Tag: 2015

TRACK | Buck Biloxi And The Fucks – In A Million Years

5/5 golden merles

New Orleans punk rockers Buck Biloxi and the Fucks’ “In A Million Years” reframes your petty trials and tribulations on a geological timescale. Ripping through the track with threats and humor, pangs and arbitrary partitions, there’s a freeing feeling to the statement. And it’s stacked in the middle of a great set of pummel and bash.

The drums swat and slug, the late guitar lead diverges ably. The track is concerned with the impending death and the insignificance of adversarial multicellular biological organism, both the ultimate joke and insult those who find themselves embodying the circumstance. It’s all proficiently hammered out in about 71 seconds.

The heralding of our sound defeat is truly a bit of a backhanded insult, with many optimistic forecasts wandering if we make it as a species to next winter. But a million years is excessive for even the most confident futurist/post-human/transhumanist, medically injecting the blood of youths on their Rotterdam bridge obstructed superyacht. And the warped scales are funny but still touch a nerve on those operating as though they are eternal, playfully exposing the absurdity of it all like good punk should.

TRACK | Hierophants – Hail Stones

5/5 golden merles

From Hierophants’ debut, “Hail Stones” careens and craters, a daydream of destruction and elemental escape from the self. Lo-fi rock from Geelong, Australia, it is appreciably equal parts glittering and gloom.

I like the symmetry and measure throughout. The drums stem off in reserved but significant patterns, steadily alternating in variance, keeping things on the whole goodly deviated during the synth and vocal melodies iterative delineations. That harmony and tension dynamic adds a lot of good depth and proportion to how it all falls precisely together.

The ruminations about transformation are fun and inventive interludes to the core instrumentation. It is refreshing to see the percussive aspect used as the element that is given freer reign to pick apart the structure, an inversion of tradition while all the pieces still combine favorably.

It can be yours for $12.99 as black vinyl from Goner Records, or a buck more for the Yellow mold.

TRACK | Woolen Men – On Cowardice

5/5 golden merles

Speaking of Portland-based tributes to storytellers, here is Woolen Men with one for the late great actor and writer Spalding Gray. There are many killer phrases exclaiming and examining within: even ten thousand hypocrites / is not an invincible army. A good sequence heaping and revising proverbs in a style befitting the man paid tribute.

The style is a deliberate weaving of bass and lead around the era, the tube amps inflecting the post-punk, active-punk and perpetual pop. In the fills and phases, there’s sensible problem solving and strong arrangements throughout, more metered and measured attention to detail from the Oregonians. It’s a careful blend of viscera and philosophizing with much empathy for the listener.

do you want to stay cool forever / or do you want to burn with love? / each choice has its punishments / each choice has its own reward.

$10 for the vinyl of Temporary Monument from Woodsist. I am so far behind, haven’t spent a minute with 2020’s Outta Reach or the other 2020 single’s club releases yet but looking forward to that period of time.

TRACK | The Funs – Don’t Let Go

5/5 golden merles

The Funs make exceptional experimental garage rock. The project is composed of two of the 321 people residing in New Douglas, Illinois, reminding you that goodness, though it is rare in overall instances, can come from anywhere and everywhere and at any time.

The minimal instrumentation is humming and ignites in the kindling of lo-fi tones. Despite some tempo and structural invention, the fuel burns out quite evenly over the track’s 4 minute runtime. Throughout the drums land spacious and torrid alongside the lead vocal until it extinguishes upon one final plea.

In its subtlety and delicate directness, particularly the way the concepts are married to their delivery, there is present a lot of empathy for the era. It is easier to dismiss or omit the devices that dominate our daily lives in anticipation of their antiquation or irrelevance. And with that, there is a temptation to also omit the accompanying alienation. It is harder and more honest to imbue them with great style that warrants attention and then proceed to process the implications. That honesty and directness is ultimately more enduring than getting lost in abstraction.

The Double LP can be got from the Manic Static webzone. Check out the new project, glow in the dark flowers. Digital is $12.

TRACK | Druggy Pizza – Like Pigs In A Slot

5/5 golden merles

Featuring members of Dusty Mush, Cédric Bottacchi/Druggy Pizza’s “Like Pigs In A Slot” convenes the crunching and crushing of waves in a not dissimilar manner. Unrest and deliberate deconstruction, it’s surf rock on a sea of molten gloom and Midas detritus.

The blistering, proximal bass synth continues grinding in perpetuity, as the focus shifts from the background grind to the central figures portrait, breaking the established mold a few times in a matter of minutes. The whole EP/split’s worth spending some time with.

If you, like me, hold its contortions in high esteem, look also into the 2020 set and checkout the handful of vinyl from the Peace And Love Barbershop Muhammad Ali split.

TRACK | Peluquería Canina – Hilda Zaude

5/5 golden merles

“Hilda Zaude” is solid psych-punk rock from Madrid, Spain. It’s contains overlapping guitar phrasing echoing and bounding in a kind of pop-sludge anthem.

The lyrics translated from the Basque speak of death and mourning. It surrounds you / chills your whole body / you are dead / I don’t understand anything.

This is complimented by the menacing, at times reverb-shrieking lead guitar tones, ominous bass, and purposefully dreary scale. The chorus is direct, composed of a solitary scream of “¡ahhh!”

It’s a foreboding track that also has an element of the festive or ceremonial to it, a good mix of garage and ghastly.

TRACK | Baston – Maybe I’m Dead

5/5 golden merles

Baston’s “Maybe I’m Dead” is more great French garage-pop, this time from Rennes. The lyrics are speaking to a need for escape, both from the world through reading/consumption of media and in deviating personally from the tired, daily routines that arbitrarily determine every interaction.

Profuse, enchanting hooks are built within the melodic structures of familiar guitar-bass lines, which are in this case utilized to convey much discontent. While the contents themselves address a desire to escape, the style is genial and possibly celebratory.

The primary concern is structures and norms that have had their value hollowed out and appear to remain only fixtures in our daily lives due to the cultural habit known as tradition. The song is just one more means of attempted escape: unable to escape the world, an additional media is constructed specifically so that this style/aesthetic may also be hollowed out and tunneled through.

And this contradiction is an interesting dichotomy, the taking of pieces/forms from the past in an attempt to build in the present a future worth having. There’s ultimately no escape but accompanying the author on the route itself provides some nice commiseration.