Selfies-Bad Blood EP (2014)

Between his slew of releases as Sick Thoughts and his growing pile of collabo-efforts, Drew Owen's got a work ethic to put the Krauts to shame. While Frau Merkel & co. specialize in financial neo-colonialism in southern Europe, though, Owen settles for milder pursuits like recording trashed noise. On this one, he's teamed up with a partner in crime from the D to dish out more goods.

This EP consists of six tracks that wouldn't be out of place as an installment in the legendary Live at the Roxy 1977 series. Ditching the psychotic, Iggy-on-crank Reatards vibe of Sick Thoughts, Selfies has an undeniably British feel. That consists of plodding drums; desultory, mildly distorted guitar; and a vocalist who sounds like he popped some Klonopin and a sixer of Carlsberg before walking into the studio on a rainy day. Song topics include "Police Dogs" at your door and fear of going outside.

None of the tracks blew me away, but there's potential here. If Selfies records again, they could grow up in public like the Adverts: Half the reason to start a punk band is to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.

Perfect for jerky, twitchy nights at the bar ogling your new crush while you impotently sip your over-priced beer and contemplate how many New Year's resolutions you've already broken.

Check out Selfies HERE.

Divided Minds-s/t tape (Doomtown Rex, 2013)

One of the reasons I started this blog was to scream and shout (textually, that is) in English about bands whose native language ain't said bastard tongue, in an effort to force you fuckers to check out non-Anglo bastard noise. So I'm always happy to rave about another Eastern European punk band,* and this time it's Zagreb, Croatia's Divided Minds.

DM traffiks in the same sorta mid-tempo slopcore we know and love from such past luminaries as Young Wasteners and The Observers. But both those bands just ripped off these guys or even The almighty Saints, you're saying to yourself. So what? Since Sham 69 started by stealing Mick Jones' best riffs, punk has meant nothing more than making good choices about who you wanna steal ideas from, musically or politically.

So Divided Minds does a good job of it! My favorite track is "Close to Death," which as far as I can tell is sung in Croat (I dunno which dialect, I understand that there's 3). Snazzy, mid-tempo punk much like the bands I mentioned above. Although "Black and Blank" is even better: neurotic, nervous, jerky punk that never slides into sheer ripoff runoff slop.

The cover looks like a cheap Discharge offprint, but don't let that deter you (or, depending on who you are, that's an endorsement). Check it out, THEN BUY IT, on bandcamp. Brought to ya care of Doomtown Records, Zagreb's best. DT Recs also dropped the Nuclear Spring 7", which you should be blasting as you get blackout drunk, RIGHT NOW. You haven't heard Nuclear Spring, you say? What are you, wicked, or something? Jeez.

*NOT a Warsaw Pact nation, thanks to lokalpatriot for the correction. All hail Comrade Tito!

J.T. IV-Cosmic Lightning LP (~1980s//2008)

 "it's kinda hard to write a song/when you've been inside these walls so long...."

This one's personal for a lot of reasons. J.T. IV grew up in my general part of the Chicagoland area (Roger's Park and Evanston), seems to have been a perpetually (and partially voluntarily) marginal member of the Chicago punk scene, and his songs generally evoke a sense of being so fucking neurotic and out of it that they don't fit into any given context, no matter how much one wants to say "Velvet Underground tribute" or "proto-whatever".

One of the frustrating things about the age of digital everything is that chronology and genealogies of influence are totally skewed: Listening to J.T. IV's stuff in the early '10s, it's easy to say "Oh yeah this dude sounds like Pink Reason" or whatever, but he was blasting out a unique blend of garage punk and lonely downer ballads back when "Anarchy in the U.K." was still a novelty. It's hard to imagine these songs in their original context, but my guess is that it doesn't matter much, since I'm pretty sure J.T. (short for John Timmis IV, I think) was doomed to be a loner while alive and now, post-mortem.

That makes it all the more important to keep this guy's work available, even if the originals had almost no impact upon first release, and the Drag City comp is out of print. "I'm Waiting for the CTA" is, you guessed it, a goofy, localized rave up of the Velvets' famous tune. "Death Trip" isn't a cover, but it manages to almost match the Stooges song for hard-edged intensity and the nihilistic glee you get when blasting it. Between them, these two songs set the tone for this compilation: a quintessentially late-'70s mix of glam, hard rock, proto-punk, and sheer outsider weirdness that doesn't fit any of our categories. J.T.'s voice is frail and quavering on most of these songs-especially the beautiful "In the Can/Out of the Can" sequence and "One Fine Day with the Karma Man." On "In the Can," we get a view of life from inside a mental institution, from a guy who woulda known. It's not just a slice of dementia, though: J.T. IV eloquently communicates the experience of total isolation and frustration, of knowing your friends are out there and care about you but won't be in touch for awhile. The best couplet is "When I finally get outta here/I'm gonna buy me a bottle of whiskey and a case of beer!'

As with most of my favorite records, I could rant about this one for way too long. I'd like to expostulate on a wonderfully paradoxical verse like "there are sometimes when I feel good/and other times when I feel fine/but I wouldn't even know it/if I didn't feel bad sometimes" for several paragraphs.  In the interests of getting you fuckers to actually listen to this guy's work, though, I'll shut up. In my opinion, J.T. IV's songs are some of the best, underappreciated bits of outsider punk ever made and you should all listen to this. My boy over at In the Zen Arcade posted this back in 2011, but I'm guessing mediafire killed the link so this is a justified post. If you don't like this compilation you shouldn't be reading this blog: It's that simple.

Tripped over a junky in the hallway....
Then, go BEG DRAG CITY RECORDS to re-release this compilation. I would happily buy 50 copies of any re-pressing and give away 48 of them to friends for conversion purposes.