Reatards-Get Real Stupid 7" (1997)

Most of you probably own this one, or at least have played it to death. Some benighted souls may, however, still be ignorant of the illuminated crudity that was Jay Reatard & his minions.

In any case, this is the Reatards' first, majestically moronic release. All the elements we love in the Reatards are here: Jay's trashed howl; pitter-pat paintbucket drumming; and two-note guitar rumbling that barely makes it to 3 chords the entire EP. It's nice when song titles adequately encompass the emotional range they express, and boy is that the case here. "You Ain't No Fun No More": Man, you ain't no fun no mo'! Other target-topics include fashion victims, Chuck Taylors, and so on.

Really there's no point in prattling on here. Either you love the Reatards or you haven't heard them. In the unlikely event that someone reading this actively dislikes the Reatards, that's cool, check back in when I post more cold wave.That's all for now. Get it here.

Then go see if Goner Records ever re-released this thing. I think they dropped a shitload of Reatards re-issues last year, so buy those if you can't find the 7" per se.

Rest in Peace: Jason Molina, 1973-2013

So Jason Molina died about a year or so ago (give or take 2 days) today. My guess would be that he'll be forgotten within 5 years, re-discovered in 20, forgotten in 22, and then lionized as a "long-forgotten" member of the canon of great American folk singers 40 or so years down the line.

I don't really give a shit if that prediction comes true or not. The point was that Molina's work was brilliant, it made sense, because so few people were interested in it. That's not to say that great art is only great because the few cognoscenti appreciate it or understand it (they don't, especially when they say they do). Rather, most people who are willing to look into the abyss of failure, misery, frustration and the inability to communicate that makes up about 75% (if not 85% and upward) of human existence will, simply, never be embraced by the rest of the human community.

Just watch the video of "Back on the Top" that I posted. While the whole production may seem a bit stilted-I won't argue with you there; fundamentally, these were just Midwestern dudes forced to make a music video-the lack of pretension is marvellous. Molina and his co-conspirators never did anything they didn't believe in. That sets them apart from about 95% of the competition. It also earned them reams of shit from the jackals who read and write for pissant rags catering to people too stupid to listen to music they love, instead of music that will get them plaudits at their university's Theater Department parties. I still remember listening to kids, back when I was a young'un, lambasting Songs:Ohia albums as somehow boring, overly melodramatic and soforth.

Looking back on those years, as an adult with real problems, all I can say is that, if anything, that was a mark of Songs:Ohia's enduring value as musicians, and Jason Molina's enduring brilliance as a lyricist. This was a band (in its many permutations) that simply made music you wanted to listen to (or didn't), and sang of problems most of us who stay alive long enough will experience. Completely and utterly humdrum, yes. Boring? Never.

Blahlbha, none of this has done anything to explain to you, the reader, why Jason Molina's memory should remain evergreen in yr youthful(?) mind. He wasn't a pathfinder, he wasn't audacious, he simply was what he was*: a depressed, even despondent, lonely, and very, very gifted guy from the Midwest of the USA in a time that did not value intelligence or earnestness, especially if it came from somewhere west of the Appalachians and east of the Sierra Nevadas.

In any case, here's one of Songs:Ohia's eternal classics, "Captain Badass." The song goes on long enough that I can imagine it accompanying most any human activity besides writing a thorough-going demolition of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. For the most part, though, it's simply a beautiful, spartan bit of Americana sung in the darkness.

Love him and the bands he led or not, I, for one, will miss Jason Molina and would like to bid him a fond farewell transmission on this, the first anniversary of his death.

*Of course, I never met the guy. People who in fact knew Molina are welcome to tell me I'm full of shit. I'm simply extrapolating based on lyrics, interviews, and what I've seen of the Songs: Ohia/Magnolia Electric Co. live footage.

Michael Wohl-Eight Pieces for Solo Guitar

This is the sorta album you listen to alone, with a bottle of booze and the stillness of the night to keep you company. Not because it's the sort of misanthropic swill I love so much, but 'cause it's actually worth paying attention to. Occasionally I like to rant about how no one truly listens to music anymore (read my polemic about the last Beach House LP for more info on that front), but instead just goes for a given sound. They then download any and every example of said sound-as imparted to them through SoundCloud or LastFM or whatever website you use to steal music and scam on girls or boys-without ever hearing that noise blurbing outta yr speakers for something other than another example of whatever Pitchfork told you is good shit this week.

Which of course I'm guilty of, so fuck off. The point is that these eight meandering, rambling tunes are meant to be heard. Which is to say, if you give them a cursory listen, everything will sound the same. That's sort of the point, with any band or musician I can think of, from Arvo Part to Lou Reed's best. I couldn't begin to dissect this cassette tape's worth of long-time-rambling blues musicologically, but I'll give you some reasons your equally musically-illiterate ass should like it:
1) There's music for every mood, for every time of day, on here, and Wohl's always been good at writing songs to the tune of Old Man Time, that is to say, the witching hour when shit's weird, there ain't many people around, and you can only focus on one or two things. One of those should be "Poor Boy Long Way from Home Blues," which manages to be complex without ever being boring (if you don't understand that statement, go listen to any Led Zeppelin LP and ask yourself if you felt a single, solitary organic emotion the whole time except sheer disgust at any and all forms of arrogance and misogyny. If you did, you're either 1)a bigger crank and misanthrope than I am, or 2) a lunatic, so get back to listening to this tape!).

2) The "come for the nighttime melancholia, stay for the morning after effect": As best displayed on "Rainin' Sideways". While I'm a cranky jerkoff on the best of days and far worse typically, Wohl's plucking style has forced even me to consider that there may in fact be rays of sunshine poking through the incipient autumnal gloom. Even more impressively, he conveys this plucky mood without words: the best instrumentalists say more without speaking than most singers can get across their whole career.

3) This is just good Americana, kiddies. "Americana" is a loaded term, given that it can include everything from Abner Jay to, well, this.* Americana is also a dying genre, these days: for the most part, assholes buy collections like the Anthology of American Folk Music out of some consumerist sense of obligation ("ugghh my RECORD COLLECTION isn't COMPLETE without this ugghhh) than 'cause they actually wanna hear weird shit from the American backwoods ca. 1920. Well, I happen to dig all that weird caterwaulin', and this dood (Wohl, that is) is one of the only people trying to add something new to the genre (expansive as it is). "Long After We Are Dead" is a fucking great guitar piece, which also strikes a uniquely American chord**: this is music only statiunitese***, white or black, could make, and which we apparently are still decent at playing despite all the dogshit we've been spewing out onto the music scene since Skip James died and Lou Reed, god rest his soul, got clean.

But don't take my word for it, go listen to it, then buy a copy of the tapes before you can't, sucker! Physical copies of the tape come with sweet quotes from revered old American heroes such as John Fahey and Barbeque Bob, while also being way cooler than the mp3 files you're streaming through bandcamp. Party on, Blind Willie McTell; party on, Didier Hebert.

*Truth be told, I love "I'm A Good 'Ole Rebel," moral qualms aside. If any of you want to wade into the historical-ethical-political quicksand on this one, you're welcome to try. Just email me.
**All due respect to denizens of Latin America, the Caribbean, and Canada for equating "American" with "music produced in the nation-state of the U.S.A."
***Further deepening the waters of political correct bullshit, I'm using this term because English doesn't have an apposite term to denote people and things from the U.S. as opposed to the rest of the Western Hemisphere.

Michael Wohl-Moonfeeder/Songs of Impermanence 7" (2013)

 As the Valdarno heats up, a nocturnal lifestyle is becoming more and more appealing: the daytime here is so hot it's like walking into an oven when I go out to buy a beer, so the day's become night and nighttime, like Fogerty said, is the right time.

Just in time for the Tuscan summer comes this bit of spartan folk from Seattle. As on Wohl's 2012 demo, this is barebones, standalone guitar music. In many ways, the demo was a tribute  to the blues and Americana influences that Wohl proudly wears on his sleeve. These two songs, however, find him starting to work out his own idiom within that tradition. His playing is thoroughly indebted to Fahey, still, but "Moonfeeder" is more measured than Fahey's spry, even effusive, plucking. The guitar is almost melancholic at times, without being heavy-handed. Wohl ends the tune with a flourish of upbeat plucking, though; an overnight train journey and not an all-night bender, perhaps, is the setting.
"Song of Impermanence" sounds like a tighter, more coherent reworking of the loose, improvised "Melatonin Blues," my favorite tune from the 2012 demo. The piece is a bit of lonesome midnight solitude crafted in a jaunty form. Around 4:21 the song soars off into ethereal heights, closing on a note of perfect, spacy elegance.

The musos among my readers will enjoy this two-song EP for the masterful guitarwork. The rest of us can get into it for the mood. Either way, give this a spin next time it's 5 am and you're too wired to sleep. Also, the cover is gorgeous and it's fun staring at it when you're stoned stupid.

Physical copies of the EP will be available in August, stay tuned. 

The Chaw-LP (2012)

Well, modesty certainly ain't The Chaw's strong point: their blurb on bandcamp compares their debut's ambiance to Morricone's spaghetti westerns, and their guitar sound to Dick Dale. Usually, I'd tell you a band with that much hubris is completely full of shit. I'm willing to make an exception to that claim, though, upon first listen to The Chaw's debut LP. It's probably that arrogance and swagger that makes this LP memorable. Humility and self-deprecation are attributes best suited to scumbag punks (I should know, I've been one most of my life). The best rock 'n' roll, if it's not mired in self-hatred (re: most of my favorite bands), forces you to pay attention to it with the most outrageous, brash sounds possible.

Enter The Chaw. I'm assuming these guys have been playing for years: this record is a crystal clear statement from the opening instrumental "Campaigning Man" straight through to "I With You," the groove-infested slow burner that closes the album. The Chaw had a vision, and went for it. Then they pulled it off, which is much harder to do. Alex Zhang Hungtai, the mastermind behind Dirty Beaches, one of my favorite band of the last few years, claims that his songs are driven by a sound, around which he constructs a story. The Chaw may not feature the same character on every song, but they're working through the same novel. It's a picaresque adventure story, probably set in the American West. But not the historical American West, in which people died of cholera more often than shoot outs; it's the romanticized West that has fuelled a lot of great music in recent years, such as Nick Cave & Warren Ellis' soundtracks.

As it happens, The Chaw's singer has done a fantastic job of replicating Cave's deep, histrionic yowl. The band as a whole has stolen a page or two from the Grinderman LP, I'm guessing. Get the picture? No? Let me walk you through a song, "Everything Wrong." Melodramatic, Count Dracula organ notes getcha going, followed by a freaked out, clean guitar that ramps up the melodrama; throughout, Mr. Could-be-Nick-Cave howls, shouts, and fundamentally boasts his way through the tune. The LP as a whole, as I said above, tells a story, but each chapter/song is unique. I have to conclude that The Chaw has (almost) earned the right to compare themselves to Mssrs Dale and Morricone.

Listen to the LP here. The next time I start a bar fight in Salinas, California, I'll ask if the bartender to throw this record on, then hit him with a chair if they don't have this LP. Ha! Look for this one on my Top LPs of 2012 List.

Rock 'n' Roll Cannibals-Blood and Pomade LP (2012)

Before I get to the review proper, let me say a few things about rockabilly.

First of all, greasers are badasses and there's a part of me that will always admire them. Second, this subculture is now pushing seventy, so I can safely say that we can expect nothing new from a rockabilly band. Third of all, that psychobilly craze of the early '00s was fucking stupid (anyone remember the Necromantix? That's too bad).

Anyway, Charlottesville, Virginia's Rock 'n' Roll Cannibals are at the top of the heap as far as current rockabilly goes. I never really got into psychobilly (Cramps excepted), so I'm happy that the Cannibals keep it pretty traditional on their first outing.  Scratchy, twangy guitar and dirt-simple drumming anchor the singerr, who can really belt it out, clearly shooting for Carl Perkins or Screamin' Jay Hawkins. Listening closely, you can learn a lot from the lyrics: these lessons include the best recipe for cooking babies with (parmesan cheese and spaghetti are good, apparently). "That voodoo" is probably the best song, instrumentally, although the opener gives it a run for its money.

I have to be in a very specific mood to listen to rockabilly. This mood comes upon me about twice a year, so I can't say I'll be listening to the Cannibals much, but when I do have said mood, they'll be on the turntable.

Listen to it here. Brought to you by Mellow Riot.