Royal Headache-July 2010 Tour CS (2010)

Well, if you haven't heard of Royal Headache by now you probably hate rock 'n' roll, and may also have no soul. Civilians (i.e. the rest of the world) have gotten real into these guys in the last two years, and I wish 'em all the best. This 2010 set, recorded on tour in Newcastle and Brisbane, contains 6 tracks that would make it onto the self-titled 2011 LP and one that didn't, "Little Star."

It opens with a scratchy, infectious guitar riff before the band blasts into its trademark sound: sharp, snazzy punk with Australia's answer to O.V. Wright on vocals. I wish they included it on the LP, since it's as passionate and frantic as every other song I've heard by RH. The rest of the set rushes by, with some of Shogun's witty repartee v. hecklers: the songs aren't as polished as they are on the LP, but they sound just as good blurry as they did with slick(er) production. The recording quality isn't all that clear, but it's still pretty damn good for a basement or bar show.

Basically, if you love Royal Headache, this will tide you over until they drop a new record. I hope that's very soon, since my friends are getting tired of me hyping this band.

"I know that you don't want me, baby...." The tape is long out of print, but the band just re-pressed the LP, so go buy that from them at bandcamp or via their own website.  In full disclosure, I stole this one from I Am the Least Machiavellian blog, which you should be following if you aren't already.

Eternal Souncheck Distro

So Matt from Kitchen's Floor/Look Pond/et. al. started a pretty cool distro, Eternal Soundcheck. Among many other cool things you can find over there, he's got copies of the Royal Headache LP, the Meat Thump EP, and a whole buncha other hot shit you should cop like a dysentery victim cops iodine.

Don't question that metaphor, just Check out Eternal Soundcheck!

Makeout Creek-No Peace Forever EP (2012)

The Aussies have been carrying the torch for quality weirdo music in a big way lately: Royal Headache, Kitchen's Floor, Cured Pink, Meat Thump, Wonderfuls, Rat King, and now Makeout Creek. Dunno what it is about the Antipodes but whatever these fuckers have been drinking, someone oughta ship a case of it to the States, pronto!

Lester Bangs said in a Creem article back in ~1973 that, given the ossified nature of the music industry and fans' expectations of their heroes, the only places that were gonna produce any music worth a damn would be on the margins. I dunno shit about Australian culture but it's hard to get more isolated than the Land Down Under, geographically speaking anyway, and as far as I can tell it's done nuthin' but good for the music.

Anyways, Makeout Creek is firmly in the ultra-lofi tradition sketched out by brilliantly minimalist records like X (Australian, duh)'s "Live at the Civic, 1979" LP and Kitchen's Floor's Too Dead to Notice EP. If these chuckleheads didn't record live straight into a boombox, they did a good job of making a real studio sound like that. Sometimes that just sounds like coy affect, but on this EP it makes it that much more fun. The singer sounds like he's yelping to himself down in a fucking echo chamber somewhere under your mother's basement, the guitar thrashes along in its own idiosyncratically enjoyable groove, and I'm pretty sure the drummer only owns a hi-hat, snare drum and kick drum. Mo Tucker filtered through Beat Happening, dontchaknow.

I can't make out any of the lyrics except for scattered snippets, but I'm sure I'd agree with the charmingly snide commentary issued from abovesaid echo chamber. The songs sorta run together, granted. That can result in one of two conclusions: that the record is a muddlesome piecea shit, or that the band is going for a unified sound, and achieves it. It has a dirty, gutteral vibe that manages to avoid sounding contrived. That's quite the feat in this age of instant-access internet horseshit. Makeout Creek will be the soundtrack next time I decide to piss off my room mates with, and I quote, "that horrible American noise you love!" (I'm living in Italy so Anglo culture has a bloblike sameness to them, I think).

Listen to it! Then buy it!

Look! Pond-CS (2005)

When I was younger, my friends and I enjoyed drinking 40 ounces of malt liquor and stealing bicycles. We finished off many a night by riding said bicycles into the lagoon and/or lake near our neighborhood and then smoking a blunt to commemorate our victory over fratboys and bike owners in general. Most of us were unemployed during this particular period, so owning a bike constituted a major strike against you in the adolescent class war being waged at the time. In print, this sounds childish, churlish, and any other manner of demeaning adjectives you can throw at it. It was. So fucking what?

Around the same time, Matt Kennedy of Kitchen's Floor fame and other n'er do-wells were recording this four-track bit of impotent rage out in the suburbs of Brisbane. It's a shame I wasn't on the Interwebs more back then 'cause this woulda been the perfect soundtrack to such inspired stupidity as described above. Mostly what I was listening to back then was a truly perverted mixture of Wu-Tang, Mars, and Bad Brains. Go figure.

What you get here is four tracks of sometimes-angry, mostly spiteful noise that always sounds a bit too intelligent and/or well-written to be the slice of hatred that it masquerades as. Of course, Matt went on to do Kitchen's Floor, which fleshes out a lot of the promise buried away beneath piles of synth goop and puerile anger here. But fuck it: these are four noise tracks I can happily blast at midnight while guzzling cheap red wine and feel completely happy with. Most noise I was listening to around 8 years ago ain't got that goin' for it.

Matt's such a nice guy he's posted the Look! Pond corpus for free download here.

A Sop to the Masses, or, Watch this:

Stumbled home blitzed outta my mind and was pleasantly surprised to find two videos in my email. So while I count up enough quarters to go buy more beer, y'all should check out these flicks, new Kent State video and a documentary of the first Deadshits Festival in Brisbane:

Aaaaaannndddd....Kent State!:

Rat King-Godsend LP (2013)

Big, ballsy blues scuzz noise that overfloweth with all the subtlety of an empty Heineken bottle to the face. Newcastle's Rat King slops together the cretinish sleaze of Birthday Party-era Nick Cave, the off-tone guitar of a No Wave band, and bass lines worthy of Prince Far-I to make something all their own. That mangled description fits the writhing, crawling, obscenely sexual obviousness of the music, I think.

With song titles like "Big Clitty City" and "Tramp Stamp," you can't lose (or absolutely will, depending on who you are). You keep waiting for Rat King's slow-churn blooz stomp to explode into punk firecrackers, but they just keep lurching along through the used condoms and empty bottles littering yr room after a night spent blitzed on Ecstasy and red wine with your boy-and-or-girlfriend. The singer just barely pulls off the chest thumping machismo required of this sorta rock 'n' roll, sorta the way that drunk at the bar in Hollywood managed to convince you he slept with a member of the Go-Gos back in '79, but only 'cause he's got a Germs burn and you've been cadging drinks off him all night. Whole thing reminds me of the much-missed, much-hated Kickboy Face.

Oh, yeah, the moosick. The bass sound is fucking huge and all over the place, closer to the sorta dub I blast when I'm baking my brain into a cake than minimal, retarded Dee Dee Ramone licks. The guitarist shoots off staccato riffs that twinkle as broken glass in the gutter, and the drums pound away like your hangover tomorrow morning.

Tired of all the metaphors and analogies? Ok, lemme tell ya a story, kiddies, that this album brings to mind. Well, no, it's too shameful to relate in all its detail. Suffice to say it involves this Drug Punk, too much booze, and his significant other in a hostel bathroom in Europe. 'Nuff said, Rat King is just that grimy.

Keep leering at that cutie at the other end of the bar, then go buy this LP at Rat King's bandcamp page. Hurry up, they only pressed 100 of these fuckers so I'm guessing it comes with sexual tips straight from the band isself. Rock out, fuck out, pass out, folks.

Kitchen's Floor-Live at Real Bad

Well, my head feels as empty as a mollusk that's just been scooped out for tonight's dinner, due to a series of bad recreational choices this weekend. So I figured I should finally get around to reviewing the latest by one of my faves, Kitchen's Floor. And of course they don't disappoint, with 8 tracks of deadpan, ramshackle pop and slop.

This was recorded December 22 at Real Bad, a preemo-primo DIY center in Brisbane. Taking the tenor of 2012's "Bitter Defeat" to its logical extreme, this is a bare-bones live set featuring nothing but Matt Kennedy's sparse guitar, deadpan holler, and occasional audience ambiance. The recording quality's excellent for a live set, which lets you actually make out some of Kennedy's words for a change. That's cool, 'cause I've always loved the spirit of Kennedy's lyrics but usually can't understand a fucking thing. Thus, my new favorite verse of recent years is the chorus from "Down": "the wine has done its job/finally I won't think about this...." This is matched only by the opening couplet from "116," "The walls are rotting/and all my friends are dead...."

Kennedy said in a recent interview that he doesn't consider any version of KF tunes definitive, and it's weird hearing savage stompers like "Downed It" and "Regrets" stripped down to their bare skeleton. At first I only liked about half the set because of this gulf. Now I listen to this thing to get me outta bed in the morning. If anything, Kennedy's voice gains in power when it's not buried in layers of jangle rock; he belts out his tales of decay and boozy abandon in a flat, hoarse, declarative bark. No affectation, no tricks, no love from you. Ah hahaha.

Buy the CDR from Breakdance the Dawn. Or do yr bit for the Brisbane scene by downloading it from KF's bandcamp! All proceeds go to benefit Real Bad.

Interview: Kitchen's Floor

"I was happy/I was happy/I was happy..." an Interview with Matt Kennedy of Kitchen's Floor

Brisbane, Australia's Kitchen's Floor has been dishing out melancholic downer pop for several years now. Matt Kennedy is the founder and core of the band. He was gracious enough to respond to some interview questions via email last week, and here are the answers.

 The phrasing and arrangement of the questions ain't what I'd like it to be; I had a vicious headcold when putting them together. Cheers to Matt for the interview, and supplying the photos.

DrugPunk [DP]: Previous interviewers have ascribed the Kitchen’s Floor aesthetic of domestic decay, in part, to the city of Brisbane. Do you agree with that? What’s Brisbane like, and how long have you lived there?

Matt Kennedy [MK]: Sure I agree with that.  I’ve lived in Brisbane my whole life apart from my high school years which I spent on the Gold Coast, a horrible tourist beach town an hour’s drive south.  I didn’t live near the beach though, I lived next to the highway.  Right now it’s summer and Brisbane is very hot and humid, things are very sweaty.  My house is old, made of wood and open to the elements so every year around this time there is an insect invasion.  Spiders, flies, cockroaches, and a lot of weird bugs that I don’t know what they are.  During winter we get mice, but I prefer the insects to the mice.  Brisbane has some great bands happening right now.  Bands like Blank Realm, The Wonderfuls, Scraps, Cured Pink, Sewers, Girls Girls Girls, Sky Needle, Fig. are ruling it.  Brisbane is also the HQ of Breakdance The Dawn, possibly the greatest CDR/Tape label in the world.   

DP: Did you have a clear sense of what you wanted Kitchen’s Floor to sound like heading into the project?

MK: I Just wanted to write catchy pop songs with junkyard instruments.

DP: How did your recent Australian tour go? Any highlights?

MK: It was heaps of fun.  We played Maggotfest in Melbourne[,] which was crazy, usually Melbourne audiences are restrained but that whole show was wild.  The next day we drove an hour north and played a small festival called ‘Paddock Bash’.  It was on a farm in the middle of nowhere and was amazing.  One of my favourite memories of this year would be during that afternoon while taking a piss in the porta-loo, Mad Nanna had just started their set in the paddock and I felt very content.  For the Newcastle and Sydney shows we went down with Sewers, one of the best new bands in Brisbane, and that was pretty darn good too.  I needed a week alone in the dark to recover after that trip.      

DP: As an outsider who’s never been to Australia, it seems/sounds like a lot of the cities-Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne-have been experiencing a music boom in the last few years. Royal Heache, KF, Naked on the Vague, etc. –Why?

MK: I don’t really know why, it’s cool though.

DP: Joe Strummer once said in an interview that “I find creativity hinges on being well pissed.” How does a KF song get written, typically?

MK: With an acoustic guitar in my room, with or without alcohol but mostly with.  Usually late at night.

DP: KF toured the States last year-how did that go, and what did you think of the US?

MK: I was expecting things to be similar since we’re seen as a very Americanized country but the US is very different to Australia.  Much more heavy.  We did a big circle of your amazing country in a van over a month, something like 25 shows.  Met a lot of great people but it’s a bit hard to sum up the whole experience briefly.  Columbus was a highlight for me, we played with Psychedelic Horseshit and it was damn awesome.   

DP: One of the things that strikes me about your music is how many versions you’ll do of the same song, for example, how different the songs on “Too Dead to Notice” sound compared to the studio versions. Why this constant re-tooling of previously recorded songs?

MK: I like experimenting with the arrangements of the songs and since the lineup is always changing then different people being involved can make the songs sound different.  No particular recording sounds ‘definitive’ to me.

DP: What can we we expect from KF in the future? The circumstances surrounding the “Bitter Defeat” material were pretty unique, but do you think you’ll continue with the sound you and Andrew McLellan and Bobby Bot developed for this EP?   

MK: Probably not, I’ll keep playing with them both in the future but I don’t really know what things will sound like.  Maybe more instrumental stuff? Maybe the next record will be ridiculous synth punk? Adult contemporary? I have no idea.

DP: What’s the deal with “Pasta”? It sounds like a Jim Shepherd outtake, and it’s a real departure from you previous KF songs….

MK: That’s a track I recorded in 2006, it pre-dates Kitchen’s Floor by a year.  It’s myself playing around with a 4 track tape recorder, guitar and amp feedback.  I don’t mind it, it makes an interesting ‘bonus download’ for the Bitter Defeat single. 

DP: Both LPs close out with numerical songs, “Twenty-two” and “Twenty-four.” Are they summaries of your situation at the time?  

MK: Those were my ages at the time when I wrote them.  I still haven’t written ‘Twenty-Six’ yet but hopefully it will come about before I’m obligated to write ‘Twenty-Seven’.

DP: In one interview I’ve read, you mentioned having a good sense that there’s a whole lot you want to do artistically before turning 30. Are you planning on musical retirement once your twenties are out? Where do you see yourself in the next five years?

MK: Age doesn’t matter with music, I’ll just keep going until I run out of ideas or motivation.

DP: What are you up to when not recording or playing out? Do you work a shitty day job or make a farce of Uni, like the rest of us?

MK: I haven’t worked much at all this year.  I have an empty wallet to prove it.  I do some volunteer stuff at Brisbane community radio station 4ZZZ, and I host my own weekly radio show ‘Eternal Soundcheck’ which focuses solely on Australian music.  Currently I’m doing a course in small business, so hopefully that leads to some interesting things in the future.  I’m planning to start my own record label/distro in 2013.

 

DP: You seem like a guy who enjoys a drink. What’s your favorite kind of drunk? Beer, wine, other….?

MK: Nothing beats beer but I do drink a fair share of cheap red wine.  It really depends on my money situation.  If I have money to waste then gin is my drink.  Lately I’ve been limiting myself, I haven’t had a drink in a week and I feel pretty good about that.   I’m not the best drunk in the world so some clarity every now and then is delightful.      

 DP: Your songs remind me of some of Lou Reed’s work, especially his “Berlin” era material: you share with him the ability to paint scenes of bleakness and squalor, without necessarily celebrating self-destruction.  Are there any influences on your lyrical style? You’ve said previously that what you’re expressing is the weird sadness of life….

MK: Lyrics are intentionally brief and repetitive.  I try to use strong yet vague words, but everything still has to have a personal meaning for me because I won’t accept shallow songs.

DP: Any closing words or further musical recommendations from Australia for us Yankees?

MK: My favourite Australian bands this year have been The Wonderfuls, Lower Plenty, Satanic Rockers, Nun, Fig., Housewives, Rites Wild, Bitch Prefect, Holy Balm, Ghastly Spats, Raw Prawn, The Native Cats, Ruined Fortune Band, The Lost Domain, Sky Needle, Straightjacket Nation, Primitive Motion, Muura, Superstar, Legendary Hearts, Total Control, Angel Eyes, Extrafoxx, Mad Nanna and a few more I’m forgetting.  All I would consider worthy of the time of your readers.

You can listen to KF albums, and buy the ones still in print, on their bandcamp page.

Kitchen's Floor-Bitter Defeat 7" EP (2012)

"All his days are about the same. He wakes up at 11 or 12, watches TV, reads the paper, looks out the front door...usually he falls asleep about 2 am. He likes to sleep. Sometimes he has good dreams."-Characters in Richard Linklater's Slackers

I took awhile to review this EP because it's my favorite record of the year, and it's taken awhile to think it through to some sort of clarity. That doesn't mean I have anything intelligent to say about it, but it does mean I've digested Kitchen's Floor's latest in a way I haven't with most records I review for this pissant blog. This thing matters, and that's why this review is so long.

 All of Kitchen's Floor's previous material is condensed, fragmentary, and complete within its narrow confines in a way that's rare in pop music: most of Matt Kennedy's songs are over in a minute and a half. "Lander," for example, the standout track from Loneliness is a Dirty Mattress, flys by in 1:38. And it has all best elements of pop music with a heart: a ragged, catchy guitar line; hollered, impassioned choruses that sound apathetically desperate; and the rare good sense to cut short instead of dawdling too long. Kennedy's lyrics are almost autistic in their terse refusal to explain a situation, and it's this refusal to draw out an emotion that makes them so fucking good at capturing just the sort of frustration you're feeling when stumbling around, blackout drunk, alone and forsaken, at 3 am in a foreign town.

The point of all this is that the Bitter Defeat EP came as a surprise and a departure from its predecessors. First of all, the songs here unfold and develop instead of rushing past you. Each one shows a sense of careful construction and nuanced phrasing that was missing, or displayed differently, on previous KF releases. Kennedy draws on a different pool of musicians for almost every release, and this one finds him drafting fellow Brisbane scene vets Bobby Bot on drums and Andrew McLellan of Cured Pink on organ. The alternate versions of "Bitter Defeat" and "Down" were slated as the A-sides, before the death of Brendon Annesley (of Negative Guest List 'zine and Meat Thump fame) threw a lot of people I respect into a tailspin. Kennedy re-configured these two songs as a purgative; in a recent interview, he said that "It's more depressive [than the 2011 LP, Look Forward to Nothing] as it was recorded during the worst period of my life."

The numb paralysis and horrible inertia of learning that someone you love is dead saturates this record. Watch the video for "Bitter Defeat" to understand what I mean. The video was shot at 116 in Paddington, the site of innumerable KF shows and the scene for their best music videos; the genteel squalor was just right for their previous music. On "Bitter Defeat," it's the site of a wake: in the first shot of the band, Kennedy and McLellan resolutely focus on their instruments, ignoring the camera. Kennedy stumbles around the backyard, guzzling cheap wine. Bobby Bot looks off into the distance, showing not a trace of emotion, pounding away a funereal beat. Kennedy slowly backwalks away from the camera, staring the viewer down; McLellan twitches and slams into mattresses, the only trace of life in him besides his organ notes. The video is a study in the sort of crippling apathy that can lead to moments of genius, and I'll go out on a limb and call this EP that. As the video ends, Kennedy sits alone, in near-dark, drinking a beer. He may be defeated, but he still woke up the next morning and wrote this song. What have you (what have I) done that's better than that?

 But what about the music, asshole? Is what yr sayin'. The truncated garage glory of previous KF material is gone, replaced by a somber marching beat and death-dirge organ. Kennedy has always sounded apathetic, in an endearing way; now, he sounds like an animate corpse. Sometimes, after a particularly rough week, people at work ask me how I'm doing; the answer is a hollow croak, "I'm fine," that means exactly the opposite of those words. Kennedy's stiff, passionless delivery does the same job. "It's cold....in bitter defeat.....the window...is open...": the pacing is as slow as the ellipses in between those words.
I got this record without reading reviews, and was expecting rambunctious jangle pop; it got me so depressed I downed a bunch of Xanax, drank two bottles of wine, and spent the rest of the evening listening to the EP over and over again. Best evening of the last three months, kiddies. "Down" is almost identical structurally and instrumentally to "Bitter Defeat." Over a more articulate organ and plodding drums, Kennedy dictates the glacial inability to act that I think is pretty fucking common these days, personal problems aside: "Looking down at the fucking ground/I'm sick of looking down this street/I have nothing to give/and they won't even think about me..."

The alternate versions of "Bitter Defeat" and "Down," as a much more cogent and intelligent review, quoted above, notes, are like the dawn of day after the utter night of the A-sides: they're just as bleak and bitter as the first versions, but there's a real sense of hope that pierces through the gloom. In some ways, they're better songs: more dynamic, more expressive. Listen to them in conjunction with the A-sides, though, and they're a perfect complement. "Pasta" is a self-indulgent slice of noise I can only listen to while bicycling; it's a let down after the catharsis of the first four songs.

Listen to the EP here. Fundamentally, a lot of the reason I love Kitchen's Floor, and especially this EP, involves what probably killed Annesley, Bangs, and far too many of the people whose writing or music I admire the most. It expresses the bitter inertia that afflicts us all from time to time. I'm usually pretty disgusted with myself, how I live my life, and my own inability to find anything that interests me enough to get out of bed in the morning. But Kennedy's work hints at what keeps me going: that maybe, despite everything, I have something to share with the rest of you. I dunno, find out for yourself. And if you hate it? If you think that what I just wrote is a grey puddle of self-indulgent shit? Well, fuck off and do it yerself! That's the logic in the "Slacker" lines I quoted as an introduction. If you feel crippled by the utter meaningless of life, no one's gonna start something new for you. Get off your ass and make things happen, chucklehead. Soon it might be too late.

Meat Thump-Box of Wine/Feel Good 7" (2012)

It's hard to listen to this EP without taking it as an epitaph for Brendon Annesley, the much-missed dood behind Negative Guest List, and Meat Thump's guitarist and vocalist. If his name means nothing to you, then good: you can listen to this record on its own terms, instead of imposing mourning on it.

Granted, these two offerings of downed-out, fucked up sloprock are delivered from the far end of a seven-day bender. But, as with the best downer blues in the Peter Laughner tradition, there's a laugh drifting up from underneath the wine, lice, and decay: On "Box of Wine," Annesley drawls out a tale of booze-driven infidelity that is downright funny (My favorite lines are: "Gonna tell my woman/dontcha weep, no dontcha whine" and "Don't know why I'm oh so sorry/for my cheating ways/it was my double box and dick to blame"). Amdist the murky clatter and patter, there are stray guitar riffs of genius, and the tambourine even evinces signs of life.
"Feels Good" opens with a guitar riff that Meat Thump probably lifted wholesale from a Laughner or Rocket from the Tombs outtake. Over a band that had already perfected the art of sounding like it's falling apart while never missing a note, Annesley asks himself the question I contemplate every time the alarm clock goes off: "It doesn't feel good...why do I do it?" Annesley was a great writer, as anyone who's read the NGL 'zine knows; he also had a compelling singing voice.

I won't insult Annesley or any of the people associated with Meat Thump/NGL by saying I understand this record, but I will say that it's a great slab of rock 'n' roll, played just how it was meant to be played: drunk, clever, and with a heaping dose of humor. I only wish Annesley had stuck around long enough to build on its great promise.

Listen to Meat Thump, and buy the record, here. Hurry up, only 500 were pressed. It'll be on my Best of 2012 list, for sure.

Nite Fields-Vacation 7" (2012)

I've never been to Brisbane, Australia, but the welter of hot new bands from there makes me wanna start selling coke so I could afford a trip: Kitchen's Floor, Meat Thump, Cured Pink, and, in a different register, Nite Fields.

Whereas most Brisbane bands I've heard lately specialize in charmingly ramshackle "Downer Pop" (Matt Kennedy's words), Nite Fields is another trip altogether. Following on their split with Happy New Year,  this two-song EP finds Nite Fields refining and deepening the atmospheric glum rock found therein.

"Vacations" opens with a snare lick that tips its hat to the opening of "Decades," before laying down an insistent guitar note that slowly builds into a swirling, hypnotic post-punk revel. The synth and drums layer each other to create dense cloud of gloom, with the singer maintaining the one-foot-in-the-grave monotone on "Come Down." This would be a great opener or closer to a darkwave night at yr local bar.

"Hell/Happy" is more downed out and somber. Ethereal might be the right adjective here: synth and cymbals swirl in and out of focus while the guitar and bass pluck away in an inobtrusive way. The whole thing makes you feel like you just ate a few Xanax and wandered into a fogbank.

I'll add Nite Fields to my list of reasons why the Brisbane/Melbourne/Sydney arc is where it's at these days, musically. Listen to the EP here. If you're Down Under, catch 'em at the Lost Race festival November 17; you can get tickets from the Lost Race site.

The Kremlings-s/t EP (2012)

The cover art features the five bandmembers as sperm. The genre which pops up when I play this EP on Itunes is "lazy punk." It's easy to tell what's going on with The Kremlings.

Opening with a hefty wash of guitar sludge and non-lingual moaning, "Abort Clusters of Sprawling Sapiens" is 1-2, 1-2-3-4 garage punk. "See in a Bedlam" could pass as a Ramones tune, with heavier guitar. In fact, the guitarist of the Kremlings may be a better guitarist than Johnny Ramone.I'm pretty sure it was tailormade to skateboard to. "Know Nothings" wallows in grunge-esque sludgy misery, with the singer mewling and whining over a ponderous beat.

You'll dig the Krelmings if you like guitarcentric, straightforward rock 'n' roll. Where's my skateboard?

Listen to the Kremlings here.

Kitchen's Floor-Orbit/Regrets 7" (2010)

I haven't showered in days and I can't recall what kind of or which drugs I've been doing for the last four days, so it seems like it's appropriate to feature Kitchen's Floor, finally, on Drug Punk.

KF is one of my favorite recent bands, combining an ear for harmonies with an offhandedly snarling, apathetic aesthetic. This, their debut EP, is ramshackle even by Matt Kennedy standards: three tracks of dirtbag, ultra-lo fi garage misery. The drummer sounds like Mo Tucker on percosets, Kennedy howls, hollers, and shouts over the guitar squall, and yr misery has its new favorite company.
"Still Night" is the surprise here: a slightly psychedelic, plodding concoction much slower than most KF songs, it really sticks in yr head. HERE.

Turn this on, drug out, and remember that loneliness is a dirty matress. This EP is long out of print, but you can still pick up copies of their two LPs at Siltbreeze Records.

Happy New Year/Nite Fields split 7" (2012)

Bridging my current fixation on dreampop (guilty pleasure of the last two months 'round here has been the new Beach House LP) and my ongoing obsession with all things -wave, this split EP throws up two tracks of effects-laden dreaminess suitable for those who enjoy thinking about doom 'n' gloom gothiness when getting fucked up.

Happy New Year's "High Sea" opens with pensive, (melo)dramatic piano and distant, echoing gongs. The singer intones from a distance, her words lost on misty trails of cold ruin as the musicians hammer home a Gothic, lost-on-the-moors ambiance fitting for smoking a shit ton of weed and watching "Game of Thrones" with the sound off, to better absord Happy New Year. Y'know, wizards and death and swords 'n' shit.

Nite Fields' "Come Down" picks up where Happy New Year left off; the song picks up after the swords 'n' dragons battle to dwell on a ruined, haunted landscape. The drums are propulsive but heavily treated with echo, the singer sounds like he's singing from a ship passing in the night, his words vanishing into the ether.

Last night I tripped over some goth girl's 12-inch black docs while walking out of a bar-it seems like goth is back in a big way in Portland, so all you ultra-cool West Coast kids, be sure to pick up this piece of Australian glumrock, pronto.

You can do so here, courtesy of Lost Race Records. Listen to it before ya buy it, over at soundcloud.

Royal Headache-s/t LP (2011)

"I was a teenage zombie..." pt. 2

...later on that same winter, there was a party at the Black Hole, a filthy apartment in one of Chicago's low-rent districts, with piss-stained couches, empty beer cans everywhere, and massive Confederate flags on display.

I spent much of this party in the corner guzzling Milwaukee's Beast with the anarchapunk girl mentioned in the last post. Shit was goin' good. We talked about Fleas & Lice and vegan recipes for like an hour....ah, youth, eh?

At some point, we adjourned to the beach, because it was obviously a great idea to hang out on the lake at 3 AM in the dead of winter. While the rest of our friends tried to get a joint going in defiance of the wind, I made a move. Total repulsion. "Whoah, what the fuck are you doing?" "Uh...I dunno..." "I can't do this." "Why not?" "Because I have to go on the swing set." And then she sat on the swing for awhile. I think I finished off the night slamming the rest of the Beast while blasting "Realities of War."

I wish that this LP was out then, so I coulda drunk myself into oblivion to it insteada Discharge. Royal Headache wouldn't have made that situation any less retarded, but certainly they'd be a better soundtrack to teenage humiliation. The singer's wistful moan really sticks in your mind after the needle lifts, and the bouncy riffs offset the melancholy under the surface, especially on "Honey Joy," my favest baddest assest track eva.

This is really happening. BUY THE FUCKER! RH is best Aussie band I've heard since Eddy Current Suppression Ring.

*EDIT, 9.7.12: I reupped the file. You can get it HERE. Please keep checking GOner for a re-press, as thing is one of the best rock LPs of recent years, easily,*

*EDIT, 5.31.13: Re'up'd the file. AGAIN. Do Royal Headache the courtesy of buying the LP, which you can do HERE or HERE. You can download the LP, for previewing purposes, HERE.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds-The Boatman's Call LP (1997/2011)

"Stars will explode in the sky/but they don't, do they?/Stars have their moment, and then they die."-Nick Cave

Easily one of the best albums of the 1990s, The Boatman's Call is also, according to Cave, one of his most personal. This album is brutally introspective. It's intense, while eschewing the hell for leather, brutal rock 'n' roll that characterized much of the Birthday Party and early Bad Seeds' output.

It sounds like Cave poured a lifetime of bittersweet melancholy and hard-won wisdom into this album and it shows, in the music as well as the lyrics. The more you listen, the more nuance emerge from the music: a beautifully-placed violin here, just the right piano note complementing a vocal phrase there. Cave's dissolving relationship with his ex-wife and PJ Harvey form the main lyrical concerns, along with his new-found Christian faith; this is passionate music from one of those guys, like Lou Reed and Iggy, that surprises you by staying alive as much as his consistently remarkable music.

We love our Queen! Boatman's Call was recently reissued, and you can buy it from the Bad Seeds, here. Cave's solo work with Warren Ellis is also fantastic.