psych – Plainly & Painfully

TRACK | No Lonesome – Good Hurt

No Lonesome’s “Good Hurt” offers a nice, vibrant stain derived from the guttural undercurrent-slurry of Americana, freak-folk and anti-folk. There’s a rich hybridization fermented in its depths, at least a bit of alt country, psych and pop rock in there as well. The tune provides so much joy and triumphant careening for something seemingly repelled and defined by its antitheses.

But as well it should be. “The ultimate hidden truth of the world,” as Graeber wrote, “is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”

It is again the care in the compiling that appeals to me most. There’s a lot to admire in the accumulated decision making, investing the piece with details, small phases arranged and melding the rougher edges: the spoken background chatter around the one and two minute marks, the gently mangled vocoder chorus of backing vocals rising in support, its plumed horns and alternating drum lanes that reinforce from differing angular plots upon the soundscape. It all invests the structure with greater meaning and acts in the service of the feeling which is evoked.

“This time / it’s a good hurt… / I’ll love you all I can.”

Friends of Goon / Women / Nerve City / Casual Technicians will likely find some camaraderie in its viscid texture, winding melodic sensibilities, and earnest, heartache-hemorrhaged proclamations.

The four track digital album “Am I What I’m Not?” is available now for $5 on the bandcamp.

TRACK | Goon – Death Spells

With “Death Spells,” Kenny Becker and Goon have again (and again) produced some of the most engaging melodic psych folk around. In the elaborately warped structure you are agreeably consumed, intricacies compiling and enveloping, comfortably saturating the self without obliterating it. Some trick.

“Death spells are coming down / don’t go outside.” That’s how it begins. It really seems to me like some small banner held aloft in attempt to redeem the medium from utter ruin. Its composition and manner of maneuvering stands out like a healthy thumb amidst the swollen hand and arm and body and world at large.

Why don’t more people do this, don’t even seem to desire it? Probably because it is difficult. For most songwriters, after a couple of bars the intention is lost or staggers. After a couple iterations the melody conforms to a bare, essential framework, the tendrils and impulses are shorn and hewn for functionality, reproducibility. While writing a song you have to remember it.

There’s a fair amount of bravery to desire this type of expansion. And it’s something the maker must consider during the making, from the outset, as desirable. The risk of either excess, mathematical purity or utterly indistinct irrelevance, begs for a balance. And the only scale is an intuitive understanding of form and the history of shared forms/symbols with the audience. Awareness and ability do not often go hand in hand.

It breaks my brain that the first reviews of Goon on this blog are now 3 years old for how fresh the tracks still sound, timeless I guess. The track is $2 on the bandcamp.

If you like it, see somewhat similar operators: memory card, Melaina Kol, Windowsill. This is the direction (anti)folk should move into and a good illustration of how to incorporate uncertainty into the model without losing the essence, a bridge that has been burned but remains traversable.

Short recommendation:
For a similar level of attention to detail and world building, see Georges Schwizgebel, “78 Tours.“

TRACK | Palánta – Éhség

Hardcore synth punk from Budapest, “Éhség” is the 3rd track on Palánta’s super demo. Melodies allocate across the runtime like a fine cognitive dissonance, only in stepping back through the frames and on repetition are we able to admire the whole from outside. While it is not a servant to structural form, it maintains a steady groove inside the atomic levels with undeniable tones and talons. All passion and experiment, what is provided is plenty compelling.

When the vocal hands off the melody 90 seconds in, the relay refines further. Through the strong performance is transmitted a tale of merger through devouring, the escalating and the colliding. There is a metamorphosis recounted, achieved through ritualized abuse or hunger and dehumanization, the conscripted contortions of nature dubbed natural. Sneering and smirking at history, we continue to repeat every mistake, possibly by design.

The set is coming soon in a physical form through SZÉGYEN KAZETTÁK. For now, name your price on the digital wares. Found through the reliable stewards of rock at Tremendo Garaje.

TRACK | Zero Percent APR – Heavy Fucking Metal

Immense and worthy, Zero Percent APR refines lo-fi psych punk roundabouts Austin, TX. “Heavy Fucking Metal” applies the rightful insolence due the stupid world but with a craft and consideration for their contemporaries who must endure its excesses alongside them (this means you). Yarns spun and death belittled in the thorough classification, there’s masterly world building before the stylistic dismantling.

I’m enlightened now, can’t you tell / when I die I wanna burn in hell. To explain why it works is a bit nasty and brutish, the rigors and ardor self-evident, sorta ineffable. But I have no shame, so: with its great consistency of the segments and variations on the heavy metal definitions, it has a feeling of the range, method and effect of great rock like Destroy All Monsters, “You’re gonna die.” It is one hell of a preview for the album to come, 23 tracks of this gleeful venom releasing on November 4th.

Preorder black vinyl from the label that knows your innermost thoughts and doesn’t care, Spared Flesh, for $20, digital is $8.

TRACK | That Hideous Sound – Funny Insides

That Hideous Sound has built a bedroom lo-fi rock track from discarded sunshine, utilizing twisted blood as a propellant. Its alternating sync of garage tone is held aloft and amended with a density of layered backing vocals, their varied trajectories glowingly cascading downward. The whole miscellany is shining and the right kind of sordid.

The fundamentals are nailed and the tonal textures irradiated, slickly building momentum throughout. With that rising, explicating over the expanses as it does, I’d wager most will rejoice to share in it. The final minute of three involves transitioning into some controlled experimentation, concluding in a sundry of cloaked loops at the latter stages. It’s all very good and pleasant, if you ask me.

A digital copy of the track can be downloaded to your personal solid state or hard disc drive for $1 USD. Or, for the wise investor, the album of 10 tracks is aggregated at $7, a savings of 30%. It is to be released October 7th, should the world continue to exist at such a time.

TRACK | Frances Chang – flower childs

Frances Chang’s “flower childs” is made up of the stuff of slowcore, psych-singer songwriter, and expertly extracted from the bedroom recordings. It has an arc that rises from the hope found in craft, the most direct determination of destiny, and then, meteorically, quickly, pivots into some dearly dreaded speculation: i’m so happy / i could cry / i’m writing and music sounds good again. It operates with all the damning and deliberate wonder you could hope for.

The melodies are found in their nascent form before repetition hammers them into rote reminders and set queues. The reverb hangs around, an intermittent percussive xylophone accentuates it. In the telling, some halcyon days are recounted which needed to be lost in order to be truly valued, or maybe even realized for their worth.

Forever is found wanting, concepts collide with the earth, invariably misaligned in manifestation. Forgiveness is afforded or withheld, to be redeemed later with interest. what if you don’t forgive me? / or even worse if you do… Is the best way forward a doubling down on delusion or maybe in the end (there is no end) living as comfortably as possible in perpetual doubt.

I wrote recently about Haneke’s Amour, “I guess this is what films would be like if they were made for humans and by humans instead of by corporations and for money,” and this is near enough the musical equivalent; limited in posturing, full of exploration. There are tapes for $10 and FLAC files for $8.

TRACK | The Lavender Flu – Demons In The Dusk

Experimental psych and folk rock from Oregon, The Lavender Flu’s “Demons in the Dusk” finds the lugubrious periphery of rock to be a haunting and inviting sector. And they offer great returns residing and mining this quarter comfortably immediately before collapse.

The album as a whole is consistently wailing and receding, working within its own internal logic that promptly consumes the listener. But “Demons In The Dusk” is probably the foremost hook, the crown jewel of a barb that easiest draws you in. It rewards your patience with a strange, strangled style, then an uptick of treble and trembling in the end.

As we hurtle unapologetically toward a new dark age, estranged from the storied ends, adrift and listless, it suits us well. At least the paths run parallel. Craven and composed, it saunters to the threat of annihilation, an easy going end that specifically omits a mea culpa, “The Lies that you breathe / will follow you.”

4 sides for 30 wending tracks, the double vinyl is around.

TRACK | Druggy Pizza – Radium Canyon

More glint and relentless corrosion from our friends at Druggy Pizza, “Radium Canyon” spells doom for us all but in a good way. Garage and psych rock veiled in withering and decadent tones, I wager the rendering of which will please fans of good things and anger or confound most of those who aren’t.

The melody of the guitar lead roams freely around the bass’ substratum, prowling the chasmal expanse. The reverb is slathered across the channels and stings. A Fender quad is purring, graciously and expertly propelling the audible tones produced by the bending of metal at certain wavelengths.

The heat comes off it in radiant streaks, it bends the light around it. It’s a good approximation of a fruitful fever. It deserves to be wound into wax, if it wants. But for this digital 2020 set you can name your price.

TRACK | Cut Worms – Like Going Down Sideways

One of the strongest 2-song 7″ I’ve come across, a pair of my favorites from the buildup to Alien Sunset. “Like Going Down Sideways” is delicate and dreamy alt country. It is also an expert projection of layering a demo into a fully fledged lo-fi phenomenon.

There’s a lot of wonder to the piercing polarization of the complimentary layered vocal lanes, creeping in solemnly from the treetops of hell before the chorus raises. The track also features texturally many deliberate flourishes, like a couple of the briefest xylophone or glockenspiel cameos known to man; arriving to puncture amidst the plucking and contribute just a bit more of the percussive, glinting and gleaming.

The persistent room noise in this version is lovely. This one came out perfected and doesn’t need refining. You can still buy the split from Randy Records for all of $6.50 plus shipping.

TRACK | Druggy Pizza – Like Pigs In A Slot

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.

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