Category: no wave

TRACK | variety – Plover

5/5 golden merles

Variety’s “Plover” is Texan avantpop rock composed of compelling narrative subversion, sticky melody and tone. The hook is a compacted material derived from descriptions of naturalistic imagery, the conflict of the domesticated and undomesticated in comparison to the authors interpersonal dilemmas. It’s thoughtful and pretty dang fun.

I need my streams and mountains tempered by the grim specter of death. Gluck and Johnson, Bly and Ruefle. Some human fingerprints on the felled log, beach towels on the bog, a figure ever-present on the vista to trample and insist.

Whereas at the end of “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota” Wright pulls it all back home, a new frame, fitted, variety’s entry point with “Plover” is immediate. But it functions in a similar way. The relationship is described then promptly the tangent turns away, meanders off skyward, the footnote consuming the page. And then another. Relative to the original focus, the elaborated metaphor informs the initial concern, compounding all the more weight.

Two of the greatest modern scouts of imaginative rock have already signed off on the making, Groschi and Doyle. If you’re not already following them, what are you doing here?

The singles are combining into an album to be released in November: bandcamp / name your price.

COMP | Palestine Solidarity Compilation

5/5 golden merles

The Palestine Solidarity Compilation is one of the most stacked comps of the era and for the cause eating at the conscience of the world. Just look at the list for many favorites of this portal: Billiam, Busted Head Racket, Rude Television, Cool Sorcery, Gee Tee, Cherry Cheeks, and the many and the more, 27 tracks of playful and cursed invention. Further good news, all the included songs are unreleased, demos, covers, or live versions, so you may become a craprock completionist and cleans some small portion of your soul in the process.

Highlights for me are Balaclava‘s “Swimming Up Up Up,” a devocore/egg punk blinder, collapsing with great intention and some real fun melodic subversion in the latter stages. And Moshi Moshi and the Moist Boys‘ “Pitchforks and Torches,” which operates primarily by gallantly gliding its synthpunk guts across the soundscape. There are many new names to investigate here, many I had not come into contact with previously, and this is a welcome introduction amidst much good company.

Give if you’ve got and can afford to. There is thrashing, there is jangle, there is wallop, and all going toward the cause of providing a tiny bit of support for those who continue to face dehumanization and death daily.

Please see the bandcamp description of the album for how to buy (…it isn’t $1,000). Make a donation and then email them directly for a code. Tapes from Idiotapes (EU) and Godless American (US).

TRACK | MENU – Actually Dreaming

5/5 golden merles

“Actually dreaming” is a thing of lo-fi shoegaze and uninhibited abstraction. It was summoned in or near Philadelphia. It has a great sense of how long to linger in the status, levels with you, offers a stasis of texture and tone, any intent amplified by their deteriorated beauty. Rarely is your patience punished here, cutting content with form in an imminently compelling fashion.

Concentric in form for the most part, each loop banishing another or building off its remains. You can more or less see what you like in its patterns, it’s a foggy mirror with some writing you got to breath on a bit to see. There’s lots of graceful skulking about and premonitions of indeterminate value. Lately, if Eno/Ricky landed, maybe this will too for you; a means and agent for teasing your own ideas out, another kind of catalyst for coherency.

Generally speaking I am suspicious of abstraction as it can be a salve for my enemies. However (!) with this much form/balance and pulse there are always exceptions. Original found on Tremendo Garaje via the intrepid scouting of @u2_is_a_government_drone / Sims / Mesh.

TRACK | Onyon – Window Shopper

5/5 golden merles

From the estranged estate of Leipzig, another entry in the perpetual golden era of post-punk in Germany. Our friends Onyon have embedded some driving beats in a cloudless convening of no wave tones, as elaborately as it needs to be under the circumstance, with instrumentation direct and effective, including only the muck immediately necessary to instigate life.

For an emergent phenomenon particularly the tape is notably consistent, arriving frustratingly fully formed. A cohesive and iridescent set of tunes, arising like a great reprieve amidst the hunting and gathering. It is not reaching in its representation of events, the quotidian enshrined in considered tribute, melded to a melody and reified with friends.

As the first tape and abiogenesis, it’s remarkably strong and to be treasured. The work has physical media out on the genuinely/reliably great law offices of U-Bac & Flennen in March of 2022 and now Trouble In Mind (Chicago) for US distribution. Cassettes $12/Digital $10.