Horrible Houses-Songs Written & Recorded Under the Influence of the Yellow House (2013)

 These tunes are beautiful fragments of melancholy. Like one of his heroes, John Fahey, Daniel is very good at coaxing emotional depth out of a simple series of guitar chords. Clanging off the 4-track hiss, the guitar plays off the lack of other sounds in the mix and gathers strength in the process. They'll never meet each other, but Horrible Houses and Michael Wohl should share a bill, or maybe split an EP. They're the only guys I know of making folk- and blues-based music at this late date that actually fucking matters.

Horrible Houses never fails to surprise: buy the ticket, take the ride, as the good Doctor once said. By now I've come to expect freakfolk* of some sort from this guy, but nothing he's done sounds quite like his previous releases. That's saying a lot, given that anyone who wants to sell records or push downloads can simply cut-and-paste a genre's sound onto blank tape again and again and be guaranteed attention, if not fame 'n' fortune (fancy that).

This is a collection of improv recordings done "under the influence of the Yellow House." I'm guessing that's a new kind of acid the Swedes are keeping to themselves. Hell, us Yankees and Itals probably couldn't afford it anyways, them Scandis always get the best shit with their sizeable welfare checks. Point is, I want some of what this guy's doing so I can make more interesting bad life decisions.

The first five tracks are empty. Not lifeless, but empty, the way Neil Young's Dead Man soundtrack sounds hollowed out: stripped of all the dross and over-produced horseshit that hides most bands' lack of talent or passion. Empty the way the best American folk music sounded empty. Arthur Rothstein says at some point in Boardwalk Empire that all of life's problems arise from not being able to sit still in a room. In the same spirit, most music is desperate to fill that silence and stillness. Dismissing such anxiety, Daniel turns off the drum machine and ratchets up the vocal mix on these bedroom recordings.

 Some of his previous work was quirky for the sake of being quirky: certainly more interesting than most of what washes up on my "to review" pile, but not necessarily keepers. This album is nothing if not that. Dude claims that he buried some of these records under a real-existing Yellow House 6 years ago and dug 'em up in May; apparently Swedish dirt is more creative than American dirt, since these songs grew in the mulching. Throughout, it sounds like he's chasing a memory or constellation of images that slip away just at the point of recalling them clearly.

I'll close by encouraging you to CHECK IT, THEN BUY IT, for yourself.

*"Freakfolk" in the sense that this guy uses the forms of American folk music to craft his own sound, NOT in the sense that he is in any way indebted to or aping the driveling mimicrky and contrived jive of shitheads usually associated with this neologism.

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.

Shape Breaker-Eyes Wide LP (2013)

This washed up on my pile of submissions quite awhile ago and, with due apologies to the band for taking so long etc., this here is a fuckin' fun LP. Building on and progressing from the scuzz-fi-mired EP No Fun, Shape Breaker has carved out a warm, feedback-soaked little niche for themselves somewhere between the Stooges and MBV.

The former reference is due to the singer. He does a knockdown splendid job of sounding like Iggy at his soberest (is/was Iggy ever sober? The gods know). That means that he sounds like the lewd, crude, quite rude drunk leering at you as you feebly pass out in a puddle of your own puke on another wasted Saturday night. He only has the right to jeer at you because he's able to stand on two feet, and you, well, you're a feeble no-legged cripple at this particular moment.

Shape Breaker decided on a guitar sound for this LP, and followed it out to the absolute limit. Instrumentally, the record sounds like a mine shaft: it's all sorta the same, rocks 'n' dirts 'n' sounds like The Band in Heaven 'n' whatnot, but each level you bore into yields more weirdo enjoyment.

Holy hell, boppers, am I blasted outta my mind on this good Chianti red I've been guzzling like Night Train. So I'll sign off by demanding that you get yr ass over to Shape Breaker's bandcamp page and check this 'un out for yerselves.

Alone and Forsaken XIII: Po' Boy Long Way from Home Blues

It's 2:15 am, I've been up for about 17 hours, and I still have a few hours to go before drinking myself to sleep. It's getting to the point where I think I hear stuff in the halls of the office I work at, but then realize it's just dust settling on the fan, and I can no longer tell if it's night or morning.

In that spirit, here's a collection of spaced out, atmospheric tunes, pieces, and improvisations suited for drifting away on cosmic rays of insomnia, workaholism, and/or drug abuse.

I should also mention that this installment in "Alone and Forsaken" is partially a shameless plug for a good friend of mine. You should check out his music, here.

Fade into you.

1. Νικκ Καβε αντ Ωαρρεν Έλλης-χάππυ Λαντ
2. John Lurie-Bella by Barlight
3. Popol Vuh-Tanz der Chassidim
4. Michael Wohl-Variations: Melatonin Blues
5. Γρουπερ-Δισενγαγεδ
 6. Cavedweller-Poison II
7. Will Oldham-Do What You Will Do
8. Sun Kil Moon-Heron Bloo
9. Josephine Foster-Where There Are Trees
10. Dirty Beaches-The Death March
11. Moon Dog-Theme and variations
12. βριαν Ενώ-Αλλ θε Σταρς βερε ούτ
13. Crimewaves-Sun Rays
14. Peaking Lights-All the Sun that Shines