Ladies and Gentlemen. Welcome to another broadcast from Sound Guardian Radio. Today will be the first in a series of artist profiles which I'll start throwing in amongst other radio pieces. To start us off, I thought I'd profile the work of a favorite vocalist of mine: Mark Lanegan. Lanegan started off his career as the vocalist for Seattle Grunge band Screaming Trees, but since that band broke up in the early 2000's, Lanegan has been rather prolific, working with everyone from Queens Of The Stone Age to Greg Dulli (with whom he formed the band The Gutter Twins.) He's got quite the baritone and after you hear him sing once you'll usually be able to recognize his work. With this broadcast I'm going to play you a selection of four songs from Lanegan's post-Screaming Trees work, including songs from his collaborations with Queens Of The Stone Age, Isobel Campbell and Soulsavers, as well as a song from his solo work. Here's hoping you enjoy!
1. "Song For The Dead" by Queens Of The Stone Age
2. "Methamphetamine Blues" by Mark Lanegan Band
3. "Come On Over (Turn Me On)" by Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan
Disclaimer: For those who read my previous review of Lightning Bolt’s Wonderful Rainbow, some of this may be recap. Also, Chippendale doesn’t really sound like Zach Hill at all. I don’t know where I got that idea from.
At five albums now, you’d think Lightning Bolt would have run out of ideas. After all, how far can you really take minimalism in music before you start repeating yourself? But no. The duo is still managing to take their selected brand of Noise Rock to new places without changing their drum and bass setup. It’s fairly impressive too. For playing such abrasive music, every Lightning Bolt album has been well received, critically speaking, and they’ve got a devoted following of fringe music lovers (like me.) More than that, the music is actually really good. Hailing from Providence, Rhode Island, Lightning Bolt consists of bassist Brian Gibson and drummer Brain Chippendale and together they create Avant-Garde Noise Rock that, against the odds, manages to have everything from hooks to actual melody, even while drenched in mountains of heavy feedback.
Lightning Bolt is about as far from conventional music as Vegemite is from tasty, and it all starts with the set-up. Gibson’s unusual instrument sound is usually mistaken for a guitar but it is, in fact, a bass, tuned to cello standard tuning with an extra banjo string. Along with this strange instrument is an array of effect pedals that serve the purpose of making the sound coming out of his bass everything from high-end squiggles to fuzzed-out quakes. By way of a delay pedal, Gibson also has the ability to loop his bass lines, allowing it to sound like there’s more than just one of him and play individual parts of the song at the same time. But this band is a duo and would not be complete without Brian Chippendale.
Behind the drums, Chippendale is a force of nature, an aggressive one-man demolition team that, if he wanted to, could level skyscrapers with just his drum kit. According to Chippendale, he plays in such a way where he’s trying to fill up space with his drum beats, which adds to the overloading effect of Lightning Bolt’s music He’s also, inexplicably, the band’s unsettling vocalist. Chippendale doesn’t really sing with Lightning Bolt, he more howls like he’s just been set on fire and is desperately trying to put it out. He does sing words usually, but it’s nearly impossible to decipher them under all the fuzz. Not only that, but Chippendale doesn’t use a regular microphone. He wears a mask with a built in contact mic made out of a telephone receiver, which further distorts the sound. Lightning Bolt without words is a volatile ride through an Arggo-Nosie Rock amusement park. With words, and Chippendales demented howling, you enter a bizarre variation on the amusement parks funhouse, where everything becomes even more disorienting.
The bands most recent release is this album, Earthly Delights, which continues their foray into spastic low-end rhythms and uncompromising audio assaults. It also manages to hit the benchmark set by their previous two albums, Hypermagic Mountain and Wonderful Rainbow, even surpassing them at times. There is a danger in Lightning Bolt’s music though and that’s the possibility for wankery at the wrong times. As strange and powerful as this record is, it has two weak spots. The first is “Flooded Chamber” in which the band manages to step in sonic shit and takes about four minutes trying to scrape it off. Gibson’s bass on the track is effected to the really high and almost painful end of things, while Chippendale just flails like a loon hopped up on too much PCP. It’s a track that, unlike most Lightning Bolt songs, doesn’t go anywhere and just kind of chases it’s own tail. The other weak spot is the short and pointless “Rain On Lake I’m Swimming In” which is just two minutes of Gibson aimlessly plucking the higher notes on his bass while Chippendale makes nonsense sounds into his mic. Both of these tracks could easily have been left off the album and it still would have been solid, probably even more so.
But aside from those two hiccups, the rest of the album is hot white gold. The opening cut and this blog’s namesake “Sound Guardians” starts out with Chippendale’s pounding drums and warping waa sounds from Gibson’s bass before kicking into one of the most raging Lightning Bolt songs to date, and certainly the most bombastic they’ve sounded right out the gate (oh look, a rhyme.) The schizophrenic fury doesn’t quit and even picks up further with the second track, “Nation Of Boar” which is a quintessential Lightning Bolt song if I ever heard one, with roaring low-end bass chords over Chippendale’s frenzied drum lunacy and manic vocalizations.
However, possibly my favorite track on the album is the seven minute long thunderer “Colossus” which is one of Lightning Bolt’s less spastic and more epic compositions. It’s slower than “Nation Of Boar” or “Sound Guardians” but that makes it feel more powerful somehow. It’s well titled too, seeing as how it conveys the feeling of the colossus rising up from it’s slumber and then lumbering it’s way across the land. As the track progresses, Gibson’s bass work gets more and more wild and Chippendales drums more rowdy before coming to a place of almost calm at the track’s end. It’s got a good arc. Throughout the album, the band doesn’t let up it’s uncompromising sound but occasionally does dip into what could actually be considered a hook or groove. Come to that, Lightning Bolt is actually very groovy music, it just might not seem like it at first.
A lot of people may think that Lightning Bolt is just random noise blather, but I have to disagree. Brian and Brian are obviously skilled composers as well as musicians and they’ve proven that by delivering yet another excellent adventure into Noise Rock madness. It’s got hooks, its got grooves, it’s got walls of distortion and it’s chock full of electrified energy. Really, what more could you want?
Ladies and Gents. Welcome to a very special edition of Sound Guardian Radio. I learned today that one of my favorite Metal bands, ISIS, is breaking up. They've stated that this is not because of internal strife but simply because they've accomplished everything they've set out to do. I'm guessing that most of these goons will continue on in music. And that's fine and all, but I can't go to their last show here in Seattle. Bummer. So instead, I'm going to devote this broadcast to playing four of my favorite ISIS songs. Seeing as how ISIS always had a penchant for long-form Metalgaze, these songs are all over seven minutes in length, but trust me, they're very good. I'm going to miss ISIS, but their music will stick around and hopefully, if you've never heard them before, you'll give this broadcast a listen and see what you think. Enjoy. Goodbye, ISIS.
I’m trying to recall the exact moment I became a fan of Steve Albini. I guess it would have to be the first time I heard Big Black’s Songs About Fucking. It was a gift from a friend who seemed to think I’d like it, not that she told me anything about it before giving it to me. So, I have the album on my iPod. I’m working on something on the computer and am trying to decide what to listen to. I cue up Songs About Fucking, plug it into my dock and walk back to the computer. A second and a half later an unholy squall blasts its way out of the speakers and I turn around to stare at them. The sound was not unlike metal girders grinding against each other with some lunatic screaming things about “The Power of Independent Trucking” buried somewhere in the mix. The drums sounded inhuman (I would later learn that they were generated by Roland the Drum Machine.) I take this in and then realize that something is wrong. I can’t quite be sure but something doesn’t seem quite right about the situation. And then it hits me. It needs to be louder… much louder. I cranked the volume up to max, nearly blew out my speakers and I think reduced my hearing by a couple decibels for the afternoon. This was my introduction to the music of Steve Albini.
For those of you who don’t know or haven’t read Our Band Could Be Your Life, Steve Albini was the driving creative force behind Big Black for five or so years in the mid to late 80’s. He’s a guitarist and sound engineer like no other and is one of my heroes… for some reason. It actually worries some people that I like this guy as much as I do, considering his proclivities for writing songs about slaughtering cattle and alcoholism. But that’s one of the things I like so much about Steve Albini: he’s sarcastic. He’s got one of the blackest senses of humor on the face of the planet and that comes out in his music.
Big Black was a great band but great things must come to an end. After his first bands demise, Albini hooked up with the rhythm section of Scratch Acid to form the disgustingly titled Rapeman. In a world where it’s fairly easy to piss off conservatives, Albini started pushing the buttons of hipsters. The ultimate test was naming his band something as offensive as Rapeman and it worked, people were outraged and completely overlooked the music. It wasn’t as good as Big Black but it showed that Albini was still capable of caustic wit and metallic whiplash guitar attacks. Rapeman came to an end before the 80’s were over and Albini subsequently formed his current band, Shellac, with Todd Trainer and Bob Weston a few years later.
Shellac’s latest release, Excellent Italian Greyhound, is, in my humble opinion, their finest to date. An acerbic assault of twisted steel and sharp aluminum, this record is nine tracks worth of deadpan lyrics and Math Rock belligerence that should satisfy anyone familiar with Albini’s work. It’s not their most accessible listen, that would be either At Action Park or 1000 Hurts, but it’s their most rewarding one. The first track is a demonstration of Shellac’s fondness for unusual song structures. The ambling “The End of Radio” is eight minutes long and barely holds together… or so it seems. There is no chorus, just Albini’s rambling tale of the last man on earth, who also happens to be a DJ, broadcasting his final transmission to an empty world. It’s actually one of the most manic tracks on the album, just not in the music. All the mania is in Albini’s delivery, where he seems to be teetering on the brink of sanity.
The next three tracks are all straight ahead rockers, as straight ahead as you can get with Shellac that is. The best of these is the track “Be Prepared.” The song spends it’s first 40 or so seconds trying to get off the ground before kicking into life, with Albini’s wind-up and release guitar taking the forefront. It’s not long before he barks out “I was born wearing pants!” to which Bob Weston responds, “Be prepared!” The song is pretty funny actually; apparently Albini was also born with $25 in his pockets and already wearing spats and a dickie (whatever the hell that is…)
The other two rockers, “Steady As She Goes” and “Elephant” are also both solid songs. Someone mentioned “Elephant” to me once as being about Fugazi and how they have yet to return from hiatus. I didn’t think much of it until I got two other records, Fugazi’s The Argument and The Evens’ Self-Titled Album. “Elephant references both albums in its title and opening lyrics, with Bob Weston singing “Here… comes… here comes the argument” paralleling the final lyrics of the final song of The Argument. And naming the song “Elephant”? Guess what’s on the cover of The Evens’ Self-Tilted Album. After that though, the reference seems to end because the lyrics of “Elephant” take on a decidedly confusing bent, with both Albini and Weston speak-singing different stories that, on the surface at least, don’t seem to have anything to do with Fugazi. Still, it’s an intriguing riddle.
By far the oddest track on the album though, is the 9 minute + “Genuine Lulabelle” which begins with Albini’s announcement that “You could say that I’m… the Genuine Article.” The band then soldiers into an instrumental section that starts out leisurely before abruptly taking a turn for the urgent. Then. Everything stops. No music. Albini… speaks. What follows is the single most unexpected thing to ever surface on a Shellac album: An A Cappella section. I was stunned too. The unaccompanied Albini tells a tale of a girl called Lulabelle and the subsequent shenanigans she got into. Then, the second most unexpected thing to surface on a Shellac album makes his presence known: Strong Bad. No Joke. And he’s not alone. A deluge of voices, from all those famous voice actors you can’t remember the names of chime in, all of them proclaiming that “what one wants is the real thing, the genuine article: a real Lulabelle.” Eventually, the voices subside, the band kicks in and the song goes wild, Albini’s now shouted lyrics meeting with razor sharp instrumentation. It’s by far the most successful experimental track they’ve done.
There aren’t really any weak tracks on this album. There are good ones, great ones and weird ones. The final four tracks, which includes the actually upbeat instrumental “Kittypants” and Weston’s major label protest song “Boycott”, all fit the bill of the album nicely. Albini and co’s music is challenging, noisy and very original. I highly recommend Shellac, Rapeman and Big Black’s entire discography. But remember, this music is not for the faint of heart and if you’re offended easily or don’t have a tongue to plant in your cheek, you probably should steer clear.
Hey folks. For todays broadcast I want to share with you some music from some loud Seattle bands that don't exist anymore. Yep, sad to say it, none of these 4 fantastic bands I'm going to play for you are still around. The Blood Brothers called it quits in 2007 and the other three buried themselves last year. I was even at the last Kane Hodder/Schoolyard Heroes show. While most of these musicians are continuing to do music with newer groups, I thought It'd be nice to give their old bands some airtime. So, let's quite the yammering and get on with the headbanging. Enjoy!
Let me preface this review by explaining that if you do not have a really powerful sound system or state-of-the-art headphones, you shouldn’t be listening to this. Also, if you’ve got a fear of loud music, stop reading because it’s a pre-requisite of Sunn O))) that you listen to them at excruciating volume so that you can feel the music. I’ll say that part again to drive it home: “Feel” not just “hear.” Because part of the fun of Sunn O))) is the full body massage that goes along with their music. To most people, Sunn O))) is going to just sound like really drawn out noise dirges and while some of their material does fit that description, this album, Monoliths & Dimensions, is one of the most beautiful and rewarding heavy albums I’ve heard in a long time.
Sunn O))) is primarily a duo: two guitarists, Stephen O’Malley (also of Khanate & Burning Witch) and Greg Anderson (of Goatsnake) accompanied by a wall of Sunn brand amplifiers. Together, these two men are responsible for re-defining the power of the word Drone. Because the music of Sunn O))) is the best Drone Metal since Earth’s early albums. Sunn O))) in fact, initially began as an Earth tribute band and has since expanded to become the world’s foremost Drone Metal act. The genre tag of “Metal” brings up certain connotations of head-banging and rock-on hand signs that really makes the word misleading in describing Sunn O)))’s music. There are no flying V guitar solos, no death growls, no drums, no vocals or percussion of any kind. Just two guitars and a wall of amps all turned to 11… maybe 12.
That’s how it was for a while before the two guitarists began to collaborate with other artists. And that’s where my interest was piqued. Of the three Sunn O))) albums I own, Monoliths & Dimensions is the best, heaviest, darkest, and has the most interesting collaborators (Black One was a close second.) I’ll be the first to admit, the first time I heard this band I was completely confused. “Why on earth would someone sit around listening to feedback variations for an hour?” I asked. That was with Sunn O)))’s Flight Of The Behemoth album, which was a less interesting and far less polished effort. With the advent of Monoliths and Dimensions, I decided to give the band a second try. This time, I was blown away. At four tracks, Monoliths & Dimensions clocks in at a 53:44 and its time well spent. It’s also a dark descent into the void that combines all the terror of Black Metal, Dark Ambient and the night. Humans have a very rational fear of the dark and Sunn O))) is that darkness in music form. More than Lustmord, more than Earth, more than Xasthur or any of his Black Metal ilk, Sunn O)))’s music is scary. Another qualifier of how you listen to it is that you should listen to it at night, by yourself and with all the lights out.
Monoliths & Dimensions is, as I said before, the best album Sunn O))) has ever put to tape. Recorded over a period of two years, it’s the biggest their music has ever sounded and that’s saying something considering that their previous material was already pretty gigantic sounding. “Monoliths & Dimensions” is in fact the best description of their music: it’s massive in scale and sounds like a bleak void.
Unusually for Sunn O))), three of the four tracks on the album feature vocals. But Sunn O)))’s choice of vocalist, Mayhem’s Attila Csihar, is perfect for the terror inspiring atmosphere of their music. Csihar perfectly complements Sunn O)))’s music by bringing his fullest, deepest demon voice to bear. You can’t understand a word he’s saying because of his accent and just how deep his voice is, but the message gets across none the less: he’s gonna eat your soul. The voice Csihar uses on Monoliths & Dimensions is not the screech employed by most Black Metal vocalists or some silly pig growl like you’d find with a Death Metal band, but the voice of the abyss itself as it swallows you whole.
Csihar’s foreboding presence is felt most strongly on the opening track “Aghartha” which gets the album off to its rumbling start. At 17:33 it’s the longest track on the album and for the first eight minutes or so it’s business as usual in the Sunn O))) camp, with slow chords and mountains of feedback that will shake your blood. Then Csihar enters the picture and begins to slowly intone what I’ve heard is a poem about the creation of the earth. Looking at the lyrics (which do exist) I’m not sure what he’s taking about, but as I mentioned before, it doesn’t much matter. After the slow rumble of “Aghartha” melts away we begin the second track, the 9:42 long “Big Church (Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért)” which is probably my favorite composition on the album and subsequently, my favorite Sunn O))) piece. You’re probably still looking at the subtitle. No I do not know how to pronounce it properly, but Attila Csihar does. “Big Church” (I’m not gonna write the impossible word every single time) begins with an unholy choir of fallen angels lamenting their lost grace before O’Malley and Anderson’s grinding chords start up again. But the angels (really a Viennese woman's choir) sing throughout this track, making it one of the prettier Sunn O))) songs in existence. As the music of “Big Church” builds and finally crescendos, Csihar reenters to speak more lyrics and does the impossible by reciting the word in the subtitle. Which, you know, should be impossible.
Csihar’s contributions to the album come to an end with the third track “Hunting And Gathering (Cydonia)” which features him at his most operatic. It also features a horn section and percussion, more things unusual for a Sunn O))) album. But the final song on the album, the haunting “Alice”, is perhaps the strangest. The first completely instrumental track on the album, “Alice” features traditional Sunn O))) song structure but manages to feel somehow less foreboding than anything else on this album. Listening to it feels like attending a very stormy funeral precession, laden as it is with mournful horns and dirgy riffs (or rather, even MORE dirgy riffs.) It feels sad, in place of the terror usually inspired by Sunn O))). My early comment about how this album is beautiful stems from the entirety of it’s construction and execution, but “Alice” is a strong swing in that statements favor all on it’s own. And there’s no twist either, no bogyman leaping out the closet at the last minute. The droning feedback fades away, leaving just the horns and strings behind and the album goes out on its mournful note.
You know, throughout this review I’ve explained how all of the more experimental elements make this less of a proper Sunn O))) album. But I’ve just realized coming to the end of this review that it is in the nature of Sunn O))) to be experimental and, therefore, it’s not so strange. Most people fail to grasp how meditative Sunn O)))’s music is: there’s a supremely Zen quality about the chord progression and the walls of sound. It makes for a very calming listening experience, at least for me. It may be feedback drenched Drone Metal but it’s strangely beautiful in a textural way and I like it. Just remember, play it loud or don’t play it at all.
Hey folks. Welcome to another broadcast from Radio Sound Guardian. Today I'll be playing you songs from Sxip Shirey, Jason Webley and Amanda Palmer, because tonight I'm off to see the Evelyn Evelyn show, which features all three of the aforementioned miscreants. It should be a fun night and for all those not going or who can't make it, I hope you enjoy this broadcast. Cheers!
Artist: Jello Biafra And The Guantanamo School of Medicine
Genre: Hardcore Punk
Year: 2009
Label: Alternative Tentacles
[At the time of writing this you could still get this album for free on amazon. Times have changed though. It's still cheaper than most things in the MP3 store, but it's no longer free. Sorry.]
There are lots of Punk musicians, old and new, who are vital, interesting and worth your time and energy to look up. Some, however, need to pack it in. Where Jello Biafra falls at this point is ambiguous, but I’m beginning to think the man has had his time and needs to hang up the microphone for good.
Jello Biafra is certainly most famous for being the voice of the Dead Kennedy’s, one of the first overtly political Hardcore Punk bands and is, at this point, the only original member of the band who is still even close to artistically relevant. Since the break-up of the Dead Kennedy’s way back in the 80’s, Biafra has collaborated with numerous artists, started a spoken word career, been running Alternative Tentacles Records and generally tried to be a force in the political realm. But if you want to know about his political involvement, you can go read his Wikipedia page. I want to talk about his music.
I’ve had an odd relationship with Biafra’s music over the years. I enjoy the Dead Kennedy’s but in terms of classic Hardcore Punk bands, they’re far from my favorite (that’d probably be Black Flag) and I usually find myself listening to Biafra because he works with other artists I like, not because I just want to hear him. Examples of this include the first Lard album, which was Biafra collaborating with the Industrial Metal band Ministry, and the two albums he did with the Melvins as his backing band. With both Lard and the Melvins, Biafra was backed by heavy Metal music that seemed very appropriate to his political conspiracy ramblings. The boys from Ministry learned to play in a more punk-like style with Lard and the Melvins sounded like a sludgier version of Lard for the albums they did with him. All in all, both worked out pretty well.
Now, at 51 years of age, Biafra has formed a new band called The Guantanamo School of Medicine, which, aside from being a mouthful, is probably, the best backing band he’s ever worked with. Except for the Melvins, of course. Including Biafra himself, the band is a quintet consisting of Ralph Spight (of Victims Family) and Kimo Ball (of Freak Accident) on guitars, Jon Weiss (of Sharkbait) on drums and Billy Gould (of Faith No More) on bass. Of the musicians involved, I was only familiar with Gould before. So in a way, this unusual group of players was completely new to me. Further more, this is the first time since getting Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables that I’ve gotten an album because of Biafra himself and not the band he’s working with.
The Guantanamo School of Medicine has released an album that lets you know right away, in no uncertain terms, that Biafra has not cooled with age and that he’ll be skewering politicians till the day he dies. All you have to do is look at the album’s cover, which features a devilish Biafra in the style of the famous Obama Hope poster and the album’s title under it, The Audacity of Hype, to get the picture: no one is safe from Jello.
Musically speaking, this is a surprisingly solid record. The School of Medicine essentially takes the best elements of the two best bands Biafra ever worked with by combining the speed, energy and punked out agitation of The Dead Kennedys with the mighty heaviness of the Melvins. The result is a classic Hardcore Punk sound with some serious weight behind it, and it sounds pretty good. Spight and Ball’s twin guitars are the stars of this show as they shred their way through all nine tracks with reckless abandon. Gould and Weiss make for a good rhythm team with Gould’s bass as the source of the weight that holds the music together. Their combined energy is manic and provides an excellent platform for Biafra to rant over. Yep. The Guantanamo School of Medicine is a fantastic Hardcore Punk Band and that’s the start of the problems.
Here’s what’s up: no new ground is being broken here. None. Sure the music is good, but we’ve essentially heard this before with the Melvins, with Lard and even with The Dead Kennedys. The Guantanamo School of Medicine is just another in a long line of Biafra’s backing bands and he has a way of infecting his bands so that they all sound similar. More than that, Biafra is getting old and his rants are too. This is umpteenth time I’ve heard him raving about how the politicians are corrupt, how 9/11 was an inside job and how consumerism sucks. All of that may be true (maybe,) but we’ve all heard him say it all before. The only thing that’s missing from that list is a reference to pedophile criminals or drug cartels… actually that second one might be in there, too.
In theory, there will always be new political conspiracies to get freaked out over, and so Biafra will always have new material, but at the moment, this all feels like re-hash. To cap all this off is the way the album ends. The last track “I Won’t Give Up” is 21 minutes long and is one of those annoying tracks that actually ends about six minutes in, leaving us in silence. After a while, the silence ends and the music starts again, but the secret track is actually all of the songs from the album being played all on top of each other which is just about as big of a waste of time as you can get. I remember when Mastodon did something similar at the end of Blood Mountain and I wasn’t happy with them either.
My final verdict on this album may surprise you though. Despite what I’ve just said, I’ve enjoyed this record for what it is, and that’s a solid Jello release. If you’re a fan of Mr. Biafra, then you’re going to like this no matter what I say and call me a hater for saying anything nasty about it at all. It may not take us anywhere new but it does provide us with a pretty fun time if you take it on musical merits alone. Also, you can get it for free at amazon.com, so if you don’t like it, you don’t have to feel bad for wasting money on it. However. This should be the end for Jello Biafra’s musical career. He’s proven that he can re-make a good record over and over again, so he needs to do something new next or hang it up. Besides, he’s not going to have time to be making music; he’s running for President with the Green Party in 2012. Lookout world. Here comes Jello.
2009 was a murderous year for famous people. Michael Jackson, Patrick Swayze, Farrah Fawcett and David Carradine all passed from this world and into the undiscovered country. All of these people were fairly well known individuals, some more than others, but still, I think it’s safe to say they all made the headlines when they died. But in the waning weeks of 2009, we lost someone else, someone who wasn’t famous by any means, especially if you compare him to the aforementioned celebrities.
We lost Vic Chesnutt.
And I know you’re going “who?”
Don’t feel bad if you don’t know who he was, I’d only just started getting into his music a month before he died, which adds a level of surrealism to this, my feeling compelled to write something about him. More so because I had thought about writing something nice about him before I found out he’d died. The confirmation of his passing kind of sealed the deal. Vic Chesnutt was a folk singer-songwriter from Athens, Georgia. He wrote beautifully poignant songs about things like mortality, the imperfections of human nature and other depressing things.
I first discovered his work in a roundabout way. I have a love for the art of David Lynch. Film, music, writings and all. Over the summer I learned of an album called Dark Night Of The Soul by artists Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse that featured David Lynch singing on a few songs. I acquired the album and learned that all of the tracks featured different singers on them, ranging from The Flaming Lips to Black Francis of the Pixies. On the album’s penultimate track, the haunting “Grim Augury,” I was first introduced to Vic Chesnutt. In the song, Chesnutt, singing with his imperfect, weary voice tells a tale of a Lynchian dream sequence and warns his friend not to take it as a sign of trouble ahead. Chesnutt’s appearance on the album is, ultimately, far too short to get a real taste of him, so I decided to do some more research.
It took me quite some time to get around to looking the man up and I discovered he’d been writing and performing music since about 1985. Over Thanksgiving, I picked up his most recent (and now, sadly, his last) album, At The Cut. By this time, I had learned more about Mr. Chesnutt. At the age of 18, Chesnutt was in a car accident that paralyzed him from the waist down which I would guess probably has something to do with the chip he’s got on his shoulder in some of his songs, as well as his obsession with human mortality. Being confined to a wheelchair, he discovered he was still able to play guitar and started writing music. Twenty seven years later, Vic Chesnutt had built up a good-sized following and released his latest album, At The Cut. For this album, Chesnutt reassembled the all-star backing band that played on his previous work, the also impressive North Star Deserter. The band is nothing to sneeze at as it features four members of Thee Silver Mt. Zion as well as Guy Picciotto of Fugazi on guitar. Those players, combined with Chesnutt’s songwriting talents, made for a powerful, moving and now tragic work of art.
It is bizarre to listen to this album now and think, “the first time I heard it, he was still alive.” Especially given the subject matter of some of the songs. The album starts with “Coward” which begins simply enough with just Chesnutt and his guitar. As he plucks, a violin enters and then his voice. Listening to him sing was haunting before, when he was alive, now that he’s dead, it seems even more ghostly. Chesnutt proclaims that “the courage of the coward is greater than all other” before crying “and I am a coward!” Bold statement. The way he sings it, it sounds like he’s trying to work up the guts to say anything at all, likes he’s physically dragging the unwanted words out of his mouth. It makes for a powerful image of the broken man. And that doesn’t even describe the music. As the song builds, the intensity rises and the other musicians enter the picture. Picciotto and Efrim Menuck’s guitars sound like the lament of the fall of a great man, and the whole band sounds like they’re in mourning for something. Which is, as I have said before, made even creepier by Chesnutt’s untimely death.
“Coward” provides a good example of the full band songs, and the second song “When the Bottom Fell Out” contrasts starkly with it because it features a lonely Vic Chesnutt and his solo guitar. The song is another sad one (really, he didn’t have happy ones) about falling from a great height. Impossibly though, Chesnutt begins to glide before eventually smashing into the ground below. But the song really feels to me like it’s about being at peace with your situation, even if death is fast approaching. Chesnutt falls and feels terror, but as he approaches the ground, he comes to a place of peace with himself and says, “It’s been pretty great going.” I promise this is the second to last time I’ll say this: It’s freaking me out just how much of this album is about death and how it was his last one. Especially with a song like “When The Bottom Fell Out.” I’ve got chills.
My favorite song on the album by far though, isn’t really about mortality to my knowledge. I’m not honestly sure what it’s about, but I know it’s the most beautiful song on the album and in some ways, the saddest. That song is “Chinaberry Tree,” a full band arrangement that features some of Picciotto and Menuck’s best guitars as well as Jessica Moss’ soaring violin. The song features Chesnutt simultaneously disparaging about and lamenting his need to cut down a great chinaberry tree. The chorus is what get’s me every time, with Chesnutt howling “chinaberry tree” at the top of his mournful voice.
Not to be callous or anything, but it’s nice that Chesnutt went out on such a good note, musically speaking. At The Cut doesn’t have a bad… uh… “cut” on it and that’s a damn rare thing. But there’s something that I just can’t get past. The ninth song on the album is titled “Flirted With You All My Life” which at first appears to be a song about unrequited love but as it progresses reveals itself to be about Death. In the song, Chesnutt traces his close relationship with Death and how it’s hounded him all his life and taken those close to him. More than that, he says at one point how he’s kissed her “once or twice” referring to the times he’s attempted suicide. However, the song’s chorus and end have Chesnutt singing the words “I’m not ready” over and over again. This album came out last year! In less than a year of this album’s release, Chesnutt died. More than that, his death may have been the result of suicide, which makes “Flirted” both incredibly ironic and incredibly sad. Chesnutt was never destined to be super famous or idolized by millions and I’m one of the few people I know who listens to his music. I’m hoping that this review will, if nothing else, convince you to look into this sad but brilliant musician. Oh Vic. If you’ve been flirting with Death all your life, it looks like you’ve kissed her for the last time. I hope sincerely that wherever you are, you’re in a better place. R.I.P.
Hey folks. Today I have a very special broadcast for you. You see, today is my friend Mr. Murren's birthday and in honor of that awesome event, I'd like to play for you a song we both like called "21st Century Schizoid Man." The original version is by King Crimson and I'm going to play that, along with two excellent cover versions. Happy Birthday Murren! Something Classy! Enjoy.
Welcome to another installment of Sound Guardian Radio. Today we've got some excellent music local to the Seattle area lined-up. Seattle has been and is still home to a great music scene and I thought I'd take some time to play you some local favorites of mine. Hope you enjoy.
[Note: I wrote this well before Hologram Jams was released. I plan on doing a follow up piece to this one where I review Hologram Jams. In the mean time, please excuse the speculative ending, I meant to publish this a while ago but got sidetracked. Still. Enjoy!]
The Blood Brothers were the best Seattle band to ever be mis-labeled as Screamo, and that inaccurate description of them annoys me to no end. Just because a band has screamed vocals does not make them a Screamo band. The distinction is that a Screamo band is effectively just an Emo band that screams the words instead of singing them. Both genres are pretentious, insincere and, thankfully, seem to be waning in popularity, at least from where I’m standing anyways.
Back to the point.
The Blood Brothers were not a Screamo band but an arty Post-Hardcore band with screamers for vocalists. Note that last part. The Blood Brothers were blessed with two excellent screamers, Jordan Blilie (the whiny one) and Johnny Whitney (the super whiny one.)
In 2007, The Blood Brothers announced to the world that they were calling it quits, but all of the members of the band have continued forward in music. Actually, all of them still play with each other, but they’ve split the camp down the middle. The two bands that have risen from the ashes, Past Lives (formed by Jordan Blilie, Mark Gajadhar, Devin Welch & Morgan Henderson) and Jaguar Love (formed by Johnny Whitney, Cody Votolato and Jay Clark of Pretty Girls Make Graves,) each feature one of The Blood Brothers two voices and each band sounds distinctly different from the group that spawned them and each other. I plan on talking about both of these bands in time, but for now I’d like to start out with Jaguar Love as their only album thus far, Take Me To The Sea, has been in heavy rotation over the last few days.
The Blood Brothers final album, Young Machetes, aside from being their best, featured a song called “Laser Life” which I feel pointed in the direction of Jaguar Love’s first album, Take Me To The Sea. Like most of The Blood Brothers music, the song was an aggressive screamer but it was also the most Indie sounding and possibly poppiest song on the album, featuring a bouncy keyboard driven sound and hooky vocal lines. Take Me To The Sea, instead of sounding directly derivative of The Blood Brothers usual music, takes on a much more Indie Rock feel, shedding the jagged guitars and unrelenting aggression in favor of cleaner, less spiky guitars and an overall sound that is far more hook laden than The Blood Brothers ever were. Furthermore, the rage that seemed to propel The Blood Brothers music is essentially gone. But thankfully, none of this spells bad news for Jaguar Love’s sound.
The fury may not be there, but the hectic energy remains and Johnny Whitney, Cody Votolato and Jay Clark put it to fantastic use as each track on this album brims with dynamic vigor. Though Clark may have played the majority of the instruments on the album and produced it as well, this is without a doubt Whitney and Votolato’s show. The two… err… “blood brothers” take lead positions on vocals and guitar, respectively, and both prove that they haven’t lost anything since leaving The Blood Brothers. Whitney’s possessed vocals are at the heart of the fiery music and he makes the most of no longer having to share stage or vocal time with Jordan Blilie. Someone once described Whitney’s voice as sounding like “Perry Farrell after a sex change” which is similar to what I thought, that he sounds like Perry Farrell if his balls never dropped. His voice is definitely not for everyone and will be the thing that scares some people away from Jaguar Love’s music, which is a shame.
Whitney doesn’t have a classically “good” singing voice, but he’s mostly dropped the harsher elements of the war cry he used with The Blood Brothers and makes far more effort to actually sing a lot of the songs, rather than just screaming them. His falsetto is something to marvel at, but his lyrics are the real draw. The Blood Brothers always had surrealistic lyrics and it’s nice to see that Whitney hasn’t lost his proclivity for abstractionist turns of phrase. It is also nice to see the expansion of sound that started on Young Machetes continue in Jaguar Love’s music. In addition to some excellent electric guitar and drum work, Take Me To the Sea features washes of Wurlitzer organs, occasional string sections and even a marimba and acoustic guitars on “Bats Over The Pacific Ocean” which is one of the best songs on the album and also one that best differentiates Jaguar Love’s sound from both The Blood Brothers and Past Lives.
My favorite songs on the album are straight rockers though. “Jaguar Pirates” begins with a rolling intro that then erupts into a bombastic, hook loaded fist-pumper that features some of Whitney’s most… well… jaguar-like screeches. Another great one is the organ drenched “Georgia” in which Whitney gives crooning a try, and it works out pretty well. But by far my favorite song on the album is “Humans Evolve Into Skyscrapers” which begins misleadingly with programmed drum beats before Votolato’s lightning charged guitar rips in, quickly followed by Whitney’s adrenalin rushed vocals. The song is an anthem and may not feature Whitney’s most inspired chorus in “everybody, get the fuck out, everything is so fucked up now” before screaming “mass exodus! Black streets bleached black” at the top of his voice, but the rest of lyrics in the song convey his usual surrealistic bent. I don’t really know what the song is about, but I like it and the chorus features my favorite vocal hook of anything on the album.
With Take Me To The Sea, Jaguar Love proved their worth and that they’re more than just The Blood Brothers-light. The album had great sound, lyrics and execution but we’re unlikely to ever hear it live. Here’s why: for reasons I don’t know, Jay Clark left the band and Whitney and Votolato decided to continue on as a duo, playing to a drum machine. They also declared that they would only ever play three songs from the album “Highways Of Gold,” “Bats Over The Pacific Ocean” and “Jaguar Pirates” and that they had gone so far as to completely re-work them for the new setup. The new Jaguar Love material moves far away from the Indie Rock direction of their first album and into more dancy-electroclash territory. Having heard the first single from their forthcoming second album, I’m not sure what to think of this. It’s good, but it’s not better than Take Me To The Sea. But one single doesn’t always spell doom for an entire album and who knows? Maybe Jaguar Love will do the move to Electroclash correctly and it’ll be like if the Yeah Yeah Yeahs had produced a good album with It’s Blitz. We’ll have to wait and see.
Ladies and Gentlemen. Welcome to another broadcast from Sound Guardian Radio. Today will be the first in a series of artist profiles which I'll start throwing in amongst other radio pieces. To start us off, I thought I'd profile the work of a favorite vocalist of mine: Mark Lanegan. Lanegan started off his career as the vocalist for Seattle Grunge band Screaming Trees, but since that band broke up in the early 2000's, Lanegan has been rather prolific, working with everyone from Queens Of The Stone Age to Greg Dulli (with whom he formed the band The Gutter Twins.) He's got quite the baritone and after you hear him sing once you'll usually be able to recognize his work. With this broadcast I'm going to play you a selection of four songs from Lanegan's post-Screaming Trees work, including songs from his collaborations with Queens Of The Stone Age, Isobel Campbell and Soulsavers, as well as a song from his solo work. Here's hoping you enjoy!
))Monoliths.jpg)
Posts
