trance-like and absolutely nothing like the original. I dig it.
I’ve been listening to this one a lot lately. It recently got reissued (though in the UK only, unfortunately) and you can read my fellow blogger STEVE HOLTJE’s review here.
I was talking about THE POLYPHONIC SPREE with a friend once. Trying to explain their appeal to me, she said it was like a bunch of choir kids went off in the woods, did a ton of acid and came back to sing in their church.
So what does that have to do with this record? Well imagine a bunch of post-punkers who do the same thing and then come back and record the results. The fierceness and savagery here is still overpowering. The only thing comparable would be the heights THE BIRTHDAY PARTY would hit a few years later on their classic Junkyard. In addition to being massively influential on The Birthday Party, THE MINUTEMEN also took great inspiration from this record. Great, great stuff.
This is excellent and every bit the equal of his better-known and appreciated earlier works like Lesson No. 1 and The Ascension. Powerful, atonal, shape-shifting and in-your-face.
Playing just the right amount of material from their new Time on Earth along with classics from their first four albums, Crowded House owned the Mann last night. Opener Pete Yorn, who I hadn’t seen play in over 5 years, was a nice surprise as well. I really enjoyed hearing songs from his debut album musicforthemorningafter, which I liked a lot at the time, but a few (though not all) of the newer songs impressed as well.
Part of the “It’s All In Your Head FM” tour, Negativland gave out pinata blindfolds and radios before the performance. With three members taking a stage set up to look like a radio station, the idea was that audience members were supposed to wear blindfolds and listen to the performance on the little handheld radios (which made no sense since it was being played live and was audible, of course). Nevertheless, the show itself was captivating with the collective mixing up found samples and other excerpts to illustrate the hypocrisy behind modern-day Christianity. In order not to focus on just one religion, after a short intermission the second half of the show centered on Islam. This was not an atheist screed, but rather a presentation designed to make people think.
This was a nice setting for three short, mostly-acoustic sets by the alt-country-leaning A Brief View of the Hudson (as their name implies, from New York), Seattle indie-rockers Patience Please and Philadelphia locals Thrift Shop (led by NEAL RAMIREZ, also in the band SCARY MONSTER).
Honestly, this show was a disappointment compared to the last few times I’d seen Morrissey live. This was billed as a greatest hits tour, but Morrissey, always one who likes to annoy his fans, instead focused mainly on material from his 2004 comeback album You are the Quarry and the more recent, lesser Ringleader of the Tormentors from last year. It would have made more sense for him to focus on this material had he toured for it last year, but now that the record is more than a year old, I was hopeful that he would dig into the back catalog a bit more. When he did just do that, playing a few SMITHS classics like “Girlfriend in a Coma”, he sounded like was phoning it in. This was a shame, as on previous tours this was thrilling, but now it just sounded rote.
