Category: Post-punk

So Pretty – Suck It Up

Chicago funk-punks So Pretty (Ashley Holman – guitar, vocals, Stefan Lindgren – drums, vocals, Rachel Manter – guitar, bass, vocals, ukulele, James Seminara – bass, guitar, vocals) seemed to have walked out of a John Waters movie.  They’re brash, a bit trashy, self-deprecating, and snarky.  Their second album, Suck It Up, is like a refreshing gulp of fruit punch that you realized is spiked with gin about thirty seconds later.

I first heard the band, and Suck It Up‘s opener, “Comfort Service,” when I saw them play in Chicago earlier this year.  Manter delivers a fiery rant from the perspective of a 1%’er chewing out hotel staff.  I can’t help but wonder if she works or used to work in a hotel and wrote it as a middle finger to dickweed tenants.  Basil Fawlty would love this tune.

Manter’s vocals and the band’s hard hitting on “Think Again” show they could start a metal project if they wanted.  Holman takes over vocals on “Blueberry Blues,” in which she screams that she wants “to be punk rock royalty.”  She’s well on her way, judging by the vocal and guitar shredding she unleashes on the track.

You can’t help but think of the Violent Femmes (thanks to the ukulele and funky beat) during “Nice Guys,” an ode to guys who treat women well and women who prefer to date douchebags.  The following track, “Whisper Corner,” is like a left hook to the liver after the gentle feint of “Nice Guys.”  It has Seminara and Lindgren unleashing a sonic assault in under two minutes.

“Chub Rub” is probably about what you think it is, and it’s a fun, trashy punk number.  They get funky on “Limbo,” with Seminara singing about the rut of modern living (“I felt a little bit better when I felt a bit strange.”).

“Manhandler” has Holman returning to lead vocals and she and Manter crank the distortion on their guitars.  It’s like a Bikini Kill track, and Holman’s ass-chewing of the song’s subject is great.  Whereas that track reminds me of Bikini Kill, “No Hamburger” reminds me of Sleater-Kinney with its nice double vocals from Holman and Manter.

The album ends with the gloriously weird “Don’t Give Up the Ship” as Seminara sounds like a drunk trying to explain the world’s problems to everyone stopped at the red light.  The whole band goes bonkers by the end of it, ending the album in a frenzy of punk chaos.

This is a fun record.  Fun punk, and especially good fun punk, is hard to find nowadays.  It’s nice to hear So Pretty keeping punk not only alive, but fun.

Keep your mind open.

 

Moonlandingz debut album out March 24th.

(featuring members of Fat White Family and Eccentronic Research Council)
Share video for ‘The Strangle of Anna’ on NME
Debut album INTERPLANETARY CLASS CLASSICS released March 24th via Chimera Music
Album includes guest appearances from Yoko Ono, Randy Jones (Village People) and Philip Oakey (The Human League). Co-produced by Sean Lennon
Tickets available for exclusive New York show May 11th at Rough Trade NYC
Credit; Chris Saunders
“A rip-roaring busman’s holiday…there’s a camp swagger to these motorik grooves.” Q
“Forging bombast with bravura, silliness with sentiment and homage with fist-clenched individuality, this is a trip worth taking, especially for those already acquainted. Like a defiant and brilliantly bonkers case of cosmic ordering coming off with flying colours, this is a release that – perhaps more than any of its main players associated projects – doubles up celebration of the possible. And how.“ The Quietus (lead review and read the interview)
“A deviant blend of filthy pop and pre-digital electronics….top drawer psycho-disco” MOJO
“Feral antics and louche anarchy!”  The Guardian
“For a ‘fictional’ band, The Moonlandingz have made a pretty great album.” (8/10) The Line Of Best Fit
The band name on everyone’s lips in the UK, The Moonlandingz, have teamed up with award winning video director and cinematographer, Dawn Shadforth and Robbie Ryan; the people that brought you the iconic video for Kylie Minogue’s ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’, the gritty heartbreaking British film, ‘I, Daniel Blake’ and ‘American Honey’ (amongst many more), to bring you the brand new video for their latest single ‘The Strangle of Anna’, featuring the voice of Slow Club‘s Rebecca Lucy Taylor.
The Moonlandingz are the semi-fictional psych-pop group put together by Sheffield’s practical electronics wizards and analogue taxidermists, The Eccentronic Research Council (Adrian Flanagan and Dean Honer) and Fat White Family‘s Lias Saoudi and Saul Adamczewski.
 ‘The band previously shared Black Hanz, released as an EP late last year and included on the album. Both tracks have been on A list rotation on 6 Music in the UK on Lauren Laverne and Marc Riley‘s shows.
INTERPLANETARY CLASS CLASSICS  is released March 24th through Chimera Music and features guest appearances from Yoko Ono, Randy Jones (the Cowboy from The Village People), and Philip Oakey, along with drummer Ross Orton and bassist Mairead O’Connor. Written, recorded and produced by the band at studios in Sheffield and New York, it also features co-producer Sean Lennon on guitar and additional drums and bass and was mixed by legendary Flaming Lips/Tame Impala/MGMT producer, Dave Fridmann. The album is a feast of swirling juddering synths, wailing guitars, motorik stomp and extraordinary songwriting – weird, catchy, glorious and filthy pop.
The Moonlandingz have proven themselves to be one of the best live bands in the UK and kick off an 11 date headlining tour this week, before heading to Europe and ending with their biggest show to date at Village Underground in London on April 4th.
The band play an exclusive New York show on May 11th at Rough Trade NYC. Stay tuned for more news, including additional US appearances.
INTERPLANETARY CLASS CLASSICS TRACK LISTING:
1. Vessels
2. Sweet Saturn Mine
3. Black Hanz
4. I.D.S.
5. The Strangle Of Anna (feat. Rebecca Taylor of Slow Club)
6. Theme From Valhalladale
7. The Rabies Are Back
8. Neuf De Pape
9.  Glory Hole (feat. Randy Jones from Village People)
10. Lufthanza Man
11. This Cities Undone (feat. Yoko Ono & friendz)
Watch videos for Black Hanz and Sweet Saturn Mine (Sean Lennon De-Mix) – both directed by musician Charlotte Kemp Muhl (of The GOASTT)
The Black Hanz EP is available digitally, featuring a special mix (non-LP) and 3 other non-LP tracks:
Drop It Fauntleroy, The Cement Garden (interlude) & Psych Ersatz (ERC Rasper Four Eyes De-Mix).
LIVE SHOWS:
MARCH (UK):
22nd – Newcastle – Cluny
23rd – Glasgow – Stereo SOLD OUT
24th – Dublin – Whelans
25th –  Liverpool –  Invisible Wind Factory
28th –  Birmingham – Hare & Hounds SOLD OUT
29th – Nottingham – Rescue Rooms
30th – Manchester – Gorilla SOLD OUT
APRIL (UK/EUROPE):
1st  – Sheffield – Leadmill
2nd – Bristol –  Thekla SOLD OUT
3rd – Portsmouth – Wedgewood Rooms
4th –  London – Village Underground SOLD OUT
19th – Oxford – The Bullingdon
20th – Rouen – Le 106 Club
21st  – Bourges  – Le Printemps de Bourges Festival
22nd – Cologne  – Artheater
24th  – Berlin – Katine am Berghain
25th – Hamburg – Molotow
26th – Amsterdam – Paradiso
27th  – Paris – Point FMR
MAY (US):
11th – Brooklyn  – Rough Trade NYC
The Moonlandingz online:

Boss Hog set to release first album in 17 years this March.

Boss Hog in New York City on June 5, 2016.

Noise punks Boss Hog are set to release their first album in 17 years, Brood X, next month.  Fronted by Jon Spencer and his wife Christina Martinez, the band’s original lineup is back together and just wrapped up a European tour.  They only have five U.S. dates slated through spring, so don’t miss them if they’re in your town.

You can hear “17” off the upcoming album at the band’s website.  It’s a welcome return of rock and roll.

Keep your mind open.

My top 25 albums of 2015 – #’s 5-1

Here we are at the top 5!

#5 

WALL‘s self-titled debut EP was a brash bit of post-punk that floored me the first time I heard it.  It’s one of those debuts that instantly makes you hungry for more, and they can’t release a full-length soon enough for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iVcNAb-iC0

#4 

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard are unstoppable.  They released the best-engineered record of the year, Nonagon Infinity (which can be played on endless loop, starting from any track, with no discernible bumps or pauses along the way), and have announced five more albums this year.

#3 

Night Beats are one of those bands that gets better with each record.  Who Sold My Generation was recorded mostly with first and second-takes in just a couple days, and the raw energy and R&B grooves shine through your speakers.  They are at the top of their game right now.

#2 

The lushest record of 2016 was the Besnard Lakes‘ A Coliseum Complex Museum.  It’s full of gorgeous arrangements, psychedelic dreams, and haunting sounds.  It’s a record that takes you out of your current state of mind and shifts your thinking.

#1 

If you’re gonna go out, go out like David Bowie did with Blackstar.  He put everything he had into his final album, and it’s a masterpiece.  Wild jazz arrangements, frank lyrics about death, sex, regret, acceptance, love, and hope, and hidden treasures (lyrically and in the album artwork itself) are layered throughout it.  The legend left us by setting the bar even higher.

There you have it, folks.  Thanks for sticking with me throughout 2016.  I hope you’ll keep reading this year.

Keep your mind open.

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Rewind Review: The Kills – Blood Pressures (2011)

the-kills-2011-blood-pressures

I’m hard pressed to remember an album I’ve recently heard that starts off as well as The Kills’ (Jamie Hince and Alison Mosshart) Blood Pressures.

“Future Starts Slow” is one of their biggest hits, and it’s for good reason. Hince’s guitar is like a haunting alarm and Mosshart’s pleading vocals (“…don’t ever give me up. I could never get back up when the future starts so slow.”) have both rock swagger and blues desperation. “Satellite” is another song pleading for more time to love as the Kills’ phone calls to respective lovers are cut off by bad satellite transmissions beyond their control.

“The Heart Is a Beating Drum” is a reminder to keep passion burning in a relationship. Mosshart sums up a hundred thousand sex life columns as she sings, “And you feel like you been here so many times before. It’s not the door you’re using, but the way you’re walking through it.” Hince’s guitar has this cool low fuzz to it well-suited for late night dalliances. There also this cool percussion that sounds like a sped-up Ping-Pong game throughout it that I love.

For having such sad lyrics (i.e., “I’ve made mistakes I can’t take back home. I love you just not the way you want.”), “Nail in My Coffin” has one of the best grooves and some of the heaviest guitar on the record. “Wild Charms,” with Hince on lead vocals, is a nice introduction to “DNA,” in which Mosshart references them (“True, I had those wild charms for you, but oh how my fire burnt them out.”) as she oozes sexual power and attitude.

“Baby Says” has a slick bass line throughout it and sounds like an early Blondie track. “The Last Goodbye” is a heartbreaking break-up song as Mosshart swears this will be the last time she returns to “half hearted love.” “Damned If She Do” has hints of heavy fuzz rock but the lyrics are pure blues. “You Don’t Own the Road” has Mosshart telling her ex that he doesn’t have a monopoly on loneliness and misery, but she’s willing to make him feel better (“Come on over if that’s the way you feel when you’re lonesome. Steal it back when you’re lonely.”). I love the way her vocals get slightly distorted in the chorus. They match the great crunch of Hince’s guitar work. The closer is “Pots and Pans,” in which Mosshart tells her lover that she’s done caring (“Ain’t enough salt in the ocean that care enough to keep you floating.”), and Hince’s fuzzy acoustic guitar draws a line in the sand.

Blood Pressures is solid rock about heartbreak and passion. Both subjects are easy to make sappy or over the top, but the Kills make it look easy. It’s not, because the road you have to walk to write songs like these isn’t easy. Most can’t handle it. The Kills did.

Keep your mind open.

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Gary Numan’s new PledgeMusic campaign chronicles his next album from beginning to end.

gary_numan

Rock / industrial / new wave / no wave / electro legend Gary Numan is putting together his 21st record.  He’s chronicling the entire writing and recording process through a PledgeMusic campaign, and he’s asking for fans to help him through the creative process.

Numan plans to keep contributors updated through videos, music clips, and campaign updates.  He admits he has no preconceptions for the record, according to the campaign’s page: “I have no idea how I want it to sound, or who will work on it with me, if anyone. It doesn’t even have a working title as yet. It’s as blank a canvas as I’ve ever had and everything that happens will happen with you as part of it.”

Most of the perks are already sold out, and there are still over 200 days until the album’s scheduled release date.  It will be worth the price of the download alone to watch his creative process…or pitch in a grand for a private listening party!

Keep your mind open.

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Rewind Review: Gang of Four – What Happens Next (2015)

gof

Guitarist and vocalist Andy Gill could’ve closed shop when vocalist Jon King left Gang of Four, but he instead reached out to many friends and collaborators and crafted What Happens Next – a fine post-punk record of dark themes with new vocalist John “Gaoler” Sterry.

The album starts with a sample of Robert Johnson from 1937 and then drifts into “Where the Nightingale Sings,” – a song encouraging Londoners to embrace new friends and neighbors instead of trying to live in a past that really wasn’t as glorious as they remember (“False memories, fake history, next you’ll talk of racial purity.”). Alison Mosshart of the Kills delivers vocals on “Broken Talk” (a song about a man seeking solace in prescription meds). “Isle of Dogs” is another track about living in a metaphorical London fog as Sterry sings, “Every day we invent the economy.” and “I buy in, to everything I see.”

Mosshart returns for vocal duties on “England’s in My Bones,” which is almost an electro dance track, but Thomas McNeice’s bass and Gill’s guitar keep it from straying out of post-punk territory. German musician and actor Herbert Gronemeyer contributes lead vocals on “The Dying Rays,” which is almost an epitaph for the British Empire (“Control and power, empires will build in our minds, but it will all go up in a blaze. Only dust in the dying rays.”).

“I Obey the Ghost” is a chainsaw attack on the Internet, social media, and how technology is making us lonelier than ever. Gill and McNeice bring dark guitars over electric beats as Sterry sings, “Online gods speak personally to me. They hold my hand in the community.”

The theme flows well into “First World Citizen,” with its lyrics of “Big appetites, those American guys. Chew up whatever the dollar buys.” That’s some truth right here, and there’s even more truth when you realize it’s a song about immigrants who would take any job any place to get where most of us are, even though most of us hate where we are. “I have lost everything, didn’t ask for anything. I would take anything, anything at all to be a first world citizen.”

“Stranded” is about first world rich cats who are secretly miserable. Robbie Furze of the Big Pink puts down lead vocals on “Graven Image,” and it’s a perfect track for him. Big Pink is a band that makes stadium-level electro, and this track has plenty of synth bass, programmed drums, and guitar fuzz, so it fits him like a tailored jacket. The closer, “Dead Souls,” is about the rat race that can ensnare all of us. “The world is rushing by. Everyone is on a roll, and I pass the time in the line of dead souls.” It’s not as dark as the Joy Division song of the same name, but it’s close in terms of the lyrics (“I’m not cut out for this role, and in the end I’ll join the line of dead souls.”).

What Happens Next doesn’t have a question mark in the title. Gang of Four isn’t asking us, they’re telling us. What happens next is a life caught in materialism, expensive medications we can’t afford or need, and trying to reclaim a past that never existed unless we snap out of it.

Keep your mind open.

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