Sex Cross-s/t EP (2012)

The goofy name is a dead giveaway that we're dealing with a goth band here. Unsurprisingly, then, these Jerseyites dish out three tracks of blackclad gloom, leaning on coldwave guitar  stylings like I'll be leaning against a wall to keep me on my feet as I puke in a few hours.

This brief EP has all the requisite components of a guitar-based goth ensemble: distant, chanted vocals; monotone drumming; a bass that's somewhere in there, probably beneath a black trenchcoat; and a taut, shards-of-ice guitar track. "Summer of Fire" is my pick, for the, you guessed it, guitar: once again, as I claimed in my Cemetery review, goth owes a lot to surf guitar riffs.

In fact, if you dig Cemetery, get yr hands (er, ears? Itunes files?) on this now-Sex Cross will tide you over til the next release by those Chicago glumrockers, and I'm looking forward to what these guys' mortuary operation produces next.

HERE. 

Sonic Death-Gothic Sessions EP (2012)

...Or, the Sonics are back from the dead, and have taken up residency in St. Petersburg. Where they are suffering from the blues.

I'm a little behind on this one, but it blew me away when I played it yesterday with bong smoke billowing out my bedroom window. St. Petersburg's Sonic Death meld garage riffing and psychedelic melancholy to create an EP that's at the top of my list for 2012.

The opener, "Наслаждение," is a mellow, mid-tempo misery stomp, setting the scene nicely for what comes next. "Сейчас (Сукин Сын)" is more concrete, with a snare drum echoing off the basic guitar chords and the singer talk-singing over the hum. "Ко Мне" features a sick guitar riff no doubt stolen from a Thirteenth-Floor Elevators tune with a freaked out, warbling bridge I can't get outta my head. The last track, "Пол," sounds like Yanka Dyagileva on a good day, with a backing band: tambourines, gently strummed acoustic guitar, and mumble-mouthed vocal phrasing.

      What appeals to me the most about Sonic Death is the depth of these songs: the form is garage, but the ambiance completely lacks the cocky, swaggering feel of most American garage. In its place is a bitter(sweet), knowing weariness that most American bands can't muster. I don't know Russian but the music and words connect on a visceral level. As it happens, Dead Moon's "In the Graveyard" follows this EP when I play it on Itunes, and I'm gonna go out on a limb and compare the singer's voice to Fred Cole's: they don't sound alike, but like Fred Cole, this dude knows how you feel and would probably be happy to share some whiskey with you.

Get weird here.

Thorir Georg-Januar CS (2011)

February is always the worst month of the year for me. It's dark, cold, all the holidays are over and, generally, it's a great time for unproductively stewing in your own misery. At some point after New Year's, Joy Div and Prurient monopolize the turntable....so this was utterly appropriate for President's Day weekend: cold, remote synth blues from Reykjavik.

After a track of dissonant, humming ambient drone, Georg segues into "Skiptir Engu," an eye-opener mingling relentlessly strummed acoustic guitar and a shuffling drum beat. It manages the difficult trick of sounding glum and uplifting at the same time. That's the paradox of this album as a whole: this is bleak, bitter music coming from lonely place, but there are glimmers of light strewn throughout the gloom.

The album alternates ambient interludes with pulsing, synth-driven tracks fleshed out by distorted guitar and Georg's hollow, frigid vocals.  I don't know what Georg's singing about, but I get the feeling that I wouldn't understand it even if I spoke Icelandic: the vocals are mixed deep beneath the drums and guitar, so it sounds as if Georg is singing from the bottom of the sea. The sound is of a man attempting, desperately, to communicate some sort of inner anguish, and failing, but resolutely trying again. The best track is "Ekki Vita," which floats along in crystalline slow motion: a hovering beat and hollowed out synth notes punctuate Georg's lost words.

It's not perfect, of course. The ambient interludes break up the natural cohesion of the synth tracks, and don't add much in recompense. Nevertheless, this is a dark, complex album that cheers you up instead of leaving you stewing in your misery.

Check out Georg's tumblr page, where you can download "Januar," here.