Bombino's second full-lengther, Nomad, recently released on the Nonesuch label, is one of the finer things I've heard this year. I procured a copy from a representative of the Time-Warner corporation just the other day (take a wild guess: rhymes w/ "David Lang"), and I've had it on repeat the past 24 hours, hitting pause during sleeping hours. Omara "Bombino" Moctar is a 30-something guitarist from Niger in West Africa who partly plays in the tradition of the likes of Ali Farka Toure - rhythmic and repetitive "desert blues" - but whose music also pays a nod to the Western sounds of Hendrix and Jimmy Page. Well, his influences are as such, although you're unlikely to mistake his music from Physical Graffiti anytime soon. It does, however, emit an intricate, semi-psychedelic tone which is more varied than his desert peers, bringing to mind everything from Moby Grape and Quicksilver to the 'Dead-like noodling of Television. Surely that can't be a bad thing, and to answer my own question, it's not.
Prior to Nomad, Bombino released an excellent CD on the Cumbancha label by the name of Agadez (where he hails from) in 2011. Have I written about it before? Possibly not, although it was one of my favourite releases of that year. It was also pretty raw, less textured than Nomad, though the lo-fi quality of the recording added to its mystique. Here was a guy who'd been hounded by militants from his place of birth (members of his band were apparently murdered), and his music reflected this relentless persistance: epic and evolving guitar/bass/drums jams which wouldn't quit. Regarding Nomad, here's the catch: it's produced by the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach, this year's Jack White/Mike Patton/etc., a middle-brow taste-maker who's sold a zillion records, plays in a fairly ordinary rock band and has the world's major music critics at his feet. Not that I have anything against Auerbach. I never thought anything of the Black Keys even in their early days, so it's not like I'm resenting their newfound popularity as a long-time, embittered fan who held them dear when no one gave a shit about them. The Black Keys are simply this year's White Stripes: the band your uncool cousin at the family BBQ asks you about once he hears you're into "alternative music". There are worse things in this life to worry about. At the very least, Auerbach (second cousin of the great Robert Quine, by the way) has put his fame & industry pull to good use, having produced Dr. John's return-to-form Locked Down from last year, and his own solo LP from 2009, Keep It Hid, from what I heard, was actually a pretty interesting mix of white-boy blues-rock, studio experimentation and some sort of moderne swamp-pop. I didn't hate it.
And of course there's Nomad by Bombino. Auerbach has slickened up the proceedings a tad, but not detrimentally so: there's simply more definition between instruments and Dan has roped in some honkies to broaden the musical pallette, including keyboards and lapsteel guitar. The results are certainly nothing to mourn, the overall ambience being note-perfect. I hope Bombino doesn't get progressively "Westernised" in his musical output as his fame rises, although the right balance is achieved this time around. There's 11 tracks in 40 minutes, songs tend to blend into one, although I can certainly say that the rockin' guitar twang on "Azamane Tiliade" stands out, and the drone and added lapsteel on the finisher, "Tamiditine", caught my ear.
 Simply discussing context, famous producers, etc. probably doesn't do Nomad any justice, although it's an interesting part of the story. It's a contemporary recording on a major label, produced by some famous guy, and it is what it is what it is: a great collection of psychedelic desert-rock. Dig it.

 When Numero Group recently announced that they were to be reissuing (kind of: the Sub Pop versions are, so far as I know, still in print on CD) the three records by New York's Codeine, I just about spat my lunch all over my computer (not really). It seemed like a mighty odd choice for a quality label which had released a ton of ace regional soul/funk comps and other curios, but hadn't really delved into the quagmire of "indie rock" reissues. But I'm glad they have, because Codeine's debut, Frigid Stars LP, originally issued by Germany's Glitterhouse label (there's a blast from the past) in 1990 and subsequently domestically reissued by Sub Pop in '91, is a real gem from the dawn of the '90s. Prior to my purchase of NG's deluxe 2LP edition this week, I hadn't played Frigid Stars LP for a long time, probably since Clinton was in power, and call me a hopelessly nostalgic old fuck if you please (you should), but it's a trip to the past well worth revisiting. I never owned it back in the day; the household copy back was owned by my brother, though I was prone to borrowing it for days on end to spin its wares on repeat. Alongside the noisier shit I was listening to back at the time (in '91 it was a lot of Die Kreuzen/Chrome/Swans), Codeine washed over me like, well, codeine. Many hold them responsible for developing the "slowcore" scene back in the day, and whilst that's interesting in some small way, I'd personally be more interested in who the fuck coined the term "slowcore" so I could wring their neck. Anyway! At this point in time, "slowcore" didn't really exist, and I suppose that if I was to define such a term, if I really, really had to, it'd be post-punk rock music of a slow, textured variety. Not quite shoegaze, and not quite doom, it is what it is and that's the end of the matter. Fact is, nobody cared less about it or its existence back in 1991: there was simply Codeine's debut to contend with.
The band had only existed for a year when Frigid Stars LP was recorded. Drummer Chris Brokaw was also playing in Come at the time (one day I will actually listen to Eleven: Eleven) and left the band to pursue Come fulltime (fnar fnar); other members would go onto play w/ the likes of June of 44 and Rex. Got it? Frigid Stars LP is made up of 10 songs, and there's not one I skip (caveat: the Glitterhouse version only had 8 songs; Sub Pop tacked on two extra for their edition). There is an awesome sense of melncholy throughout, though it never gets mawkish or hamfisted. The instrumentation keeps everything in check; washes of guitar noise mixed w/ subtlety and intricacy. What Codeine achieved in 1990 would subsequently be run into the ground throughout that decade, as every post-HC nudnik w/ a college degreee decided to 'slow it down' for whatever effect. Some good things were achieved, and some best left forgotten. Listening to Frigid Stars takes me back to being a confused, nervous and slightly stupid 19 year-old: the sadness of the opener, "D"; the heady guitar churn of "Pickup Song" (a track which sounds like it could've been lifted from the Grifters' debut, So Happy Together, from '92, or vice-versa); the anthemic "Cave-In"... I must've listened to this a lot back in the day, coz little of has been a surprise to me during my 2013 revisit, except for perhaps how good this still sounds. And let me say this, before you accuse me of being hopelessly nostalgic (you already have): listening to Frigid Stars LP doesn't get me wistful for the past. If anything, spinning it in the year 2013 only makes me thankful that it's not 1991 anymore and I made it through to approaching middle age w/ everything, most importantly my sanity, intact. Things are better now, in many regards.
Codeine were a band of their time and place: parts of their ouvre (and membership, in some instances) overlap w/ the likes of Slint, Bitch Magnet, Galaxie 500, Grifters, Supreme Dicks et al, but their worthiness makes them more than just an artifact of their era. Frigid Stars is a very fine recording of it or any era. Numero Group's edition, as w/ most things they do, is ridiculously deluxe: a heavy-duty gatefold sleeve w/ a bonus LP of demo recordings and very early tracks from the late '80s ("Skeletons" being the most atypical: an uptempo number which borders on hardcore) and a CD of everything therein (which I still can't manage to exit from its packaging w/out fearing that I'll tear the LP sleeve apart: how the fugg are you supposed to remove this thing?), as well as a large and detailed booklet detailing the history of the band w/ many previously unpublished photos. Interesting stuff - the roots of the group go all the way back to an early '80s HC unit, Pay The Man - but you're best reading it firsthand, not here. NG has also released similar editions of the band's Barely Real and The White Birch, and I might very well need 'em all.

Been an interesting last few weeks here in Melbourne regarding touring acts. Like I said in the previous post, we had Public Image Ltd. just last month, and before that we had Iggy and the Stooges (or what passes for the Stooges these days; there's none of the Asheton brothers in the band anymore, and that new album... peee-yoooo! I can't possiby express disppointment, since there isn't any), and in the past fortnight we've had Blue Oyster Cult, Flamin' Groovies and Black Sabbath all passing through town. Hell, whilst yer at it, throw Aerosmith in the mix there, too. 1975 is alive and well. I caught none of them, for various reasons. Actually, my main reason would be a lack of interest and desire to fork out big dough for the occasion, but there are other mitigating factors. Black Sabbath were the pick of the bunch, so far as I'm concerned (and reports from all and sundry have been universally very positive), but I've been to a handful of arena shows in my lifetime, and they've all been duds. If there's one thing them punkers got right it remains this: "arena-rock" shows are one hell of a lifeless, disengaging experience. I fell asleep watching Slayer in such a manner mid last decade! Sitting down w/ 10,000 other schlebs in a cavernous airport hangar watching your fave raves from a zillion miles away is a bore, and I don't care who's leaping about on stage. I'd rather watch the Youtube clip the next night and save my money. There was the one glaring exception of having witnessed a brain-frying show by Neil Young at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl about a decade back, when his blazing performance smoked minds left, right & centre, but that also mighta had something to do w/ what I smoked before the show.
Anyway... BOC played at the Prince Of Wales, as a sideshow to their Dig It Up! show (where the Flamin' Groovies also played; Google this event, if need be), and, being cautious about paying money for a band whose peak era was roughly the year I was born (that's 1972, folks), I steered clear. Some friends of mine attended and were vaguely positive about the performance, although griped about it being either a little too "guitar workshop" or even "too Pat Benatar" for their liking. Yikes! Having only two original members in the mix probably didn't help the cause. The 'Groovies? They're OK, though they've never worked me up into enough of a lather to care a great deal for their existence, despite what my namesake thinks of them. I've never even bothered to research the whole story behind the differing Roy Loney/Cyril Jordan lineups, since their music has never inspired me enough to care. Still, this "Slow Death" clip is one of the greatest things I've ever seen and there are other moments in their discography I like (and even own), but again: their highpoint was approximately the year I was born (or maybe even the year I attended kindergarten, if you're willing to vouch for Shake Some Action as the contender), so it wasn't on my radar. Some folks said they were sloppy, some folks said they were great. Some folks said they were sloppy and great.
Now, let me tell you a little (and perhaps pointless) story about Black Sabbath... last week I was invited to a private "listening party" by Universal Music for their forthcoming new album, 13, to be released worlwide next month. It's not because I'm an important guy or anything, it's just because myself and a workmate happen to be friendly w/ a sales rep from the company and were offered the passes. We eagerly accepted them. I'm not one prone to attending such events - in fact, I usually avoid them like a proverbial cliche - but I figured it would get me out of the office for the afternoon, give me a chance to mooch a few free drinks and possibly even grant me the honour of shaking the hand of either Ozzy, Geezer or Tony, the three of whom would be in attendance. What the fuck, I'm pretty shameless. I might even be able to get a snap of the four of us together and post it on Facebook for the envy of my nerdy friends.
 I hadn't been to a "listening party" for over 15 years. The last one I can remember attending, in all seriousness, was for Sepultura's Roots, which was held at the Public Bar in North Melbourne and comprised of a hundred or more freeloaders packed into a small bar for the free booze and pizzas, a chance to hear the record (which I'd already heard a thousand times by then, anyway, as I was working for their distributor at the time and was - quite literally - involved w/ the manufacturing of the album) and get drunk w/ friends. I remember having a blast, if I remember much at all. I expected this one, to be held at the ultra-posh Park Hyatt Hotel, to be a similar if perhaps larger affair: 200 junket-riders packed into a mini-ballroom, guzzling booze whilst the album was played overhead and the members of the band shuffled around under heavy security to meet and greet important people (mostly journalists). It was nothing like it.
Upon arrival we were directed to the downstairs bar where we were greeted by several security types who instructed us to hand over our mobile phones and then ran a metal detector over us. I guess it only takes one person to leak an album to the entire goddamn world these days. We were then directed to the next room, a very swish private area where billionaires probably hold hooker parties and snort coke off the balls of midgets. Or something like that. This was to be a far more intimate affair than I expected. There's a coffee machine and some backstage deli treats laid out for the guests and 20 chairs lined up in a semi-circle against the oval-shaped space to my right. I immediately spot a few people I know - radio and retail types - so I get myself a bottle of mineral water and grab a chair next to an old retail friend who's there. Proceedings are about to begin. We're given a program of the forthcoming album before it's to be played - track listings, a rundown on the history (sales and otherwise) of Black Sabbath - and a Park Hyatt notepad and pen to make notes. A marketing schleb from Universal - thee marketing schleb from Universal, apparently - then gives a speech about the album and 'Sabbath's standing in the greater scheme of things, the kind of award-winning speech which earns you six figures a year in major recording companies. OK, it wasn't that bad. Being an Englishman of the right age, he went on to talk about the English punk scene of the late '70s (don't ask me why, no one asked) and how it was a rebellion against the pretension of rock music in the '70s - yada yada yada... heard this before? - but remember this: Black Sabbath were never pretentious, they were the real deal. OK. I won't argue.
Cue Ozzy, Tony and Geezer for a quick hello, quite literally. Ozzy shuffled in - the others seemed more sprightly and compos mentis - and mumbled a polite greetings to everyone, saying thanks you for coming along and he hopes we enjoy the record. I don't care what they say about the guy, he was the perfect gentleman when I semi-met him. Exit band members and cue the madly-guarded new album for the select few people in the room. The speakers set up were tiny, about twice the size of my fist, but fuck me, they could pack a punch: they were LOUD. Too loud. Annoyingly loud. Nobody wanted to be known as the person who asked that the volume be turned down at a Black Sabbath listening party, but everyone was thinking it. Anyway, we sat through the eight tracks of the album, I scribbled out a Satanic star on my sketch pad and wrote "Hail Satan" and then we were once again politely escorted from the room to pick up our mobile phones and chat amongst ourselves. I joked to a friend that I had a plastic-based recording device sewn into my jean cuffs and was shot a suspicious look by a company rep. It was a joke; he soon realised that. Ozzy and co. were kicking back at the bar 10 metres away, waiting for the non-journo plebs to leave so they could answer some pre-approved questions from the Woodward & Bernsteins present. My workmate pointed him out to me and said, Maybe I'll potter over and say g'day to him. Two turtlenecked dudes were in proximity of Ozzy, and it was quite obvious that if you were to seriously entertain such an idea, they would sniff you out pronto and probably put you in a lung-squeezing Brazilian jujitsu hold before throwing you through a plate-glass window onto the street. Best not risk it. What the fuck do you say to Ozzy, anyway? "I really liked you music ca. 1968-1978"? No, to be fair, the new 'Sabbath album sounds pretty A-OK to me. It certainly sounds better than the new Stooges album, and even better than the first "new" "Black Flag" track leaked just this past week (sidenote: care to discuss this? Please do. Ginn's guitar sounds hot, as always, although Ron Reyes' - a man who's been residing mostly under the Where The Fuck Is He Now? file for the past 30+ years - Hank Rollins impersonation sounds constipated and the rhythm section is weak as piss and possibly playing an altogether different song underneath. I like jazz, too, especially SST-damaged jazz, but this sounds extremely unpromising to me): every riff off 13 is ripped off a track from one of their first six, classic LPs (there's about three moments throughout which had my workmate prodding me and shouting in my ear, "That's 'Children Of The Grave'"), Rick Rubin's production is crunching and mostly sympathetic to what 'Sabbath should sound like (he hasn't totally reproduced the beautifully organic fuzz of their early '70s works, the bass lacking the warmth of the days of yore), the lyrics are mostly atrocious drivel you might expect to see written on the schoolbag of a 13 year-old and out of the eight songs, there's probably four I'd rate as being really great, two as "good" and the remaining two being a bit weak but still acceptable in the grand scheme of things. W/ today's diminished expectations for listenable rock music, that's not a bad strike rate. I told you this story was pointless.

I see that Public Image Limited's debut LP from 1978, Public Image: First Issue, is getting its first ever official US domestic release c/o the good folks at Light In The Attic on both vinyl and compact disc formats. They've probably made enough money off Rodriguez that they can release whatever the damn hell they want these days. It's strange to think that this classic - and it is a classic - was never deemed commercial enough at the time to get a US release (even though Warner/US printed a test pressing), but then again, Never Mind The Bollocks kinda stiffed in the American marketplace at the time (it eventually went Gold) and I guess Warner weren't about to take a gamble on John Lydon's new group, a goddamn "art band" at that. PiL's 1979 meisterwerk, Metal Box/Second Edition, was seen as such a monumental shift in sound, that the band's debut, barring the well-known "Public Image" single, is often viewed as merely a lead-up to a much more satisfactory sophomore effort. I would almost claim that Metal Box can be seen as a warm-up to the even more mind-blowing Flowers Of Romance LP from 1981 - their last gasp as a "real" band and the end of Lydon's musical career as a true innovator (there's some great PiL singles from the rest of that decade, I'll admit), but maybe that's an issue between myself and my therapist. The fact is: the first 3 PiL longplayers represent three brilliant successive leaps in the career of Lydon, a guy whose life in music very well could've been deemed dead on arrival the moment the Sex Pistols called it quits in early '78.
Lydon's "new" PiL toured Australia just a couple of weeks ago. It was steeped in predictable controversy after he acted like a jackass to other, even bigger jackasses on an annoying TV panel show down here (watch it), something which guaranteed him headlines for at least a few days, and yet all of this brouhaha couldn't drag my sorry bones out to see him play live... and I was offered a free ticket! I just don't really care what John Lydon is doing in the year 2013 - musically or in other aspects of his entertainment career - and the thought of seeing him whining on stage, acting the fool and wearing some godawful multi-coloured suit sounded like a chore rather than a treat. Word is the shows were very good - the Melbourne show the best of them all - so I guess he got the last laugh. His band, featuring longtime member Bruce Smith (ex-Pop Group guy) and a guy who's played w/ the Damned, apparently played the material faithfully and w/ energy and vigour, whilst Lydon kept the tiresome/predictable obnoxiousness to a minimum, concentrating on being a jovial and engaging frontman. Who'da thunk such a description would define a "good" Lydon show in the 21st century?
Where was I? The first album... Some of the tracks on the debut were written whilst Lydon was still in the 'Pistols: he tried to get Jones & co. to jam on "Religion" when the band was in its dying days, though apparently they wouldn't have a bar of it. Glen Matlock always said that Lydon was just a messed-up Catholic, and he was probably right. I can't imagine Jones and Cook getting their heads around such subject matter, and I can't imagine Sid getting his head around much at all by that stage. First Issue is an excellent combination of the two records it's sandwiched between; sonically, it's a perfect balance of the two - "art-rock" which actually rocks. It was recorded in three separate studio sessions, though the sound throughout is seamless. The one great (and obvious) anomaly is the end track, "Fodderstompf", nearly eight minutes of a repetitive drum-machine track interpersed w/ giddish vocals and electronics. It could be dismissed as aimless farting about, or filler to pad out the album (the latter it actually was), although as a complete song it's entirely listenable and points forward to their epic 1979 double/triple set. The rest of it could well have wound up on a second 'Pistols LP if Lydon could have convinced "the lads" to expand their horizons a little.
The rock & roll tracks on First Issue are a real treat. There's seven of them, and there's not a dud in the batch. The opener, "Theme", probably wasn't a good way to convince coked-out Warner execs that they had a possible hit on their hands. At nine minutes long, it's probably ther least-commercial song on the LP, and not just because of its length: it's a torturous, screeching sludge, a decent blueprint for Flipper's subsequent career in audio annoyance (though when I asked Steve DePace if the band listened to much PiL in their early days, he responded in the negative. He said Flipper were inspired by the Stooges, Leonard Cohen and Led Zep[!!]), a great, cavernous-sounding production. Much hoo-ha has been made about the alleged dub influence in PiL. It's more prominent in Metal Box, but the massive echo on First Issue's drum sound shows it was there from the beginning.
"Religion I" is Lydon's anti-religious spoken-word rant, nearly two minutes of it. He really was a fucked-up Catholic. "Religion II" is the five-minute musical accompinament and it "rocks" in the way the 'Pistols did; more obtuse in approach and rhythm, although the guitar riff isn't a thousand miles removed from AC/DC. "Annalisa" and "Public Image" follow; the former could've been a hit, the latter was (down here and in the UK, at least). Jah Wobble's opening bass rumble remains one of the great opening moments of it or any other song the past 35 years. Levene's guitar shards lead the way for the likes of U2 and every other annoying idiot from the UK and its hinterlands who discovered a flange pedal in the '80s, but you can't always blame a good idea for inspiring bad ideas further down the track. My fave number from the LP is next: "Low Life", an anthemic number which harkens back to 'Pistols tracks such as "Bodies" and "Liar", only there's no Jones Wall Of Sound, but a Levene Sheen: no low-end on the strings, but this was when every punker in the UK was de-rockifying themselves in the pursuit of some righteous goal I don't quite understand, but at least PiL did it well for a handful of platters. Second-last is "Attack": more of the same, still good.
Lydon was only 22 years old when First Issue came out. He'd already played in the most important UK rock band of the 1970s, and his reinvention at such a young age, and one done so publically, isn't something to sneeze at. Lesser men would have fled for the hills. He later got fat, lazy and stupid and everything else he said he'd never be. By 1983, PiL's musical quality took a serious nosedive and he took to hiring sessions musicians to back him up. Right or wrong, he did it his way. He's an asshole, though I'm glad he's still around and still getting up people's noses (even mine), and First Issue is more than a mere footnote. As I am fond of saying: you need it.

Hawkwind's monumental rep as one of the finest bands there ever be, at least for me, mainly rests on the achievements which lay within their first four LPs - Hawkwind, In Search Of Space, Do Re Mi Fasol Latido and the desert-isle meisterwerk, Space Ritual - yet there are other gems in their vast catalogue worth indulging in. 1977's Quark, Strangeness and Charm is one of them. Released during the height of the punk boom in the UK, it was the band attempting to come to grips w/ a new scene which they had inspired earlier in the decade. Sans Lemmy, for myself the band lost a lot of grit and looseness which his playing contributed to the group; his booming four-string beast really anchored their sound. Their peak albums - Do Re Mi and Space Ritual - presented a band w/ one of the loosest, most organic, swingin' and undeniably heavy takes on rock music ever achieved. Only Black Sabbath ca. Master Of Reality comes close, and they never got "cosmic" (well, not in that sense). Sci-fi author and all-round space cadet, Robert Calvert, was the unofficial leader of the band at this stage, and they'd also roped in ex-High Tide violinist/keyboardist Simon House into the mix, along w/ 'wind veterans Nik Turner and Dave Brock, as well as ex-Pink Fairy Paul Rudolph on bass, and for me, and for many others, Quark... is the band's finest post-Lemmy moment. Of course the unabashed heaviness and lo-fi qualities of their earlier works had been lost; this is clean, the guitars are mixed down and the keys more prominent, but Hawkwind ca. '77 were not a band to dismiss. Skinsman Alan Powell ably whacks out an ace, metronomic beat, especially on the opener, "Spirit Of The Age", which for me represents the sonic nexus of Neu! and Eno-period Roxy Music. In fact, a lot of Quark... sounds like it's borrowed from '70s Roxy or even the Sparks, with Hawkwind dropping the boogie for a slightly more refined, UK art-school sound. The title track has a giddy, Maels brothers quality to it - a thousand miles removed from the relentless biker-boog grind of "Brainstorm" - but nothing I'll sneeze at. I saw Hawkwind play here a couple of years ago at Billboard in the city. The venue was booked out later in the evening for its weekly teen-disco shenanigans, so the band and its support played at a ridiculously early hour to accomodate this: support to be on stage by 7 PM sharp; Hawkwind to hit the stage at 8 PM and everyone to exit the venue by 10 PM. Given my increasing seniority in the age dept. (it's a one-way street), I was happy to be home by 10:30 in the evening on a hot summer's night, although it sure felt strange seeing Hawkwind in what felt like an afternoon matinee performance in the year 2012 (I'm assuming it was last year... it's all a blur to me now). Some friends of mine thought the 'wind blew - especially their late, late-night performance at the Meredith Festival (which I didn't see) - although I thought the group, or whatever remnant of a band now passing as "Hawkwind" on bills are, were a whole lot of fun. The sound was atrocious, the bass either completely absent or totally dominating the mix, but they had that loose-as-a-goose boogie-drone still sitting in their collective craw and enough grit under their nails to make them an enticing proposition. For me, they sounded a lot like a spacey crust-punk band w/ elements of Amebix or Rudimentary Peni in the mix, but, you know, maybe that's just me reading something into it. Back to the album in question... the edition I'm reviewing is in fact a double-CD reissue on the band's own Atomhenge label from 2009. Atomhenge has been documenting the absolutely living buggery out of the band and its voluminous output (barring the essential four albums I listed at the start of this piece: EMI ain't giving them up any time soon); some of it's great and some of it's not. Not only is Quark... an excellent album in its own right - eight tracks of straight-up art/glam/punk/space-rock FUN - but this version, fully remastered, sounds fantastic, has a ton of really great bonus material (earlier, rougher studio takes and good live recordings) and a hefty booklet detailing the band and its plan ca. 1977. You need it.

PS - there's also a great, previously unheard bonus track on CD1 you can listen to here. I highly recommend it; sounds like late '80s F/i.

I was late for the Godspeed You! Black Emperor gravy train the first time they were around. They'd been and gone before I even bothered giving them a spin. Of course, I knew who they were - working in music retail, I had to - but I'm a recalcitrant mofo, and their goofy name and alleged post-rock tendencies put me off having not even spun a second of their wares. Fact is, when I started working at Missing Link in '99, and found myself selling their records, I had to do a bit of research as to who the fuck they were, so out of the loop w/ contemporary sounds at the time that I was. Anyway, maybe none of this is particularly interesting. I bought a couple of their records some time 'round 2004 or so and found myself quite impressed: these bombastic French-Canadian epic orchestral punkers (or whatever) were A-OK. Far from being the saviours of rock-not-roll that the British press hailed them as (they made a big splash there at the turn of the decade), although their three main LPs from the time - F# A# (infinity), Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven and Yanqui U.X.O. - were something I could sink my teeth into after the fact. They did, for better of for worse, capture the tension of the times. I had the entire genre known as "post-rock" pegged as a tiresome noodlefest which had totally run out of steam after the release of Tortoise's second album, although, in fairness, Godspeed's music was an amalgam of many different elements (Swans/Sonic Youth art-rock noise, Savage Republic-style musical panorama, the melodic bombast of the Dirty Three, et al) which put them streets ahead of the coffee-shop tedium of many post-rockers ca. the latter half of the '90s. Yanqui U.X.O., however, saw them running out of puff. It's an OK set of tunes, although the band had fallen into a well-worn formula by then - and after only two LPs and an EP! - and by then the quite start/build-up/bombastic-middle/slow-retreat-to-quiet-and-dramatic-ending schtick wasn't bringing anything new to the table. And Godspeed aren't like Motorhead or the Ramones: bands who could rip out 4 or 5 albums of the exact same formula successfully within a relatively brief amount of time and really pull it off. Which isn't to say that Yanqui isn't a good record - it is - but I didn't see where they could go from there, and likely either did they. Band members have been busy the last decade running the Constellation label and pursuing a myriad side projects. Thee Silver Mt. Zion (and their other, more ponderous aliases) have put out a number of fine discs, although one of my favourite artists on the label has remained Hanged Up, a Montreal viola/drums duo who've released three excellent albums of clang. You could nominally compare them to a stripped down Dirty Three, although their approach is more amelodic and, dare I say, "industrial" in its sound (perhaps in the tin-banging 'Neubauten sense of the word). Whatever, I like 'em a lot. Listen here if you please. But back to Godspeed. Last year they announced they were reforming and recording and releasing new material, and that brings me to Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!, another platter w/ a pretentious, cryptic title, but it is indeed a whole lot better than I expected, especially given the slightly mixed reviews it received upon release (I only just heard/bought the thing last week). I've been playing this a lot of late, and an honest appraisal would have me concluding that I actually think it's the best thing they've done. The centrepiece track, the 20-minute opener, "Mladic", is the one which has grabbed me and their most atypical song thus far. For the lack of a better term, it gets heavy; not laden-in-an-army-of-strings heavy, but doom 'n' gloom guitar-riff heavy, and I dig it. It sounds more like a Sunn-damaged Southern Lord groove to me, and the build-up and comedown are timed perfectly. What the heck, you can hear it here. The rest of the album strays towards a more familiar formula (two shorter tracks and another 20-minute epic), although the darker shades of sound and sense of drama puts it above Godspeed-by-numbers. GYBE aren't everyone's bag - I have actual friends who consider them a gigantic, monstrosously pretentious yawnfest - and whilst I see their point, I'm not going to let it ruin my good time. Allelujah!... is a fine disc, GBYE are a fine band, and their recent performance at the ATP festival in Melbourne, which I witnessed, was yet more proof of that.

There's been some interesting to-ing and fro-ing in the internet sandpit this past week, w/ various types throwing shit around like monkeys in a cage. The one I speak of is linked here, or at least the follow-up riposte, that is. Penned by Gerard Cosloy (you probably know who he is), it's his response to a blog post on Kitty Vincent's Your Music Is Awful (yeah, I didn't know it existed, either) which went "viral" earlier in the week - that means some friends of mine posted it on Facebook - and I must say, his response is a hoot and a holler. Whilst Vincent's bagging of beard-rock dullards such as the Fleet Foxes and Mumford & Sons may be a worthy if perhaps trite and well-worn pursuit, in the context of the point attempting to be made, it was also hollow and, uh, pointless. As Cosloy made clear, in a manner of words: looking back to the '90s as some sort of high point in the history of rock & roll, when the music mattered, man, and "had balls", ignores all the terrible music at the time which hogged the spotlight (and I will say this from first-hand experience: for me that era was all about Cul de Sac, Grifters, Unrest, Dawson, et al, and whilst they mighta received some critical kudos, it was Alice In Chains, Stone Temple Pilots and Candlebox who were selling records in the zillions), heaps praise upon the dunderhead-rock of L7 as some sort of template of righteousness (they weren't; they sucked) and then proceeds to completely ignore any contemporary rock music which might actually happen to be worth an earful (and there is a whole load of it out there - I just don't tend to cover it in this blog... but I don't claim it doesn't exist). Anyway, it was just a blog entry and Kitty won't be the first or last to say something which, in hindsight, was kinda silly regarding the state of modern music and the alleged halcyon days of yore: it's just that this one got some attention. Years ago this debate would've been ably handled in the letters section of Flipside magazine. Now you have the interwebz to air your grievances.

Speaking of grievances, let me say a word or two about "International Record Store Day", which came and went just yesterday. I think it's a great thing. Anything which brings the hoi polloi, the great masses, into the independent music stores of the globe like it mattered once again, can not possibly be a bad thing. Not that the masses ever cared about independent music stores before everything started going completely tits up half a decade ago, but it appears to have reached critical mass in the year 2013. For one, I am thankful because it helps keeps me in a job and puts money in the tills of many friends of mine. However, there is one caveat: it seems to have been slightly hijacked by the forces of stupidity. Firstly, there's the umpteen pointless "exclusive" RSD day releases brought out annually by all and sundry, both large and small. There are items of worth - the reissue of Half Japanese's epochal 1/2 Gentlemen/Not Beasts set is a good day indeed, no matter what day of the year it may be - but it's also cluttered w/ otherwise unsellable offal from some of the indies (who shall remain nameless), w/ some of the majors chiming in with such essentials as, uh, a picture-sleeve edition of the Sex Pistols' "Pretty Vacant" 7". Whoopee-doo, indeed. If you really feel compelled to buy such an item (a fine song, of course, but it is included on the album, too, ya know), then pat yourself on the back for purchasing a "collectors' item" which will never be worth anything above and beyond what you paid for it in the first instance. And if such a thing is bought on a whim, then again, thanks for supporting the indie music retailers of the world and I hope you enjoy the tunes. I could think of other records you should be spending your money on, but of course I would say such a thing. The analogy I use for RSD is that it has now turned into the Melbourne Cup Day for record stores (MCD is a once-a-year horse race here which, for reasons not understood by me, remains a big deal): it's the annual opportunity for thousands of clueless dilletantes to pretend they care about something they actually couldn't give a shit about the other 364 days of the year. Cynical? I've been too close to the action for many years to be any other way, and I wish RSD all the success in the future. The fact remains this: I had a great time.

Goin' back a little here. I do this every once in a while in the hope of stirring up some traffic amongst older entries in the blog. Let's see what I can find here...

FEAR

MISSING LINK RECORDS

SWAMP POP/BLUES CONTROL

METEOR BLUES/JIMMY GIUFFRE

SONIC YOUTH

ELECTRIC WIZARD

KILLING JOKE

MILWAUKEE ROCK & ROLL

ORNETTE COLEMAN

BEAT HAPPENING

 SPRINGSTEEN'S (!) NEBRASKA

THE OUTSIDERS

Whilst you're at it, check out this blog I "discovered" (not really: someone sent me a link): Crusty Punks. It's a photo/story blog detailing the lives of "crusty punks" (does that need inverted commas?) in the US. Some of these people are idiots, some are sociopaths, and some are probably decent people either stuck in a bad situation or, as seems to be the case, are simply living a transient life which they enjoy. I didn't realise train-hopping was the crusty's first choice for modern transport, so there ya go. You learn something new every day. You might just kill an hour of your life perusing the site, and hopefully you won't hate me for it later on.