Author: z-s

TRACK | Mope Grooves – Here Comes Another One

5/5 golden merles

Listening to new music you find that most songs are speaking in vague and grand generalities. Their subjects are love and death, to the extent they have them. By and large, the melody is the message.

Most songs are used as a platform to display the singer’s performative talents. And depending on your cultural conditioning you can grant them credulity or not.

“I was only calling / to talk to my brother”

This isn’t that. Mope Grooves’ Here comes another one appears to be a song about a relationship. And within that an interaction. And within that an instance.

Music is a tool. Whatever conditioning I have been subjected to and/or later sought out values lyricism including storytelling and texture.

And in minimalistic instances like this one, the gravity of limited phrasing amplifies its significance. All of this creates a small but highly detailed world, one possible to escape into, if you want, and is some real nice storytelling.

TRACK | DVA – Javornicek

5/5 golden merles

Javornicek is a song…

“sung in a secret language… dedicated to the little kitten Javorníček, who was castaway with its spaceship by Nové Hrady. It spent one day with us, warming up, eating and then continuing its flight to its home planet.”

Are you not sold on this description? Maybe then you are on the wrong trash-rock blog.

It’s a lovely assemblage of field recorded loops and percussive detailing, gravel steps, the pluck of nested ukuleles. And it’s just about mixed better than anything i’ve ever heard.

TRACK | Shannon and the Clams – King of the Sea

5/5 golden merles

Pretty sure King of the Sea is rock and/or roll, though it’s seen in the wild so rarely that sometimes it is hard to recognize.

There are plenty of bands in possession of guitars and drums, and they even play them, if pressed. But not quite like this.

All the pretense is stripped, and under the guts of the track are exposed a bit. And still it staggers forward with a rawness and intensity, the energy (probably eternal, huh?) is unleashed.

Captivatingly and kindly, they’re playing to the pit.

Sleep Talk is not on bandcamp, unfortunately, and spotify only lets you embed a 20-second clip (?) but here’s their other stuff.

TRACK | Dirty Beaches – Lord Knows Best

5/5 golden merles

Lord Knows Best is a well calibrated machine of a song. Like clockwork, spiraling gears gracefully align the complimentary melodies while brackets of tones reinforce them.

Full of purpose and with great density, it must be lowered by crane carefully into the heart.

Check out Alex Zhang Hungtai’s more experimental, clamber and field rec’d new stuff as well, Young Gods Run Free.

TRACK | The Baptist Generals – Going Back Song

5/5 golden merles

There are two excellent renditions of this song on No Silver / No Gold. The other is a better single, but the version included below from the end of the album is preferred.

“Has anybody seen my bag / it’s the one I put together for the leaving”

This is what folk/americana could be and should be known as: all the layers of grit, complexity, simplicity, and directness. A unique and passionate delivery, playful and apocalyptic.

And just the one long note on the organ, putting Iggy to shame; making him out to be an overachieving opportunist for all those additional percussive hammerings.

TRACK | Eola – Chaosos

5/5 golden merles

A simple handful of elements combine in this 72 second track to mimic the creation of the universe, and in a pretty flattering way.

Deceptively simple and full of wonder, there are only limited number of components: The 1-2-3-4 scale on the piano, the organ’s repeated quiver, and the various dreamy octave orations.

“Over your shoulder, chaos is growing”

This was the 5th track on a mix I made to drive to NY in 2010. The song was released a few weeks prior. My good friend Larry had moved to Hell’s Kitchen and needed a roommate.

I had my degree. I’d worked on a few failed campaigns. The grandfather I was assisting had died in hospice. It was a good time to move.

Listening to it now I am filled with both great nostalgia and anxiety. I feel like I’m driving a rented minivan in the dark, one long shot from Indiana, a folding bed and a box of clothes rattling around in the cab. stupid, hopeful.

Deliriously tired, when I dropped off the van I forgot the CDs in the cup holder. I know that the first worker who found them rightfully threw them out. But I was also hoping that maybe they didn’t notice them. And maybe the next inhabitant had found them and used them on their trek to LA, or Chicago, or back home, or wherever.

TRACK | The Coromandelles – The Project

5/5 golden merles

The Project is a golden and somewhat bloody haze of chamber surf. The tune is outfitted with much to admire: bells, whistles, but structurally it is also sound underneath.

Proudly pop, lest the textures fool you, the build into the chorus will convey and confirm your suspicions: all of this is meant to go together, and is precise with intention.

Artisans have built it and now it is to be admired. It’s a great structure of a beast.

TRACK | Naomi Punk – Gentle Movement Toward Sensual Liberation

5/5 golden merles

In somewhat keeping with the aside, this is an instrumental track on an album that otherwise features exceptional vocal production and performances.

And within that context, after the also superb track Burned Body, Gentle Movement toward Sensual Liberation lands with the most wobbled grace and poise.

An enclave of singing synths deliver a kind of orchestral chamber pop, built around two well textured, extra-strength melodies.

TRACK | Getatchew Mekurya – Akale Wube

5/5 golden merles

Here is a slight departure from the guitar-driven lo-fi, but the hiss of the tape remains, the synth-organ still chirps it’s guttural encouragements, and the hooks are everywhere present.

Akale Wube is an all time great track, for me, not only of Ethiopia, and not only of the saxophone, both of which I am not very familiar. But of the thing called music, generally. It wails.

Generally in art I am wary of outright abstraction, and view it with suspicion, as a salve to established, unjust hierarchies, and through it’s broad interpretation offering undue comfort to the enemy.

But not in this instance. At least for four minutes and eleven seconds I take Getatchew’s (lack of) word for it.

TRACK | Gorgeous Bully – Stamp

5/5 golden merles

Stamp is one of them joyous garage rock lamentations, end to end.

Everything down to the outro refrain and terminal exclamation are so well balanced and calibrated, it almost defies belief. The fuzz and fade are most agreeably punctuated by the lead guitars tremolo.

Disgust and disillusionment never sounded so kindly, even merry. Tom Waits enjoys “Beautiful melodies telling (him) terrible things,” and so do I.

It is Good.