punk

Chelsea Light Moving – “Chelsea Light Moving”

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It can be tempting to read a lot into this album, since it’s Thurston Moore’s first major move since Sonic Youth dissolved into a tepidly scandalous divorce.  Following a mid-life crisis that broke up both his marriage and his band, this new album represents the direction he wants to push his career in.  Chelsea Light Moving answers that the direction he’s moving in is circular.  It’s certainly spotlights his long-standing tendency towards heavy guitar work built on high gain and feedback.  The tone is angry, although as per usual it’s a very diffuse anger whose target is unclear.  It’s reminiscent more of the tone on Washing Machine or the heavier parts of Daydream Nation than it is of Rather Ripped or A Thousand Leaves, however; it’s guitar work that snarls through the gutter, levitating on its own squeals.  It makes Chelsea Light Moving into a Sonic Youth record made in a world where Lee Ranaldo and Kim Gordon no longer exist, a dark world where Moore is free to follow whatever Sabbath/Flag blackness he wishes.  Personally, that makes it a winner:  Moore was always my favourite part of Sonic Youth, and Kim Gordon’s meandering, flat-voiced passages always left me a little cold.  The problem, though, is that Moore very rarely leaves his comfort zone here; he rehashes his best Dirty moments but doesn’t use this new chapter of his life to say anything new.  It leaves Chelsea Light Moving feeling like it ended up being less than it could have been; instead of progressing, it simply feels like Moore ends up wallowing in his own sullen quicksand, thrashing about in the same patterns until he becomes stuck.  It sounds great, but it ultimately goes nowhere.

FINAL MARK:  B-

Ty Segall – “Music For A Film 1”

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My sweet Lord, those drums, and that wiry guitar work.  It’s like someone achieving their own personal Revolver in a dirty hole-in-the-wall.  This guy has already proven himself to be a modern-day Robert Pollard, churning out a staggeringly prolific catalog of mostly very good songs.  “Music For A Film 1” takes him in a much more expansive sonic direction, although the title sounds like the placeholder filename of some experimental studio fuckery.  Maybe he needs to do that more often.

Parquet Courts – “Light Up Gold”

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Parquet Courts are a Brooklyn band, but don’t hold that against them – they barrel forward with a singleness of purpose that cuts through the pseudo-intellectual fluff that a lot of borough bands seem to wallow in.  Right from the kickoff, this album does not tiptoe around why it came; “Master My Craft” is as straight-forward as a gunshot and as catchy as a coronavirus.  Leadoff single “Borrowed Time” flows naturally from the ending, creating the greatest one-two punch of the year, easily.  The fifteen tracks contained here have a shockingly high percentage of gold embedded in them – the album only really lags once or twice briefly, most notably on the sort-of-slow “Yr No Stoner”.  Andrew Savage and company really do master their craft here:  the songs are tight, ridiculously catchy, and (with the exception of the five-minute ode to the munchies “Stoned and Starving”) less than three-and-a-half minutes in length.  As a debut album this is an auspicious start; I’ve had this one on my heavy rotation list since I first caught “Borrowed Time” on satellite radio earlier this year.  This is minimalism that manages to say more in half an hour than some artists manage in their entire career.  Thank all the gods that Whats Your Rupture? decided to rerelease it (it was originally released in 2012 on the tiny Dull Tools label), because it’s going to be a presence on my year-end list for sure.

FINAL MARK:  A


Single Mothers

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Caught these guys live in St. Catharines at the Mansion House last night.  They combine a classic Ontario hardcore sound with vocal elements that strongly remind me of the Hold Steady.  Their show is sweaty and bruising, and Drew the vocalist throws himself into the crowd at any opportunity.  His teeth (“she didn’t seem to mind my busted ass smile”) are mute evidence to the dangers of this sort of practice – the pit last night was brutal and I was sure someone was going to get knocked right out at any moment.  The show is short – the band only has seven recorded songs to their name and two more they’ve been trying out live – but the intensity makes it well worth it, if you can catch them.  This is most evident when they bust out ragers like “Christian Girls” or “Baby” but the singalong chorus nature of “Winter Coats” (my favourite track of theirs and possibly one of my favourite tracks period) makes the intimate crowd setting even more of a “us-against-the-world” vibe.  Drew spouted at one point that they had come to “keep the spirit of punk rock alive in St. Catharines” and in this they succeeded wildly.

 

R.I.P. – Five Classics Songs Written By Jeff Hanneman

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Woah, I was about to close up shop for the night and then found out that integral Slayer co-founder Jeff Hanneman died today of liver failure.  He’d been battling necrotizing fasciitis for some time and it is unknown at this time as to whether the two were related.

Slayer is one of those bands that transcend the genre they are a part of and become part of the cultural lexicon.  After all, it is common wisdom that if there is a gathering of hippies growing dangerously out of control, you need to use Slayer to disperse them.  Commonly found to be paired with the hook ’em horns gesture that signifies the love of metal, the name conjures up images of fast, brutal thrash metal.  They (OK, along with maybe a scant few others) were the key guiding force behind the formation of death and black metal; it is hard – maybe impossible – to imagine the current, sprawling metal underground without them. Hanneman was arguably the man that brought the real intensity of hardcore punk rock to the world of metal; he favoured technical brutality and had the logo for the legendary Dead Kennedys emblazoned on his guitar.  The line between the two milieus blurred considerably during his career, to the benefit of everyone involved.  His work became a touchstone on both sides, and his influence is felt in all sorts of random places throughout the musical universe. So, in that spirit, here are five songs he wrote that changed the world of heavy music forever.

BANG YOUR HEAD.

“RAINING BLOOD” – From Reign In Blood, 1986.

The final track of the blistering, epoch-defining hardcore workout that stands as perhaps the finest metal album ever created.

“CHEMICAL WARFARE” – From Haunting The Chapel, 1984.

Speed-of-light thrash that borrows a name from the brilliant DK song of the same name.  The sheer relentlessness of this song ensures its immortality.

“SOUTH OF HEAVEN” – From South Of Heaven, 1988.

A key indicator of growth in the Slayer canon – an eerie mid-tempo riff that slowly builds into a crushing finale.

“SEASONS IN THE ABYSS” – From Seasons In The Abyss, 1990.

That lengthy intro.  That creepy clean riff behind all the crunching chords.  That break that kicks the tempo in the ass and keeps it running.  Close your eyes and forget your name.

“ANGEL OF DEATH” – From Reign In Blood, 1986.

This song is the aural equivalent of being pummeled by a flurry of body blows from a trained boxer – it’s probably the best metal song ever recorded, and it might just be the best kick-off to any heavy album ever recorded.  It’s a fitting song to crank to 11 as you celebrate the life and times of a heavy music legend.

Goddammit, I’m growing old.

Pissed Jeans – “Honeys”

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Factory towns are, by and large, not a terribly fun place to live.  I’ve lived in more than a few, and believe me when I tell you that the curious intersections of sociology that occur in them have a tendency to wear you down after a while.  Life there is as monotonous as the machines make it out to be; you get into a rut of the same old places populated by the same old faces.  You go to the same bars, have the same drama, sleep with the same people.  Pissed Jeans knows this life all too well.  They come from Allentown, PA.  You know, “Well we’re living here in Allentown/and they’re closing all the factories down/Out in Bethlehem they’re killing time/Filling out forms, standing in line”.  It’s the existential ennui of such a place that lends the band the primal urge necessary to craft their brand of heads-down, cock-out torpedo rock.  They exist in a similar sonic realm as Polaris winners Fucked Up, but where that band reaches for the esoteric, with concepts and operas, Pissed Jeans instead mostly just wants to follow the Stooges in terms of feedback, fucking, and getting fucked up.  They succeed at this wildly; they can deftly balance rave-up bouncing garage punk (“Vain In Costume”, “Bathroom Laughter”) with Melvins-esque sludge (“Chain Worker”, “Male Gaze”).  “You’re Different (In Person)” shows a deep love for the Jesus Lizard.  It’s an album that seems to exist primarily to placate the fears of the nouveau aged who think the Nineties cornered the market on the Sabbath dream.  It transcends these influences, though, with a deadpan sense of humour that sets it to an equal alongside the classics and a balls-out attack that makes it all seem curiously modern.

Final Mark:  A-