New Music Reviews by Eric Saeger by: Eric W. Saeger
RANDOM STABBINGS & ARTLESS CRITIQUE – November 2005
The Catz in the Hatz, “”Take One” (Catz in the Hatz Records)
Stardust-sprinkled jazz favorites played by genial weekend warriors for the Arthur Murray set. The marketing sound-bite for this SoCal-based quintet is “Jazz with an attitude” but with such foxtrot favorites as “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” “It Was a Very Good Year” and a baritone re-do of Peggy Lee’s “Fever,” the attitude (and sound) is pure Tony Bennett. Steve Johnson’s (place pleasant adjective here) renderings bottle every puff of smoky piano and expel a record that will please everyone from great-granny to the most recent reality-TV-inspired ballroom converts. Shirley Jones and Dawn Wells of Gilligan’s Island fame are among their converts, for what it’s worth.
Order from Tower Records
The Renovators, “Rhythm & Blueprints” (Berger Platters Records)
Squeaky clean DIY 12-bar with a 70s feel, Bowdlerized for church suppers but witty enough that it can’t be roundfiled as empirical bar-band wankage. Bob Raseros’ Don-Henley-congenital vocals make excellent use of the other proceedings, most notably on protracted honky-tonk essay “The Big One.” “Everybody Loves the Blues” delves the furthest into old-style kegger-rock, almost to the point of picking at Blue Oyster Cult bones, not that “Renovator’s Boogie” doesn’t have its own “Flirtin’ With Disaster” bills to pay. “Who’s to Blame” is an obligato swipe of “Black Magic Woman” but is nicely redeemed in the BB-King-like comedy “It’s Been Done.” Order from CD Baby
Decoded Feedback, “Combustion” (Metropolis Records)
Demon-haunted dance techno reminiscent of “Too Dark Park”-era Skinny Puppy (“darkwave” is the genre) but a noticeable stretch friendlier in spite of Marco Blaglotti’s vortex-swooshing whisper-roared vocals, which in fact he downshifts to wax Depeche-Mode-ic on the futurepoppy “That’s All You Want.” Although much of this is lit up with S&M grind-core, the tweeters get plenty of attention via higher-pitched synth currents (the fake bagpipes in “Psy-Storm” for instance), keeping this trancey ghoulishness safe for occasions other than goth-club fashion shows.
Order from Industrial Music
Pilotdrift, “Water Sphere” (Good Records)
An unadvisable track order puts the two most inaccessible songs up front, taken together a schizoid core-dump with more faces than Sybil – Dresden Dolls, Meatloaf and the Charlies Angels theme song are all imitated in a near-Thirlwellian trip. These were the kids who sat in the corner of the caf in high school, moving and talking in snail-time, all glassy eyes and spaceshot rant, therefore no Martian elevator music collection would be complete without “Bubblecraft” and the valiant effort its coed voices make attempting to synch up in the face of a comical incompatibility. “Passenger Seat” takes a more speed-prog approach, skittering synth arpeggios fluttering around like butterflies staying just out of reach. “Jekyll and Hyde Suite” connotes further Dresden Dolls/Kit Kat Klub detritus paired up with funeral parlor Muzak for saucermen.
Order direct from Good Records
We Are Scientists, “With Love and Squalor” (Virgin Records)
Museum-quality Iran/Contra-era pogo this diligently crafted could only have resulted from lead-man Keith Murray’s having spent a grotesquely misshapen childhood diving into dumpsterfuls of scratchy Mission of Burma and Buzzcocks wax, coming up for air only for the occasional Cure chestnut (see “Cash Cow”). Either that or these gents are the first band of 2005 to make something genuinely useful out of all the CMJ rock they’ve been spoon-fed, but regardless, the album is successful in its endeavor to re-retro the 60s-retro foundations of those wild-west years when safety pins were the only fashion accessory required to prove that you were, like everyone else, different from everyone else. Bolstered with power-jangle and cloddish bass lines right out of Lords of the New Church, this is far from emo-hack; much of it would have fit in fine on a CBGB comp from 1981. [October release for the UK, January for the US] Band website
Baleen, “Follow Me Blind” (Liquilad Records)
On the surface a genre-shy college-radio alphabet soup, Baleen are ultimately pigeonholed as boy-band emo bolstered with enough laptop know-how to encourage exasperated retailers to throw them in the general industrial section. George Carlin might take the easy way out and describe this as “meatcake” – “Solidify” could be Tool or Boyz 2 Men, “6:30 AM” could be Al Jarreau or My Chemical Romance, but ultimately the unadvised high-school-band sax passages define it as an experience similar to getting stoned with your grandparents – it’s cool in an odd way but there’d be no regrets if you were able to avoid doing it again. Band website
The Bangkok Five, “10 The Hard Way” (Aeronaut Records)
Teardrop Explodes meets Weezer nu-indie portraying a pre-nodes Rod Stewart barging in on a Maroon 5 tribute to the Pixies. Clinically neutered market-aware punk frenzy abounds, put to best use on “Spread Eagle” and its grabby chorus, a hotdog-fingered pillaging of Carly Simon’s “You Belong to Me.” Order from Aeronaut Records
Vigilante, “The Heroes Code” (Black Rain Records)
Dark techno/grunge-metal hybrid wired for big-budget soundtrack, its signal-to-noise ratio seriously reduced during the first five-odd minutes owing to a cinemophilic overdose of sampled movie dialog. By the time the music comes in it’s more side dish than entrée, but worth the wait – Ivan Munoz and his crew toss the KMFDM playbook aside and content themselves with melody, thus sacrificing bee’s-nest anarchy for well-earned style points. The churning Linkin Park-ish nu-metal of “Survive” creates a sense of menace lorded over by piranha axemanship and Munoz’s cigar-chomping drill-sergeant bark, lightening up a little for a near-emo chorus that plays like Hoobastank gone techno. And so it goes; “Lack of Faith” finds Munoz test-driving an Alice n Chains “Rooster” voice in blatant violation of current EBM by-laws.
Virtual Embrace, “Hellektro (Alfa Matrix Records)
Captivating nu-mod techno that shines brightest when this anti-Chemical Brothers duo’s Buggle-oid genes are freed to wreak havoc, in the squeaky bimborama floor-filler “Welcome to My World” for example, punctuated as it is with Mike Johnson’s space-ghoul mumbling. “Grief Cry” does a fake-out of kraut-techno before springing some 60s sexiness which will hopefully inspire a wave of Batgirl dress-up among the fetishists. “I Am” and its Exorcist-riddum tweaks hip-hop’s nose (always a constructive idea), and later mounts a torch-lit Tomb Raider offensive that alludes to far deeper thought processes than what you get from typical genre-clinging convenience. Not to leave himself outdone by the Bollywood gobbledygook of “Dark Room,” Johnson tosses in an Alzheimer-addled rehash of BOC’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper” that amounts to Loreena McKennitt getting a wedgie from a robot-zombie mourning a recent diagnosis of kidneystones. Staticky breakbeats pop up sporadically in whack-a-mole fashion, another value-add worthy of forehead stickers all around. Order from Alfa Matrix
Taken, “Between Two Unseens” (Goodfellow Records)
Like labelmates Quell, Taken’s vocals are the drunken jockstrap bellows into the toilet you heard coming out of yourself about an hour after your first 12-pack, and there’s more than a little Fugazi cacophony going on, but Chad Tafolla’s stalker-like reverence for U2’s Edge puts this isolationist-core ahead of the colicky pack. Aside from some grindcore windmill-chasing, this EP’s songs (all 5 of which seem a million years long each) are the conjectural results of Slayer rumbling with the Alarm, and they’re often – dare it be said – gorgeous. Order from Goodfellow Records
Lynn Julian, “Cookie Cutter Girl” (Cookie Cutter Records)
Man oh man, is this chick asking for it – she looks like an SUV-driving mom dressed in a Wonder Woman costume, tiara and all, with a CD insert that’s almost a comic book but not quite, more like a knockoff of Powerpuff Girls with a few ossified grrl-power platitudes. Fingers poise over keyboards all over reviewer-land, ready to ream her a new one, but the tunes kick in and damn it all, the pummellings are denied as the fingers unclench, howling in frustration like ringwraiths denied a bite out of Frodo: the Cookie Cutter Girl actually isn’t bad. A vocal cross between Shania Twain and Natalie Merchant, the songwriting here is pro-level and almost as tight as her spandex nut-outfit. Order direct from Lynn Julian
DBMQ, “The Essential Sounds From the Far East” (Estrus Records)
Like a relentless ear-humping from a Viagra-crazed chihuahua, this Warhol-vortex jrock floats like a Hendrix and stings like a New York Doll. It’s as if Jackie Chan had been born for guitar rather than karate – picture him screaming “I’m a rawwwk star, baby!” over something blatantly akin to Jimi’s “Fire” played at 78 RPM and your imagination needs no further stretching. Fine Stooges-style stuff, of course (as is just about anything Japanese and indie lately) featuring more wolf-howls than David Lee Roth would normally recommend for trying at home.
Order from GEMM
Paul Armfield and the Four Good Reasons, “Evermine” (Groove Attack Records)
Sensitive-male torch zydeco understatements slow dripped Cat Stevens style in honor of your local laptop-pecking coffee-bar fixture. When Armfield stows his chimp-at-the-wheel trilling safely out of earshot his moonlight serenades hit nothing but net (if your idea of mood music is the sort of post-breakup montage backdrop common to Meg Ryan films, that is), although your bohemian-wannabe Paris-trotting aunt will surely be more profoundly affected than anyone else in your immediate circle. Order from Overstock.com
State of Being, “Haywire” (Reverse Image Records)
Cleveland-spawned multi-genre prototype that succeeds in the face of a situation comparable to inviting your strangest bedfellows to the same party. Mainstream listeners will block out the occasional crackly sample-breaks and hear hard rock or nu-psychedelica depending on the song, but it’s more a stew of both those styles further synth-refined into a concoction deserving of its own slick classification – aggro-indie perhaps (aggro, for all the blessedly unaware non-scenesters, is wonk-English for techno-metal). A slightly vulnerable production prevents this from being as drunkenly powerful as, say, KMFDM, but makes it CMJ-relevant in the same stroke. Title track combines ennui-drone vocals with buzzsaw guitar and caustic industrial patterns that peak during its zillion-layer chorus. Fair comparison here would be Flesh Field, but then there’s the Garbage vs Melvins scuffle in “Overload” with its ear-drilling fuzz-bombs. There’s talk of big-league interest already, which comes as no surprise. Order from the band’s website
Cubby Creatures, “After the Deprogramming” (Rodent Records)
Unplugged guitar-and-string post-punk nonsense resembling an uninspired Clash trying to impress the one hot waitress at an Irish-American groggery. “Wallet” coughs up some not-unpalatable ska that quickly gets hamstrung by the same weasel-faced fiddle that cocks up everything else, not that it isn’t already seasick from the massive overdose of Lennon/McCartney reverb. And the choruses are all identical. And they’re momma’s so fat she’d take up all the space at the club anyway. Order from Rodent Records
Indie label releases, spaghetti sauce recipes and silly questions are always welcome. Email ericsaeger@mindspring.com.