photo credit: alec mackaye

Uzeda, “This Heat”

Monday night I went to the Starlight Ballroom to bid adieu to Sleater-Kinney. I generally don’t head out to R5 shows in the summertime because they’re always crowded and hot beyond all belief, but there’s times where I’m willing to make an exception. I walked out of the club drenched in sweat, skin so moist that it was peeling off David Blaine stylee. Not only that, I had some sort of bizarre rash crawling up my legs. I pray that someone at the Starlight Ballroom is cleaning off the furniture. What I want to say is: summertime is gross, fucking, gross.

At least there was _some_ air conditioning. I haven’t been overseas in a while, but where I lived in Sicily, AC was a luxury. To beat the heat, you either spent a good portion of your time at the beach or lying around.

This is the heat I conjure up at the start of Uzeda’s “This Heat”. But Uzeda live in Catania, located at the foot of _Mongibeddu_, aka Mt Etna. The heat they’re talking about is not your standard disgusting day — New Orleans has its hurricanes, Sicily has one of the world’s most active volcanoes. Etna may turn the oranges bloody which is great for martinis worldwide, but it also has the ability to destroy entire cities, which it did in 1669, 1928, 1983 and almost in 1992, the latter being the same summer judges were getting blown to bits on the A20 by the Mafia.

Math rock in 2006 — who fucking knew? — might sound like the punchline to an indie rock joke, but it works. Uzeda’s newest record, _Stella_, elucidates the line between between beauty and destruction found in Sicilian life. Two riffs, one a tinny chug maintaining the rhythm, the other pealing off distorted metallic notes, weave their way around each other, growing in intensity, pushing each other towards an uncertain fate.

You should totally buy this record.

Petra Haden, what are you on? Why is this mindbendingly brilliant? That voodoo you do, keep doing it.

(Purchase her acapella masterpiece Petra Haden Sings: The Who Sell Out here.)

Cassettes Won’t Listen “Cut Your Hair” (Orig. Pavement)

Countless dudes spent the entire stretch of the 90’s impersonating the nasally, ironic distance/stance/dance of Stephen Malkmus, so this time around Indie Rock Nostalgia offers up a reedy Ben Gibbard whine with a stunted and slow phrasing of the lyrics, as if they’re teaching Indie Rock 101 to newcomers. The lyrical murkiness of the original remains the enduring legacy of “Cut Your Hair” (cf. “career/korea” argument); the band totally misses the boat on this one. It’s not an entirely lost cause, however. The thing is, the instrumental portion of the song is pretty awesome — I’m hesitant to throw around adjectives like “glitchy” and “twinkly” but its fun enough, so they will do — turning this into a cartoonish version of the band with keyboard flourishes here and there. A seemingly simple maneuver, but totally next-level and worth some points.

Listen: The Mice, “Not Proud of the USA”

Read: Robert Frost, “Mending Wall”

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulder in the sun,
And make gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there,
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

*Mahogany “Supervitesse”*

I have this new saying, perhaps you may have heard of it: don’t hate the player, hate the game. This afternoon I was sitting on College Green, soaking up those last moments of sunlight and slogging through my EMP paper when “Cybele’s Reverie” found its way into ye olde ipod shuffle [what they say about the ipod's shuffle being better than a real DJ is untrue; so far I have been pretty unenthused by its selections -- why does it *always* want to play that damn Rita Lee Beatles cover album which I've been meaning to delete?] and I thought to myself, “Man, remember how awesome this band used to be? Remember how fun it was to sing along with their crazy commie anthems?”

I can’t get annoyed when Mahogany [who are based in NYC yet have distinct Philly connections] sound so much like Stereolab; I should be annoyed that Stereolab are slack motherfuckers. [and yes, I know I can't completely blame their joylessness on ProTools -- Mary Hansen RIP, divorce, etc etc.] “Supervitesse” sounds like a band overcome by realization that they’ve stumbled upon Stereolab’s sound and rightfully inject playfulness back into the formula. There’s an airy quality a la Durutti Column or Dif Juz here as well, speed up just enough to blur the lines in a pleasing manner. What keeps me listening is the physicality of the sounds; you can hear fingers pressing down on the bass and the struggle of metal against metal, grounding the whirlwind just enough so that you’re not totally floating away.

(Visit Mahogany online HERE. Or HERE.)

Notekillers “Airport”
Sonic Youth “Reena”

I was writing about the new Notekillers single when a copy of the new Sonic Youth fell right into my lap, which is totally funny because that version of the review said, “…all I can think is that someone swiped my copy with a promo of the forthcoming Sonic Youth record.”

Here I thought the Notekillers heavy jams, so ferocious they might qualify as metal, were trace elements of a harsher return to form for Sonic Youth. It seem everything new I like hearkens back to some old sound without sounding like a historical rehash — OxC/Embos, Clockcleaner/Flipper and so on — that I was prety convinced with all the No Fun festing, UPenn backlash, reissuing of early material, Sonic Youth were going to go old-school on us. Needless to say, I felt pretty clowned when I threw on Rather Ripped, only to discover how completely modern and gorgeous this album sounds. In fact, I’m having a real hard time picking the most “pop” song on this record because there’s several.

And I guess there is my lesson for the day — you can’t make something new by simply sounding old. This is why more than half of the post-punk revival sounds awful; slapping an Ian Curtis soundalike over some discopunk beats sounds fucking tired. [post-punk is not the only culprit] It’s like what the modernists used to say, “Take the old and make it new.” These two tracks, I suppose, sound fantastic because they’ve taken the ethos to heart. Notekillers are relentless in their pursuit on this killer three-chord romp, right from the opening wail of the feedback. The metallic guitars, heavy like a thousand-pound weight and grinding like so many of Branca’s compositions, reside somewhere in the grey area between metal and no wave.

“Reena” opens up with a killer solo so Grateful Dead that its ridiculously awesome, but before I think the band has veered off into complete jam band territory, Kim Gordon intones “You keep me comin’ home again,” as if to remind the audience that no matter how hard they stray, they’ll return to what put them on the map in the first place. And that much is true when the breakdowns hit, a wall of shimmery dissonance comes up that isn’t too far from the sturm und drang of Sister. It’s the revisitation that’s thrilling with both of these songs, but even more comfort’s gleaned in knowing how far they can take those ideas, in this case twenty years into the future.

(Visit the Notekillers online here. Visit Sonic Youth online here.)

Clockcleaner, “New Slow”

i guess i could have picked “interview w/ a black man” for this entry, if only because you can understand the words and it’s more obviously aligned with the band’s influences, but nearly wordless, unintelligable and distorted is the best route to understanding the majestic fucked-upness of clockcleaner. they don’t play the game fair, so neither will i. sharkey’s yelps and screams pepper “new slow” but it’s totally backseat here; the main focus of this song has to be the thunderous plodding of the drums and extended guitar solo lurching its way to the end. i don’t really think of clockcleaner as the band that kind of jams, but this is about as close to it as we’re gonna get. this track is stranded-in-death-valley-and-there’s-vultures-swarming-over-me ominous. bataan death march ominous. (and by the way, there’s nothing wrong with the mp3, clockcleaner likes to let songs bleed from one chord to another, which is why you need to pick up the entire record.)

for purposes of full disclosure, i should note that in addition to booking clockcleaner for shows, in the past i’ve handled a bit of publicity for them. im not a very good publicist because i hate hype but i gotta say nevermind, their new album out on repitilian (on which i am thanked in the liner notes but thats as far as my involvement goes) is definitely the best local release of this new year so far. seriously solid, totally offensive.

(Purchase Nevermind here.)

for those heading to sxsw, clockcleaner aren’t officially part of the festivities, but they’re down there. will the city be left standing? there’s only one way to find out:

March 19 2006 @ 8:00P at SXSW [with] Clorox Girls @ Beerland, Austin, TX

stevenwardjames “An Alcove”

Taking a big bite of whatever Jim O’Rourke and Animal Collective seem to be feeding him, swj creates a lovely pastoral concoction here, full of sensitive, burbling acoustic fingerpicking and mellifluous melodica. “An Alcove” is not so much one song but rather two, glued together by silence, re-emerging with understated percussion, off-kilter, hushed backup vocals and percolating electronic flourishes.

(Visit stevenwardjames here.)

Man Man “Ice Dogs”

So have you ever seen The In Crowd? I have probably caught this movie more times than a human being should. But its always made me curious of the age when the Geator was gold and American Bandstand’s presence loomed large over West Philly, way before the thought of moving to Philadelphia ever entered my mind. I have a sneaking suspicion Man Man feels this way too, throwing off the mustachey, Beefheart affectations we’ve come to expect for the lone stylistic break on the forthcoming Six Demon Bag (nice WoW reference, d00dz, btw, LOL). The simple chug of a piano breaks through the murky flute-laden theatrics, like the sun rising up over the Ben Franklin Bridge and then the there’s a pitter-pat of the hi-hat and then, oh, and then the motherfucking “sha-do-ba-doo”s kick in. It’s a doo-wop recreation where women suddenly sprout beehives of frosty colors and keep their sxe tattoos. Out of Man Man’s quasi-carnival ouevre, this shit is the freakiest. (Purchase Six Demon Bag Here!)

The Capitol Years “Farther On” (Vetiver cover)
I’m not sure what blows my mind more: the fact that Vetiver is Andy from the Raymond Brake (one of my personal favorite indie rock bands of the 90s) or that the Capitol Years are covering Vetiver. But the group has a knack for doing things completely left-field and that’s what keeps reeling me in. If you like strummy folk thats not overly showy but could perfectly accompany a quiet fall afternoon, this one’s for you. (Visit the Capitol Years here. )

Buried Beds “Empty Rooms”
Buried Beds are one of those bands that sound completely elegant and refined thanks to all those strings, slow tempos and quietness. But you can hear a faint crack in Eliza Hardy’s clarion voice and instantly you know these are songs that are teetering on the edge, without that restraint there could be some serious shit-losing going on. Meltdown or not, it’s a captivating listen regardless. (Visit Buried Beds here.)