Flop - 'World of Today' (Frontier)

And here the Flop story ends, and it couldn't happen in a more beautiful and fiercely contemplative manner. Actually, if we're talking pure aesthetics of sound, World of Today only slightly pulls back the big, loud hard rock sound of Whenever You're Ready; the grandiose, stadium rock riffage is still here, recorded like a brisk autumn wind, and on this November morning I couldn't think of a more suitable record to listen to while watching the grey sky slowly brighten. World of Today was released after the band broke up, back on the Frontier label, and is a rare album that I prefer to have on CD than vinyl, since it was squeezed onto a white 10" that is mastered terribly. Maybe someday it will get repressed with the extra 2"s that it deserves, but I'm going to have a slow campaign of winning over fans to Team Flop until then, to build the potential market. Oh, capitalism - if there was justice in the world, then every man, woman and child on earth would receive a 12" 180g vinyl pressing of World of Today in their postboxes tomorrow, and together we could start to understand the frustrations and resentments of mankind, collectively. Because this is an album that is very much about the torment of the individual, struggling to acclimate through schooling ('North Mason Middle School'), child-parent relationships ('Eggs and Ash'), post-adolescence ('Of Today'), childbearing ('April Ate Our World'), labour (the brilliantly existential closing cut, 'Two Martians Working', as perfect a coda as could be) and escapism ('Waste of Space'). If this sounds like a bumpy journey, well it's true that World of Today is less accessible than And the Fall of the Mopsqueezer. The only single was the opening cut, 'Act 1, Scene 1' which is a dark, existential rumination on the corporeality of being, and sets the tone for what is to come. There's unmistakeable darkness throughout this record, and you can hear it in Willoughby's voice - it's hitting a slightly higher register, and there's none of the exuberance heard before on songs such as 'The Great Valediction'. That's not to say he underperforms here - in fact, there's still an enthusiasm and joy for music, and exhibit A of that would be the cover of 'Yellow Rainbow' by the Move. This is a remarkable rendering of an already remarkable song, and the 60s acid imagery of the original takes on a malevolent tone with mid 90s guitar production behind it,  and in the context of the rest of this album. Yet throughout, the essential fairytale nature of the song is never lost as Willoughby sings with almost reckless abandon. If I'm making this out to be a dour, miserable trip, then I'm doing a bad job of conveying the pure joy (no pun intended) of World of Today, at least as a listener. The catchy hooks and musicianship are more integrated than ever before, and you get delicate guitar jangle ('Eggs and Ash' is a beauty to listen to with Kurt Bloch's production) and shifting time signatures ('Of Today'), as well as some of the most earworm-forming (albeit dark) lyrics imaginable. Imagine a fifteen year old version of me singing 'You'll get more disillusioned with age ... you wait!' alone in my bedroom. (In case you're wondering, he was right, I did. We all do, which is one of the lessons of World of Today). This record represents the peak of Willoughby's songwriting in Flop, and some of the most personal moments that I've discerned from his work.  Hell, it represents the peak of songwriting in general, from just about anyone. It's hard to pick a single highlight but maybe it's the penultimate track, 'Miniaturize', which begins with a masterfully epic jangly buildup before it's autobiographical raison d'être is delivered with such mastery that I wish stadiums and arenas were filled with thousands singing along: 'Solemn as a child / in stoic reticence'. The melodic high point may be the back-to-back punch of 'Around' and 'We've All Seen Better Days', the latter being one of the moments of relief and empathy that comes here. I  can only wonder about the residue of failed relationships here, as well as a general questioning of one's purpose in life. That this came out of the Sony-catalysed bad juju makes sense, and if it's a band falling apart then it's channeled through one man questioning everything. I meant to post this a few days ago but once I started listening to it I kept listening to it over and over, so I've listened to this about ten times in the past week and just want more, and I've been listening to it consistently since 1995. I've never met another Flop fan in person, and only a few people who remember them at all; certainly no one whose life was so affected by this record as a teenager. I realise that there's a lot of great records that had I invested my formative years into them might have impacted me as much as this one, but I'm glad I ended up with this one being so important.

Flop - 'Whenever You're Ready' (Sony 550/Frontier)

Are you ready for a hot take? Here goes: Rusty Willoughby is one of the greatest unheralded songwriters currently alive, and his best work stands up against the best work by Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Roy Harper or anyone else you might want to put in that canon. And that best work, for me, falls squarely within the boundaries of the three albums recorded by Flop in the mid-1990s. Unfortunately I only have And the Fall of the Mopsqueezer on cassette, which lies outside of the purview of this blogging project, so we must start here with their major label debut-swansong, Whenever You're Ready. The story of Flop, whenever it is written, which is rarely, is always the same - being from Seattle, they got signed to a major label in another case of right-place-right-time syndrome, this being one of the more crippling examples. They recorded this stunner of a second album for Sony, but because the major majorly fucked them around w/r/t promotion and marketing and general support (Steve Albini is always right!), the band collapsed in a mess of bad vibes and their third album, originally meant for Sony, went back to their first label, Frontier. We'll get there soon enough – oh, hooray for it being Flop Day on this blog! Willoughby's previous and future band was Pure Joy, who are also great, and fell somewhere in-between the Paisley Underground sound of Rain Parade/Game Theory and the crunchier melodic punk of Fastbacks (for whom he briefly played drums). For Flop, he brought in Bill Campbell on second guitar and the sound thickened immediately, especially on this record - er, sorry, CD. Campbell's guitar lines do a lot of chugga-chugga and pickslides and things that you hear on metal records, though it's not metal in the slightest; but it's hardly soft rock either, despite the acoustics of 'Parts I & II' or the psychedelic residue throughout. Generally, the production here is thick and booming, which is evident from the kicking drums on the opening 0:01 of the disc; one would situate this closer to the 'hard rock' genre than pop-punk were it not for Willoughby's angelic, soaring voice and the incredible hooks in his songs. Instead, Flop ends up in a maligned liminal zone which was doomed, even for the time; too heavy for radio play, too brainy for the heavy scene. But the songs are sophisticated, sometimes beyond belief;  that opening cut ('A. Wylie') is about An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw, so that indicates from the get-go that this is a far cry from whatever Mudhoney and Tad were writing about at this time. Second cut 'Regrets' mixes beautiful poetics ('And the leaves are convalescing / the sun is warming the baby seed') with verses of urban alienation over palm-muted heavy rhythm guitar. Willoughby's lyrics often implicate scientific/medical imagery (though more so on the later Pure Joy recordings) and mix in just enough pop culture references to conjure songworlds that are relatable while just ambiguous enough to create intrigue. A cursory listen may suggest this is merely a competent punk-pop album, a product of its time, but it's so much more. And maybe the competing tendencies of Willoughby and Campbell make the music so much more interesting; the sinewy guitar lead underneath the driving speed of 'Eat' gives it a catchy, clear direction; the production of 'A Fixed Point' makes it sound like if 'The Ballad of John and Yoko' needed its batteries changed; the back-to-back punch of 'Night of the Hunter' and 'Port Angeles' is an experience of pop perfection. The former has some of the most clever and quotable lyrics of Willoughby's career ('Solvents, glue and heroin/ she said "I don't want to do that at all" - and it's a song about the Robert Mitchum movie through and through!) and the latter explodes family tension with religious imagery. Legendary UK producer Martin Rushent engineered this and for me, as a 15 year old, I didn't initially glom onto Whenever You're Ready as quickly as the other two records, maybe because the production felt so heavy. But now I can't imagine this any other way. There's hardly anyone around who remembers Flop and probably even less as passionate about them as I am, but I urge you to investigate these three records, because for over 20 years they've been  endlessly rewarding and get better with age. The same can't really be said for the weirdly retro artwork, though again, I can't imagine this record looking any different by this point in my life - a life that has been mostly lived with Flop as some part of it.

Arnold Dreyblatt - 'Animal Magnetism' (Tzadik)

This is one that blew everything wide open for me. My impressionable teenage mind heard this for the first time (i think) in someone's car, on a cassette, and even still I was quite affected by the power of microtonal music. This is rocking 20th century classical composition, an album to make anyone sit up and take notice. But it's not aggressive, macho, or posturing - it is pure energy, an open, celebratory exploration of sound with a pulsing momentum and a driving urgency. It would be easy to try to read the sound of post-wall Berlin into this, and were I a Greil Marcus type maybe I would try to say that this music celebrates the eclecticism of a new Europe. But I'm not, so I'll just again repeat that this fucking 'rocks'. It's that drum on the opening track, 'Point Rotation', that sets the tone, but it's not a snare - it's a Basque string drum. Yes, even the drums are tuned microtonally and would you expect anything less? There's such a passion behind this ensemble, compared to the more sedate Propellers lineup (only cello/tuba/electric bass specialist Jan Schade remains) that when a deep bowing sound (maybe Schade's cello) saws through the mix, its accelerating rather than retarding. Interesting recording techniques mean that on some tracks, certain instruments are not properly in the mix, so it feels like someone is tapping a bell or block right over your shoulder, as opposed to with the other musicians. The piercing, sharp staccato notes are the brightest sounds on here and work really well against the horns. Everything is distinguished, and it's a composition to celebrate. I know this work like the back of my hand, making this a rare work of classical music that I sing along to. Like 'Propelleres in Love', it ends with a slow, spacious statement, just a note, a rest, and the note again, repeated. Very little gets better than this.

Destroyer - "Streethawk: A Seduction' (Misra)

I've listened to this CD so many times that I can't actually play it anymore. Not because I'm tired of it -- far from that -- but because one day I dropped the disc into some freshly applied polyurethane while refinishing some wood, and now it doesn't play. I kept the disc as a tribute, burned a copy from a friend, and resumed it's regular rotation. Streethawk: A Seduction is a title that sounds like a concept album, and maybe it is. Despite my hundreds of listens I'm not quite sure what the story is, though Bejar really explicitly takes on the world of indie music here, with frequent references to culture which would normally make me wince, but here are done expertly (and cryptically). Track two, 'The Bad Arts', may be the greatest Destroyer song; it has it all, an epic buildup, lyrics that seem very much of my world in 2001 ('Thou shall not take part in, or make bad art'!), and a beautiful, transcendent coda (with lyrics borrowed from a Joy Division tune). I will say it again - I have listened to Streethawk a shocking number of times, and would count it among my favourite albums of all time, so I have learned every nook and cranny of it's sounds. This means that every little hesitation or embellishment in Bejar's vocal delivery is a secret signal to me, a talisman for the strange world I dove into over a decade ago when I first heard this. There's the perfect amount of suggestion here; I once read into 'Farrar, Straus & Giroux (Sea of Tears)' a narrative directly applicable to my own life, knowing of course this was ridiculous, but that's why metaphors are great. Every song is a classic here; there's not a second of filler (whereas the last two albums had frequent instrumental interludes, Streethawk is overflowing with language, making me think Bejar hit a real creative burst around this time). Over time, the songs that had the least impact on me grew to become my favourites. I could just list the things I love here. When this was released it got a fair amount of attention, which it deserved, though I couldn't help but feel the Bowie comparisons were overdone. Yeah, the ascending vocals and piano on songs like 'The Sublimation Hour' are totally Ziggy Stardust, but after a few hundred listens I started to see a stronger connection to Pavement. It sounds crazy because the aesthetic is different, but the vocal turns and casual yet expressive glitches in his delivery are shockingly similar to Malkmus circa Wowee Zowee. The way Bejar sings "Helena, the ramifications / are very large tonight / the stars say don't pick a fight" is among rock music's most beautiful subtleties, but I hear a lot of 'We Dance' in there too. Musically, there more confidence here, plus the presence of Jason Zumpano on drums, continuing the path from Zumpano's own brilliant records a few years earlier. The succes of this record led to big changes in Destroyer, and he's spent most of the past decade trying out different things, confident and progressive at all times. I've kept up with all of it, but this is still his masterpiece and the one I return to most frequently.

The Dead C - 'Harsh 70s Reality' (Siltbreeze)

This, really, is it. Though really, I feel like I've been repeating myself on each of these trips through the Dead C's musical lair; I'm just creating an echo of empty language in a feeble attempt to convey how great something is that should just be experienced. Maybe that's a way to portray about this blog overall - a failure to articulate. And there's a window, because that tension between articulation and letting it slide; between intention and affect - that's maybe what's so fucking stunning about this CD. There's a lot of Harsh 70s Reality to make it the singular record that it is (even among the band's already stellar catalogue by this point). Opening with 'Driver U.F.O.', the most blatantly anti-structural track they'd released to date, is not a sensible way to begin your masterpiece. But 'Driver U.F.O.' is not just a jam; despite the millions of free-rock, spacey explorations I've heard in my young life, there's something about this one that makes it more complete. I can't articulate (there we go again) much beyond that, but I don't have to. It's a brilliant balance of all things that are great in improvised music, which includes (but is not limited to) texture, rhythm, space, and dramatic currents. One thing you can do with Harsh 70s Reality is consider it alongside other big records of 1991/1992 - specifically Loveless and Nevermind, two records that inspired billions of my peers but in some ways don't hold a candle to the artistic genius and complexity of this. Or maybe, instead of being so quantitative, we can just appreciate these three cornerstones as being three sides all balancing each other, structurally. It's crazy to think twenty years has elapsed here, two-thirds of my life, and that this would probably pass the "Velvet Underground" test - it was certainly heard by the least amount of people compared to Loveless/Nevermind, but probably all of those who found it went off and started their own bands. I myself came late to this, getting into the Dead C around the time of Tusk and luckily coming across a bunch of these CDs secondhand in a short period of time. Talk about getting thrown into the deep end! Back then, it was the long, loose jammy tracks that spoke to me most - 'Driver U.F.O.' and 'Sea is Violet', for example. Whereas the songs, I didn't click with them right away, maybe not til I came across Eusa. 'Sky' is the real comparison against Nirvana; if you have doubts look at the (insane, amazing, thank god for YouTube) live clip online and wonder what was floating in the water down there. 'Love' has been regurgitated in several forms on various records - this is something else to admire about the Dead C, their continual reappraisal of past compositions - but this one is a slow, 10 minute dirge that might be the best take on it. Much of this record ws recorded live, some as far back as '89 according to the liner notes (a barely readable typewriter font on some beautifully minimal artwork). There's not much distinction between studio and live anyway - the fidelity can benefit this sound, but this is a mid-fi world that messrs. Morley, Russell and Yeats pioneered and conquered. Harsh 70s Reality is rounded off with 'Baseheart' and 'Hope', the latter being another all-time great Dead C classic. This is the CD issue and it omits two tracks due to space limitations, which believe it or not, I've never heard (but don't fear, I'm downloading them now). Some years ago I saw the LP version of this for about $40 and I passed it up, but now that seems like a bargain. 

Richard Davies - 'There's Never Been a Crowd Like This' (Flydaddy)

Danger: we're entering another obsessive idiosyncratic favourite of mine. There's Never Been a Crowd Like This took me years to warm up to, as I remember borrowing it from a good friend my freshman year of University and not liking it at all. I checked it out because it was on Flydaddy, of course. Flydaddy ends up being an odd label in the history of it all (for me). It's a mid-sized indie that I suspect was a bit overfunded at times and certainly overreached (they were somehow involved in the V2 partnership with Virgin, and this is the Japanese edition of the CD, which means they were making separate editions for Japan). They also came about in that weird time where compact discs were still commercially feasible. We didn't have downloads yet and 1996 was that interesting turning point, post-grunge, where independent labels frequently flirted with bigger distribution partnerships and often blurred the lines of what 'independent' means. Flydaddy would be just another forgotten indie label, sinking into the blur along with Grass and Frontier and Alias, except they released a few cornerstones of my musical taste: Olivia Tremor Control, Number One Cup, and the Moles/Richard Davies. Even in 2012 I listen to these records repeatedly, more times than I would normally admit. Though as I was saying before, I came late to Davies. It wasn't until I had already moved out of the US that I discovered his greatness in retrospect. And a huge portion of that would be 'Transcontinental', the opening jam here. To say this is Richard Davies' finest accomplishment is not enough - nor is it a definitive answer, because 'Cars for Kings Cross' and 'Instinct' give it a run for its money. But I digress. 'Transcontinental' is much more than a great song - it's a world of mystery, a self-reflexive circuitous pop anti-classic, rooted in autobiography and infused with Wallace Stevens-like levels of obtuse affect. I've listened to it hundreds of times, and continually try to unravel it, even though there's nothing to unravel. Start here. Move through the album, which can be easily dismissed as a pedestrian 90's indie guitar-pop album, all the songs sounding somewhat similar (which was surely my dismissal of it back in '97). This is power pop, though not so powerful; Davies isn't interested in being brash and confident with his melodies. He doesn't always show his hand, and has a strong sense of the whole over the details. But the details are rich! There's a few confident, strident 4/4 stompers, except without any aggression behind them, making it an orchestral-pop horizon pretty similar to the best Cardinal songs ('Topple Into My Fantasy', 'Sign Up Maybe for Being'). And then some fragmentary, open sketches, like 'Hard River', which become more beautiful with each listen. And then we have 'Chips Rafferty', apparently a paen to an obscure Australian character actor, but not. It's something else, and I want to explain it, but where can we go? Davies falls into the category of songwriter who perfectly balances the line between accessible and difficult; he dangles me just enough of a line to hang onto something, which makes me want to draw my own portraits. Pure modernism, perhaps, or maybe songwriters like he (and Dan Bejar, and early Pavement too) appeal the most to people who want to create their own worlds. Thus, I connect with the beauty of subtlety; the expression is more gestural. The romance is between the words, but structurally dependent on them, being bordered by language. As I mentioned, this is the Japanese edition which has a slew of bonus tracks, which is why I spent years looking for it on eBay. There are demo versions of 'Transcontinental', 'Topple into my Fantasy' and 'Chips Rafferty' ('Topple' being striking for it's starkness and space -- I think the emergence of song from demo to studio recording is always interesting but more fascinating here). And then four live songs from the Richard Davies band, or maybe the Moles - 'Bury Me Happy' and two songs from Instinct, including the aforementioned 'Cars For Kings Cross' which still burns bright in the live version. 'If You Believe in Christmas Trees', one of the best Cardinal songs, ends it all, in a fairly aggressive version that makes me wish I had seen this band. I look back here and I haven't actually said much about what is so great about There's Never Been A Crowd Like This, but I guess that's for you to discover.

Dadamah - 'This is Not a Dream' (Kranky)

Welcome to the D's, and welcome to the murky 4-track atmosphere of Port Chalmers, New Zealand.  This CD compiles the recorded lifespan of Dadamah, a project of Roy Montgomery and Peter Stapleton in the early 1990s.  Vocalist Kim Pieters wrote the liner notes but they're pretty damn hard to read, and as much as I've loved this CD for years I've never really forced myself through them all.  If you're looking for crystal-clear psychedelia this is the wrong place; Dadamah are lo-fi and have that classic kiwi downer vibe, much like Nocturnal Projections or Montgomery's first band, the Pin Group.  There's churning guitar chords, military drum-tapping (courtesy of Stapleton who rarely gets to shine, due in part to the mix, but knows his place) and dense organ chords over it all.  The band works themself into a Velvet Underground-jammyness on tracks like 'Brian's Children' and 'Limboswing' and it's all quite inspiring, or was to a teenage dronehead like myself.  'Scratch Sun' is repetitive and builds to a manic pulse, but it somehow stays grounded in space. Hey, punk and minimalism can co-exist, and we don't even need  to be aggressive.  There are "hooks", or at least song structures that get lodged in your brain.  Throughout, the deep male vocals of Montgomery and Pieters' earthy drawl complement each other perfectly on songs like 'Papa Doc', even if she is just wailing in the mist.  There's beautiful layers of chorus and reverb on the guitar - this is before he started making all of those beautiful, shimmery solo discs like Temple IV, but the shimmer is there, and it's fucking electrifying.  I've loved losing myself in the epic chord progression of 'High Tension House', Dadamah's masterpiece.  There's a gentle pitter-pattern behind it all and the swirl starts to come in.  This isn't noise, nor is it punk, but it's a fucking vision, painted with the broadest strokes possible.  

Consonant (Fenway)

This Consonant album was one of the biggest surprises of 2002 for me, surfacing as a new Clint Conley-penned album of rock songs which was magic to those of us who worship at the altar of Burma. Nineteen years is a long time to hide away, and expectations were understandably low. The band had a guy from Bedhead and a guy from Come, but how good could the songs be? I guess if you spend nineteen years writing stuff, you're going to have twelve good tunes for a CD. But nothing could quite prepare me for how good this actually was. Or IS - because it still sounds absolutely great, a perfect merger of classic rock, 80's and 90's American guitar indie and a bit of the Burma fire. It's all love songs, of course, or rather contemplations of love and loss structured somewhat around these weird acrostic poems by Holly Anderson. There's bitterness seeping out of tunes like 'Call it L---' and 'Who Touches You Now?', but it's the more lunar language that kills me - a hopeless 40something romantic who is struggling to put things into context. Anderson's poems are built around the names of flowers and Conley has certainly adapted them well into rock phrasing, managing to sing lines like 'Cured but curious we embrace post-pathetic happiness: neutered, fixed, companionable' without it sounding as strange as it probably just did to read it. The fuzzy guitars, drum fills and amped-up energy ('Buckets of Flowers, Porno Mags'; 'That Boston Life') are raging with confidence and mastery; for an aging punk, there's no element of embarrassment. Chris Brokaw's guitars find the right places - for those of us who grew up with music that itself grew up on Burma, it's all just perfect. There's oodles of 'Trem Two' style moodiness, but still a hint of 'That's How I Escaped my Certain Fate'. And Roger Miller turns up a few times too. The pop hooks are there - not singsong like the Beatles but subtle, mind-burrowing lyrical fragments that I had bouncing around in my head for much of 2002. I remember having the 'We couldn't ever make enough / time for lips and hips and arms' following around my consciousness for so long that I was starting to go nuts; of course, for a song about the ghost of a relationship (and the song I refer to is the closing tune 'What a Body Could Do'), it's practically supernatural. 'Post-Pathetic' is an absolutely brilliant song, with a bit of college 80s jangle, sharp sharp sharp words, and a self-deprecating sexuality that gets better with every listen. It's the influencer meeting his influencees, and I was pretty much obsessed with this CD when it came out - my digipak is dinged and dented from taking it to work every day. Of course, I haven't played it for a few years which is why it feels so good and familiar now - I actually am on the third consecutive listen. Rock music connects when it's music and lyrics meeting in perfect balance, and that's what's here. I love lines like 'Wasn't she full of wild want / for is he and her she?' but even more when the band is providing the perfect presentation of it. My love for Consonant is pretty strong, and I realise a bit idiosyncratic, but just wait, cause there's gonna be lots of these as we go along.

The Coctails (Carrot Top)

This is the final CD by the Coctails, the cover photo emulating their previous album Peel, only with a feeling of rot and decay here. This is an album that I hold close to my heart - an idiosyncratic, personal favourite that becomes more obscure with each passing year, but that I still feel a strong rapport with. Because I don't own anything else by this band, this is taken a bit out of context. The Coctails were a Chicago band in the early 90s who merged indie rock with eclectic instrumentation and jazz/lounge influence; their earlier LPs, such as Long Sound, were bouncy and owed a debt to Dave Brubeck and stuff like that. Peel took things into a somewhat more guitar-based territory, and then this masterpiece ends up almost totally eschewing the quirks of their early work (with the closest reference being 'Cadali', a jaunty tune that is lovely, but out of place here). The Coctails is a dour, depressed record that's about half-instrumental, half-vocal. There are bright spots - 'Circles' is a major-key instrumental with vibraphones and a really perfect, brief use of casio beats - but even this has a somber tone. The vocal tracks are set by the opening cut, 'When I Come Around' (released around the same time as the Green Day hit of the same name); your typical white-guy indierock vocalist, emoting despite not actually having a great singing voice. This is heard more clearly on 'So Low', where the singer (either Archer Prewitt, John Upturch or Barry Phipps; not really sure) bellows a dramatic dirge. I can't speak highly enough of how wonderful this record is, but I have been listening to it for almost 15 years. The credits reveal the source recordings to come from various points throughout the 90s - 'When I Come Around' and 'Never Knew' were actually recorded with Stuart Moxham back in 1993 (this album was released in '96). So rather than being a cohesive statement of melancholy, this was a collection of what didn't fit on the other records; whatever the motive, it ends up being the most rewarding work of their career (and I think it outclasses anything Prewitt did subsequently in the Sea and Cake or solo). This is guitar-based indie rock, with carefully chosen notes that ring out delicately like a Bedhead record. And like Bedhead's last album, there's one fuzzy stomper near the end of the record that would be out of place except it fits so perfectly - the grunge anthem 'Cast Stones', a snarled rant that feels more frustrated than angry. The Coctails is filled with moments of utter beauty, such as the delicate 'Starling' and the epic 'City Sun'; it closes with a Terry Riley moment, 'Last Organ'. It's a thick, elliptical organ drone, clearly intended as an elegy for the band who I think had broken up by the time this was released. At the time, I'm sure this album complemented the livelier tunes on their other records - completing the picture, and fleshing out the band into a more fully expressive unit. But since it's been at least a decade or more since I've heard even Peel, I'm left remembering the Coctails by this, their Sister Lovers.

Chisel - '8 AM All Day' (Gern Blandsten)

I was sixteen years old and my music friend (the man responsible for making me mixtapes which forever cemented my interest in mid-90s indie rock) was trying to get me into Superchunk. He had succeeded in showing me the ways of Pavement, Sebadoh and some minor cult faves who you will hear about later. Superchunk actually came to town during this period, but I didn't go, as I had yet to become hip to their sounds. My friend returned from the gig with his mind blown by the opening act, Chisel. I remember him saying "They took the stage and then played the most amazing songs I ever heard"; he snapped up both of their CDs and immediately dubbed them for me. Now I eventually did become a Superchunk fan, but it's because of Chisel that I regret missing that show (I would later see both bands). Now I've nearly doubled in age, but 8 AM All Day is one of those CDs that I've taken with me from place to place, pulling it out at least once a year for a trip down memory lane. It has become no less sweet with time. This is one of the prime artefacts from an era where I learned every millisecond of my favourite albums by heart, finding deep connections to the songs that tapped into a physicality and a lyrical connection as well. Yeah, that doesn't happen anymore. For one thing, I'm not sixteen anymore. I still remember every millisecond of this album and I'm glad I do! At the time, I didn't know much about the DC-area hardcore scene (of which Gern Blandsten, the label, was a player, releasing a bunch of other records though I can only remember Merel right now) or the history of mod-influenced power pop. Ted Leo has never shied away from his appreciation of Paul Weller or Joe Jackson but I didn't know any better then. All I knew was that 'The Dog in Me' was the perfect summation of everything I wanted indie rock to be. It was fast, and aggressive, with an awesome guitar solo/buildup at the end, backing vocals during the chorus that showed an appreciation of pop saccharine, and a line like "Trying to touch that sound/and not let it get me down/when nobody comes around". Of course that's magic to my ears, because this stuff was all part of a secret club for me, and I was on the outside looking in. Ah, this whole fucking album still stands up as a masterpiece to my older, jaded ears. The opening cut, 'Hip Straights', explodes with the line "Why don't we go walking for awhile?", intensifying in pitch and energy as the song goes on. I was amazed by Ted Leo's guitar playing - I thought at the time he was the best guitarist I had ever seen (it was 1997 when I finally saw them) because he could shred these inventive, fast licks and sing at the same time! 'What About Blighty?' was as fast and hardcore as I could take it then, and I still jump around when listening to it. 'Your Star is Killing Me' was on the first album (Nothing New, my copy of which seems to have disappeared) but re-done here with twice the energy. And then the immaculate 'Looking Down at the Great Wall of China From Way Up High in the Sky', whose lyrics are far more whiny and self-centered than such a grandiose title would indicate. The tempo cuts back for this one, and the endless guitar lead is like a knife slicing through butter. I didn't really know what 'emo' was at this time but this sure woulda been it! Even now I shouted out "I still care about her / yeah I really like her a whole whole lot" while listening, though typing it make me realise that at 16 I wasn't so concerned about fear of commitment. The rest of the album continues to be great. The title track has a brilliant cadence that almost re-works 'The Dog in Me', yet it's still a distinct song. 'Out for Kicks' is an actual reworking of a song from Nothing New, with new lyrics, and perhaps the most overtly Jam-styled number. And then the beautiful, beautiful closing pair of songs, 'Citizen of Venus' and 'Breaking Up with Myself'. Leo's songwriting was a better glimpse into the world I dreamt of than the bigger names like Malkmus or Barlow could manage; the emotions conveyed now pretty much summed up my life from age 18-22, when I was still listening to Chisel but a lot less frequently. So what happened to Chisel? They made another album which I anticipated like nothing else in the world, but was disappointed by; Ted Leo went on to a solo career that wasn't bad, but I never really got into except for one album (Hearts of Oak). I grew up and never stopped loving 8 AM All Day, and I love meeting others who share it with me. It's not the life-altering artistic statement of an Astral Weeks or even an Alien Lanes, but it's perfect nonetheless.

Camberwell Now - 'All's Well' (ReR)

Camberwell Now, what a band, what a moment in music, but what little splash they made! This CD, long sought-after by yours truly before it was finally reissued, compiles everything they recorded during their brief (1984-1986) existence. Now, here's a bias to lay up-front: I'm a massive This Heat fan, and I look to Charles Hayward as a magical musical force that did a lot for my own artistic and critical development. This Heat/Camberwell Now brought together a lot of concerns for me at just the right time in my life (my early 20's!). In the musical arena, they brought together ruthless sound experimentation with mindblowing musical chops - the balance is always perfect, as for every dazzling Hayward drum run comes some incredible use of musique concrete techniques. And lyrically, Hayward showed me that you can bridge fiery, political expression with poetry and the personal - I'd say that I now follow the "everything is political" philosophy, which is a great deal inspired by This Heat. So Camberwell Now was the somewhat more obscure followup band, whose lone LP The Ghost Trade I luckily scored from eBay about ten years ago, but whose other records remained unobtainable. The Meridian EP, which comprises the first 4 tracks of All's Well, is an open, tuneful Camberwell Now, and maybe the furthest removed from This Heat's post-punk caterwauls. The nautical theme is overabundant and years before all those midwestern indie rock bands started writing songs about boats, it's funny to hear Charles Hayward's approach. The trio format of This Heat, with Stephen Rickard on the tapes, is retained; what's different is that there's a more central rhythm, yet less rock structure here. It seems to emanate more directly from the intelligent 70s prog scene that Hayward came out of, but I think more of Rock Bottom than the Quiet Sun LP. Coming in the midst of Thatcherism, these songs about decaying empire and the exploitation of natural resources seem prescient, if not overtly obvious. A bit of digging under the surface is good, and the way these rhythms emerge it feels like waves, gently rocking. The instrumental 'Resplash' is where we get Camberwell Now starting to really amp things up. It gets a bit 'S.P.Q.R' at points, but puts on the brakes at just the right moments, building up massive caches of tension. It's the first really astounding track in a disc that's full of them, and it's like rock music has taken a major step forward. A bonus track, 'Daddy Needs a Throne', is inserted after Meridian, before Ghost Trade and clearly coming from the same sessions. This is when we start to really feel the manic, bass-driven rock of Camberwell Now's middle period. The song, in only 3 and a half minutes, somehow manages to address the difficulty of maintaining a working class family structure, while exploding in a cacophony of furious voices and electricity. But it's almost a teaser for 'Working Nights,' the leadoff cut from The Ghost Trade, which I'm glad to have on CD because my vinyl copy is practically worn through. This is the definitive Camberwell Now song, which is crazy because the first time I heard it I thought it reminded me of New Order! There is something lively and dancey here that This Heat never had, but it's so fucking intense and fast and magical and the bassline is like a choker necklace on your brain. I don't even know what else to stay here, but I know the LP will get listened to soon on Vinyl Underbite, so I'll save it for there. 'Sitcom' follows , assessing the state of progress in mid 80's Britain, and then the beautiful, understated 'Wheat Futures' closes out side 1. Except this is a CD, so we don't have to flip anything! 'Wheat Futures' is one of those songs where Hayward is singing/droning/intoning deeply and passionately, accompanied at first by an electric erhu and some keyboards, and it slowly builds to a slow series of musical thoughts, with a repetitive autoharp line to centre it. This is still somehow punk rock to me, but it's also folk and experimental and anything and everything. Hayward probably never plays drums as minimally as at the end of 'Wheat Futures', yet it's still folding in on itself in rhythmic complexity. 'Speculative Fiction', with it's cut-up vocalisings and electro-beat, at first sounds like the great sellout, but is actually an upright stride towards Valhalla. While still frantic, it's slow enough to breathe, with lots of studio/Rickard tricks, such as layers of bells and whistles, echoing drum fills, and nooks and crannies jumping out at all points. By the end it's a swirling maelstrom of the original electroclash hook and Haywards layered Ya-ya-yas. And then 'Ghost Lantern', whose lyrics aren't printed in the booklet for some reason yet this track continues The Ghost Trade's reliance on Trefor Goronwy's manic basslines and frantic guitar chops, with Hayward's crisp yet explosive drumming. And then 'The Ghost Trade', the 12 minute behemoth that ends the album of the same name. The first four minutes are a midtempo song, an indictment of global capitalism, post-Fordism and conspicous consumption. And then a slow xylophone line emerges from the keyboard smog and a plodding, instrumental coda takes us to the end. It's as beautiful as everything else here, which is to say it's also tense and strange and unusual. And then, the Greenfingers 12" to close out the disc! The title track is an explosive meditation on rural malaise, with punchy saxophones and a rock-solid beat that makes me violently tap my foot off the bottom of my desk when I listen to it. It feels a bit more fruity than what came before, perhaps a feeling carried on in 'Mystery of the Fence'. At this point, the band has expanded to a four-piece, with Maria Lamburn adding the sax, piccolo and viola. The textures are slightly more plastic, but it's 1986 after all - it's got that digital sheen on things, despite Lamburn's organic grounding. Goronwy's own tune, "Know How" comes next, which is a real 180 turn. His earnest, bright voice sounds like he should be in Tears for Fears, and the simple, minimal lyrics are much more commercially rooted than Hayward's use of language. There's a nice pulse behind everything, and I've come to really like this song over time. It's a weird sort of ending for the Camberwell Now, though I guess that would actually be the 35 second 'Element Unknown' which actually ends the disc. I realise this has been one of the longer and more passionate entries in the Constructor Bags to date, but I guess that's why I love music - because it gets me excited, inspired and totally fuckin' pumped! The booklet includes lyrics and a rather technical description of the tape switchboard, written by Rickard. I know that this is all that there is, but I still can't help myself from pining for some more deluxe edition (vinyl!) in the future.

Boredoms - 'Vision Creation Newsun' (Birdman)

My god, it's been ten years since this beast from the East was unleashed! This was the Boredoms' big reinvention, or for those listening more carefully, the next logical step in their progression. Super Roots 7 (or was it 8?) started off with the formula - long, extended pieces built around polyrhytmic insanity, with the usual shrill electronics, pulsing organs and disembodied voices layered in slow crescending waves. Vision Creation Newsun expands it to a whole double album-length, and the result is astounding. I remember getting this CD back in college and totally losing my shit over it. It was also one of the first "big" albums that I heard in its entirety via NAPSTER before it was released domestically though I don't know if that is somehow significant. Maybe I can say that this was a record that changed the way I heard music, arriving at a time when the ways we listen to music were changing. Ugh, I'm starting to sound like one of those shitty Sirius/XM sattelite radio commercials! So on to Vision Creation Newsun: If you wanna talk about a perfect melting between the electronic and organic, this is it. The untitled tracks flow together into one cohesive whole, though there are certainly highlights. The opener is a statement of purpose, with it's sweeping filter banks defining the Boredom's new temple. Track 3 builds up a repeating, ascending riff like something out of Can or Neu! but filtered through Marginal Consort. Throughout everything, the 'anything goes' mentality is scaled back a bit and the emphasis is on duration instead of the short-attention span pyrotechnics that the Boredoms practiced in the early 90s. And oh, what a result. There's thick waves of organ, reverb-affected guitars, bells and percussion galore, and lots of voices that slip away into a distant sea. Best of all are these weird parts that go into power-rock sections - jamming on one long riff over a steady 4/4, or the recurring two-note monotony that makes up track 6's main theme. This organic onigiri is also wrapped in a great deal of digital processing, but somehow the choppy skipping feels more akin to a tremelo effect, the disjointed ebb and flow of accelerated consciousness. Talk about music for a new millenium, that simultaneously looks ahead and back! Energy courses through everything - even the ocacsional acoustic instrumentation that pops up, or the smooth groove singing on track 7 -- it's still raging with a spastic fury. What's different from Pop Tatari is they've learned how to channel this energy into some cosmic third eye consciousness without compromising their uber-modern exuberance. This pumps me up as much as the greatest hardcore records, and somehow stirs my soul in the same way as the greatest works of Riley, LaMonte, etc. After this, the Boredoms never were quite as special for me - the bang-on-everything percussion attitude was taken a bit further and the results, while occasionally very impressive, somehow lack the magic of this.

Robert Ashley - 'Automatic Writing' (Lovely Music)

I went on holiday in 2001 to Scotland, and visited a friend there. Among other conversational items, he mentioned that he had just purchased a secondhand LP of Automatic Writing but he wasn't "into" it and was going to sell it. Neither my traveling companion nor myself had ever heard it, so he put it on the turntable and we opened some beers. After ten minutes or so my traveling companion and I both expressed our amazement at what we were hearing and we both offered to buy the unwanted record from my friend. When faced with our enthusiasm, said friend re-evaluated his feelings and refused to sell it to us. So I went back to America emptyhanded, though as soon as I could get my ass to Twisted Village (or maybe it was Other Music in NYC?) I bought the CD reissue, which tacked on bonus tracks 'Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon' (1968) and 'She Was a Visitor' (1967). Some years later I found the LP for cheap but I never unloaded this CD, which means it's going to get reviewed immediately after this on Dislocated Underbite et al. But that's okay - I don't mind listening to this twice in a row, because there's something really amazing about this recording that still affects me as much as it did eight years previously. The CD liner notes, by Ashley, explain his mild form of Tourette's syndrome and his interest in involuntary speech, though he admits that attempting to do performances with involuntary speech results in 'fake' involuntary speech, since it's a performance after all, etc. you know. Anyway, he spent five years "composing" this, which consists of voice by himself and Mimi Johnson, Ashley's voice being electronically manipulated mumbling and gurgling and Johnson's being whispered French text. On that surface you have a brilliant, surreal low-listening mindfuck that wins points in sound poetry circles as well as the avant-text circuit; but what really blows my mind about this record is the "music" in the background. For at least part of the record, a distant booming rhythm loop is present, but it's recorded in a way that makes it sound exactly like your next-door neighbor is listening to some shitty groove/dance record. Now read those italicised words again and let them sink in. And if you haven't heard Automatic Writing you're no doubt asking yourself "So?" Which goes to illustrate how futile it is to convey the sound experience through language. Because this distant rhythm is what moves this music into the arena of something special and indescribable - I cannot explain just how good it is, or why, or what the big deal is. Certainly the whole package with the mumbling and the weird electronics ticks all the boxes of conceptual art, surrealism, outsider art, and electronic fuckery that is interesting. But there's also something extremely anti-musical about it, and maybe this rhythm is what makes me feel this way (because it's music being used to oppose music, or something). And another thing is that I think this succeeds enormously as the conceptual/brainy/avant-garde theatre piece it was composed as, but it also succeeds without all of that attached to it - as a pure piece of sound to lose oneself in and draw inspiration from. Now I should probably save my raving for the LP version and focus on these bonus tracks, but the truth is, they've never done much for me. In fact, nothing of Ashley's apart from this and In Sara Mencken, Christ and Beethoveen there were men and women (which slays!) has ever interested me. The benefit of having this on CD is that you don't have to flip the record, this making it the perfect record to fall asleep to and inspire your own involuntary speech - except you have to program your CD player not to play tracks 2 or 3 which is a bit of a drag. I've listened to this many times, usually at low volume so the French whispering is just static, but now I've noticed it seems to keep repeating 'Qu'est-ce c'est tu caché?' or something like that, which even my high school French can tell is 'What have you hidden?' (or something like that). And maybe that's just made this even better.

Alva - 'Fair-Haired Guillotine' (Avant)

Source: Bought from Paul's in the late 90's for (I think) around $20, new (Japanese import)

Some records exist outside of any conceivable time-space continuum and Alva's two compact discs are as magnificent as a 7-11 Slurpee overturned on the saddle of a racehorse. Those weirdo Czech Tom and Jerry cartoons might have done better with Fair-Haired Guillotine's bouncier moments insteada whatever freejazz they had. But it's not all animated: there's some amateurish guitar strum, tin whistle and church organ that would creep out any impressionable tyke. These gals could be compared to any number of precedents: LAFMS, Futura records, Ralph label, Very Good Records -- but the comparison would be imperfect. Cause Alva's music is more baroque, more constructed, and recorded with more panâche than most others. For tracks as simply constructed as this - the instruments are clear, there are few mysteries as to what is generating the sounds - there is a world of strangeness in every second. They weren't the first band to paint a sky of looped mumbled vocals, renaissance violin, and melting honkytonk fumes but this is both hi-brow and no-brow at the same time. Obviously these ladies made quite an impression on me so maybe I've put them on some sort of pedestal, but the sounds can speak for themselves.