(Drive-In 21)

Lovely Aussie Pop that recalls the hearty jangle and innocent tunesmithery of The Go-Betweens– who I like– with extra helpings of harmonica, cello, trumpet and female harmonies that remind me of Belle and Sebastian– who I don’t, especially.

Can’t say that any Australian band has produced a song as good as “Carravanna,” even though I admit the Go-Betweens’ “Bye Bye Pride” is mighty good too.

–Dave Harrison

A Minor Forest– Inindependence (Thrill Jockey 56)

So maybe I go off a little half-cocked sometimes.

But damn, I guess I just got a little tired of that “post-rock” word and went off on the last Tortoise album. And I’ll not take any of that back.

You’d expect Thrill Jockey to put me (and the rag that prints me) on the negative guestlist, but suddenly we get not one but two Thrill Jockey releases in the mail! Either they’s masochists, or just want to see how het up I can get.

(Or, I suspect, they just didn’t read the Tortoise review. Anyhoo, both of these are good albums and worthy of your patronage. They couldn’t be more different from each other.)

Pullman is an all-acoustic star-jam with Bundy Brown (Directions), Chris Brokaw (Come), Curtis Harvey and Doug McCombs (Tortoise). Before you start thinking, “Oh God, like one of those Tesla ‘Five Man Acoustical Jam’ things?,” rest assured that none of these people has long hair or wears denim on stage. Including acid-washed denim underpants.

Turnstyles. . . is closer to Jim O’Rourke’s Bad Timing album from last year, albeit broken down into nice little three-minute chunks and without the tape manipulation. All of these pieces come off as being heartfelt, and more importantly, just plain felt… I can see these people playing and getting into the music as music, not merely getting into theories about what discrete musical unit goes where. Perfect, wholly organic music for sitting around on the back porch as you slowly fan yourself with your straw boater.

A Minor Forest come from another place, a louder place that shares a border with Spiderland. So they sound like Slint.

But whiff this: that’s not a bad thing. We just got jaded. The first song is the album in a nutshell. “The Dutch Fist” opens up with some anthemic slow-core power riffage, big ol’ drums and what sounds like doves cooing (my fave touch on the album). It goes on, gets some steam up, things get faster and louder, the tape breaks (oh, yeah, this is a Thrill Jockey release!) and they start again, finally descending into something very loud, spastic and pummeling indeed. And since this is, as I mentioned not one sentence earlier, a Thrill Jockey release, they have the requisite 18 minute long epic but the difference here is that it’s 18 minutes of the same song and not seven songs cobbled together by studio drones, a la “Djed.”

Listen to it, enjoy it, smack your head about to it, and marvel at this fact: all musicians on this album are also part of a Metallica tribute band. You think Tortoise would cross the street to spit on Metallica? The fact that I (or you, possibly) wouldn’t either is barely the point. You know what I’m saying.

— T. Magill

What Another Man Spills

(Merge 146)

My first reaction to the new Lambchop album is lovely.

And then I think how do they get away with it?

Kurt Wagner’s ever expanding orchestra of the absurd (now up to fourteen members, all completely necessary, I am sure) wanks about with bedtime stories concerning desperate losers, dog piss and dead ends and does it in a way that suggests that that is all there is, which is a downer fer shure but told with such gentleness and empathy that you can’t help but feel good when they crack a genuine smile. That many of those unreserved moments of bonhomie come on covers is telling, but who cares when you realize that “Give Me Your Love (Love Song)” is a Curtis Mayfield number replete with disco strings and Cooz-o-tron Mark ’75 bass?

If you can dislocate your disbelief bonehard enough, you’ll be grooving along with ‘em. Plus my pal Kadugan maintains that their cover of “I’ve Been Lonely for So Long” is the perfect couples-skate song for down at the Golden Rollerbowl. Damn. Betcha I’ll be down there asking for it next Saturday, in my best old tie, rollerskating backwards and trying to get lucky with the rest of the beautiful losers.

See you there.

–T. Magill

(Touch and Go)

Pull over, pop quiz time! Get yer hand out of yer pants and answer this simple-to-answer question.

Which has the shortest lifespan?

a) a live oyster at a raw bar

b) a TV show starring a Wayans brother

c) any band — such as Circus Lupus, Las Mordidas or the Monorchid — featuring Chris Thompson

Time’s up! It’s C !

And in the time it took to do that, our boy has already dissolved the Monorchid and started another band, this one called Skull Control. This impatience would be funny if the bands were flails, but man, anything Chris Thompson does turns to gold and the Monorchid were no different, with two laser-guided guitars dog-fighting it out and a bottom end that chews up and spits out concepts like ‘swing’ and ‘funk’ and makes your ass move.

So he’s riding off into sunset number three behind an album of rants in the classical sense, angry, breathless and exhilirating. And what’s so touching is that he’s not just spouting off at the mouth but he’s got an agenda against the high priests and poseurs that he thinks are killing punk rock (who cares if it’s an outmoded concept, so is Super 8 and people still love that). And if he goes a little bit overboard a song called “‘A’ was for Anarchy” with a chorus that has him proclaim “Don’t you see / I care / that’s why” well, hell, at least someone still cares. Extremism in the defence of liberty if no vice, if fact might be the one ultimate rock and roll lifestyle.

So let’s not let the man scream alone in the wilderness. The $12.99 you spend on this album will go towards an ass-save of rock and roll, and charity begins at home, and so on.

–T. Magill

(Teenbeat 252)

Sound-track music for a 90′s John Hughes analogue?

Indie party music?

Or just Mark Robinson’s continuing early-80′s fetish shooting through a new hole?

Little bit of all three.

The story here. . and this is actually a pretty selfless move, one that only makes Mark R. seem like all the nicerdude. . . ain’t the famous one. This is not Mark Robinson’s band,though he’s the reason for the season and plays some guitar.

This band belongs solely to the rhythm unit, being bassist Nattles from the (defunct? hope not) Cold Cold Hearts and Matt Datesman, who has played drums for every Charlottesville band ever and now looks to take over the Arlington area as well.

Half of the songs here (the first half,for the most part) really work the low end, highlight being foghorn basswork on “Moose Jaw”. Otherwise, it’s Olympic Death Squad part two.

Which is pleasant enough, but man, when you got the drummer, you oughta always… always… let him get some.

—T.Magill

(Digital Hardcore 16)

The sound of Digital Hardcore Recordings is the sound computers make when they scream. DHR pushes everything into the red and beyond.

The formula seems simple Crank the gain on every sound you have until the essence of Slayer is manifested in your sampler. Usually this means Digital Hardcore Recordings, however, are little more than an ambiguous cacophony of static. Fine if you’re a noise rock outfit, but DHR purports to be a dance label of sorts.

DHR founder and Atari Teenage Rioter Alec Empire understands that you have to know the rules in order to break them. Unlike label-mates such

as Shizou, EC8OR and Bomb 20, (Christophe DeBabalon being a notable exception), Empire definitely has an understanding of dance music and “Groove.” His solo work ranks as some of the most experimental electronic music produced to date.

The Destroyer is a collection of mainly breakbeat and drum & basstracks recorded in 1996, with a live piece recorded in 1994. The 14 trackson the album show Empire at his hardcore best, foreshadowing the hard dance trends popularized a few years later by the likes of The Prodigy and Fatboy Slim. Cuts such as “ThePeak” and “We All Die!” display a calculated sonic fury yet to be captured by any other electronic act to date.

And absent are the sophomoric ravings and posturings of Atari Teenage Riot. The Destroyer is pure distilled angst. Empire’s crunchy beats draw the listener into a frenetic groove while crashing, distorted synthstabs and bomb-dropped basslines blast away any hint of boogie. This is dance music truly fit for Slayer fans. After hearing his solo work, you get the impression that Empire might singularly be behind all that is good about DHR.

The Destroyer stands as a huge middle finger flying in the face of dance music. If you just want indiscriminate noise, save your CD money,and tune your radio to a dead channel and pump it, yo.

– Tony P.

Alternative Stereo Sounds

(Bobsled)

By its very nature, pop music means different thingsto different generations, even though each generation (and sub-generation;you can plan on a five-year purge) expects it to stick for all eternity.

To my (older) sister’s gang, “pop”meant the Monkees’ “Last Train To Clarksville,” and to her, a pop songstill has to have jangly guitars, two-dozen vocal hooks and a break wheremost of the instruments drop out.

My version of pop– built around DwightTwilley’s “I’m On Fire”single that I bought when I was 14– is apurer pop, completely removed from country and blues, allowing for twodozen XTC album cuts but virtually none of their singles. In this popvision, Nilsson’s “Me and My Arrow” is “Stairway ToHeaven,” and Nick Lowe’s Labour Of Lust is Exile On Main Street.

To my friend Sue in New York, “pop”is– and always will be– Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer” multi-trackedvocals, a beat that doesn’t distract and lyrics that absolutely have tobe about failed or failing love.

I’ve decided that Adventures In Stereo have put out the absolute greatest pop record of thedecade, but I’m not sure that’s gonna mean a whole lot to Grip-ites, given that no less a resource than The Trouser Press Alt Guide throws the “pop” term at bands as disparate GreenDay, Pere Ubu and My Life With The Thrill Kill Cult.

I can really only describe Adventures’songs in terms of fast pop (“Down

In The Traffic”), dream pop (“Dream SurfBaby”), and slow pop (“Brand New

Day”). It’s so pure, there’s reallynothing else to compare it to, save for the peppier songs from the firsttwo St. Etienne albums. Judith Boyle’s vocals (sometimesdouble-tracked, Sue!) float over Jim Beatty’s melodic, perfectly minimalguitars.

So let’s try it like this if GreenDay is your idea of pop, this is western swing. If My Life With the ThrillKill Cult fills the bill, think of Alternative Stereo Sounds as ultimate grunge.

And if you think the second-to-the-last Dave Matthews Band single is perfect pop, we’ll have to negotiate.

-ÐDave Harrison

The Thicket

(Drag City 160)

It’s no secret to anyone who reads this quaintlittle sheet of ours that I was deeply conflicted as to the worth of thelast Gastr del Sol album, in a way that only someone with way too muchfree time can be.

( I mean, I wrote something like fourdrafts of that review! It cut seriously into my drinking time! It was lifeor death! Yes! I was that fucked up!)

In the end I said that it was Jim O’Rourke’s last album with David Grubbs so we might have to hang it up on the Gastr brand.The bad news is that I was right.The good news that David went out and gothisself a proper band, with John McEntire on drums, Tony Conrad on violin and Josh Abrams on bass. Plus a flŸgelhorn, because this isGrubbs and he’s gonna do dumb shit like that.

The great news is that this is one ofDavid’s best albums, including the old Bastro stuff, and it’s goodsongs you can hum. Uh-huh.

It seems that our boys listened toO’Rourke’s Bad Timing album (whaddaya mean you… just… go out and buy acopy, you twerp!) and decided to try to make some equally pleasantmusic for backroad straightaways.

And there are some genuinely pleasantpassages on here, folksy guee-tar noodling and banjo strumming and theflŸgelhorn rounding out the sound quite nicely, natch. It’s notgetting in the way in any case. And Grubbs might (just might) be evidencinga sense of humor on one song, where “the wickedspace-cow upended the candle generator.” ‘Course, immediatelythereafter he starts talking about observing cool flames in zero-gravity,so he was probably just distracted.

Speaking of, where’s the Serious Art? Does it got it? In spades, man, chill out.(‘Cuz, man, I’m jonesin’ fer summa that art!) With a heavy hitterlike Tony Conrad around (he worked with LaMonte Young and explored thetextures of drones and so on oh dee do dah day), it’s a matter of timebefore you get a plaintive, beautiful slab like the twosongs on ‘Worship’. To me, they sound like awe, straight up, likedawn breaking wet over a new ocean, one note pulled with harsh but lovingcare as far as it can go.

‘Course, I played it at work, andMurph the Surf asked me where I got a CD of an Emergency Broadcast Systemalarm. Bunch of god-damn yahoos where I work. It’s all in the ear of thebeholder, I guess. And I know you. If you’ve read this much of the review, you’ll like it. Because you want to.

— T. Magill

Finally A Va. band that I can personally guarantee that Greil Marcus would pop a chub over.

How cliched is this story, three high-schoolers practice in their basements for a couple of years getting it just right and then pop up at an open mic night and wow a label CEO, in doing so making the five grand they need to save the farm from the evil debt collector (played by Bob Hoskins). Two out of those three things apply to the band that I will hereafter, for space’s sake, refer to as Union. They sound like an avalanche of glass, or maybe like excited atoms of TNT making that last surge just before they get their activation energy going. It’s a brutal assault.

I was there when they showed up that night at Tokyo Rose, and nobody was expecting this, an unholy skree-ingracket with layers and layers of ooey-gooey feedback and enough spasmorhythmic drive to propel the entire Riverdance crew through a wall of cobras and spikes, and seemingly played for that very same purpose. Add to that the sort of home experimentation that I hold so dear (short wave radio, a violin played like a bandsaw, Red Ryder wagon with coils for the beating) and I had to stop myself from calling Greil up myself and telling him to hitch up the old bandwagon again, it’s a new art-punk era, it hails from Staunton (where the cool kids live) and we better get straight for the last supper. Later, over at Jameson’s, I calmed down and told myself no, they’re just one of the five best bands around. That’s still something.

The only bands I’ve heard that are anything close are Bastro and maybe the Hal al-Sheddad, but latter comparison might just be ’cause they’re young’uns playing with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake as well. But they’re just punks, God love ‘em. Union’s a lot more than that. They’ve got their own ideas, as well. I’m glad they put this out before anyone else could mess with them.

T. Magill

(Drag City 145)

“People in Charlottes-ville seem to be a) Not really ambitious, and b) Kind of inhibited,” Dave Berman told the magazine, Magnet following the release of his band’s second CD, Natural Bridge, last year.

“I think the I.Q. level in Charlottesville is a little too high, just high enough to keep there from being any hell-raisers, or people willing to do anything uninhibited and let go. Everyone seems a little bit too uptight and self-conscious.”

Touche and bully for Berman. The singer / songwriter / frontman said something that needed to be said.

Only trouble is this particular social critic who never played live in Charlottesville while he lived here, who backed out of the ONE local gig he was supposed to appear at over a year ago in Charlottesville, who wouldn’t be labeled as an uninhibited guy in even the most frenzied of circumstances, and who no one can claim writes songs that personify any form of anarchic dick-wigglin’ or righteous supporting of lost community causes was at the same time backing out of an interview with a Grip writer because a reviewer, in the course of a mostly rave writeup back in Grip #1, hadn’t appreciated Natural Bridge to the fullest extent of acceptable critical praise.

Uh, excuse me. I don’t mean to be uptight and self-conscious– (I knew I shouldn’t have read that damn press kit!)– but. . . Hello? It was us? WE WERE KEEPING DR.GIGGLES FROM BEING THE UNINHIBITED, HELL-RAISING, LAMPSHADE-WEARING, LIFE O’ THE PARTY HE SO DESPERATELY WANTED TO BE?

I don’t think so.

Despite his local connections, his Charlottesville address for mail and his many bon mots about Virginia, Berman has since moved his theoretic trouble-makin’ ways to Austin, Texas; the nation’s premier college town; the town with, statistically, the nation’s largest I.Q. average; a place that (for all its amazing qualities and love for boho-thought) could be labeled the Six Flags of anal-retentive academic self-involvement. Way above Charlottesville. Hot, too!

Hmmmmm. . . . don’t forget to write.

Did it ever occur to Dave that overly-educated, pampered “poets” might be part of the problem that he himself very succinctly points out in these goddamn high I.Q. college towns? In any case, it would’ve been interesting to read this auteur debate his half-formed geographic conclusions with someone who might’ve been able to call him on his shit.

Anyway– Surprise, Surprise The Silver Jews’ new American Water is pretty damn great.

The heavy involvement of Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus (absent on the first two Jews discs) may or may not be the root and cause, but there are actual tunes here (finally!) to complement Mr. Poet’s sardonic word play and parable-making. At times you begin to understand what it is that many intelligent critics have heard all along in the guy. For one thing, unlike most self-absorbed poets on the Drag City roster (Roll over Bill Callahan and tell this new guy Plush the news), Berman does possess a sense of humor, even if it often takes those of us who didn’t get our diplomas a while to sneak up on his jokes.

(Hey, maybe that Charlottesville quote was Dave’s idea of a joke too. Let’s hope.)

To me Berman’s earlier Jews releases can’t match the more lively setting of American Water (“People” is the closest thing to a happy popsong he’s written yet. Damn good tune, too), and a prime dosage of electric guitar colorings add another dimension to the atmosphere– the music that surrounds Berman’s folk fabling is finally as lively as the words.

Berman’s pipes are also at their best– although some would argue that what he does is more speak-sing than sing at times — something that’s also been said of accomplice Malkmus. But the music is up to the task of support, and those oblique lyrics bend to the shape of the music and not viceversa an important lesson that other would-be musical poets should note. Your words can be great, but if they don’t feel like music, you should stick to the chapbook.

Maybe moving out of uptight Charlottesville was the best thing for our Poet after all. American Water should get a lot of attention and it’ll deserve it. Still, let’s hope Berman lays off his old hometown in the next round of press interviews, and who wants to bet me we’ll find him in Ann Arbor or Berkeley around Silver Jews album #5, talking the same shit?

— Don Harrison