HOLD ON FOR HIATUS

As y'all've probably gathered like good kids oughta, I'll be taking a break from this for the next month or so, as an odyssey awaits me. If you happen to live in Lumberton NC, the Outer Banks, Krumville or Munnsville NY, Barre VT, or Parts Unknown ME, drop me a digital line and I'll come do my laundry on your tab and throw shoes at your pets. You'll be sorry I came. I'll be too drunk to remember. It'll be fantastic.
Then I'll be returning--from new digs!--hopefully with some kickin slices to talk on. Keep watching your skis and always eat your oatmeal. Or at least until mid-September. I'll know.

Church Police - Gilligan's Wings (7", Skulltones 2007)

Call me a cynical Northerner (read: a Northerner), but Skulltones is pretty over--and I don't mean that in a carny/pro-wrestling way--right?. I mean, they're finished, washed-up & 86'ed. I generally mount up on anything Tom Lax gets his mitts on, but I guess I missed the Der TPK debutante ball. I had the directions straight, but apparently my feet thought better.
So here we are. Another Jewelled Antler-sponsored drunk-in-the-studio one-off to be consumed by 8 people who all know each other. To the credit of the whole JA crew, they's got a sense of humor their peers oughta envy. I'd much rather give 16-minutes to something that at the very least sounds like a blast to make than something that sounds like it's supposed to have been "a really intense trip, man. We totally got out there. Really stretching and reaching through some doors." That is, if it's going to suck about 5 different ways regardless. Which this mostly does. "Life is Fun" is the best delirious wastoid rumble never to be on a Footprints of God 7"--for whatever it's worth. Kind of like the Bunnybrains doing German Oak. Yeah. There's my press release quote, Skulltones. Dine and be merry, for tomorrow you're boots. For rill.

AND WITH A HEARTY MEH

Agitated Radio Pilot & Nether Dawn - The Ghost of Medb/Under Your Night (split vinyl Pseudo Arcana)

So apparently months and months ago I wrote this review and some shady Internet business went down and it was relegated to the land of unwanted drafts. I don't remember a lick of this. Too much mud or too much Canadian; decide if you wish. So, moons and moons later, here is another tirade on some thangs:


Soon. Soon I will take a break and go back to reviewing dumpy black metal or maybe not review anything for a bit. Music is starting to feel like homework. It's hard enough to keep track of what new shit I've got, nevermind what I actually think about it.
So here we are again. I put this on and I let it play. I thought I knew Nether Dawn from Last Visible Dog's something or other but apparently I was mistaken. They're from somewhere. Who knows. Agitated Radio Pilot could be anyone of any gender recording anywhere in the world right now near as I can tell. It's got all the pretty, lilting festoonery of aged lore and forgotten colored paper and...oh shit! I started falling asleep there for a minute. Nothing stood out. Drones drone. I mean, what else do they do? Really good ones work their way into your head until they wind through the muscles in your back and then you're linked good & proper. It's like a bulldozer: you don't just hand it to anyone and expect him to know how to steer. And folk'll tell me I should be glad to hear boring drone and raga'ed-up folk than, say, bad metal. But it's all the same to me: you is or you ain't, and ain't no use in being anything but what you is. See the Cloudland Canyon bit for more unnecessarily heated ranting.
Anyhow, I like the Nether Dawn side because they at least smother their sound rather than gettin all cathedral on me. Don't we get enough of that these days? I mean, ND's "Sky Dust" had me with my ear to the floor, rather than thinking I was at Pseudo Arcana's midnight mass. And the melodies are challenging, in a loose and lopsided way. The point being, I'm not sorry I heard them. This might not climb to the top of some imaginary list in my head nor be something I cling to and put on for friends who want to know where you go after you've already heard the Congos and Dead C. Then again, I've got a ton of stuff like that. You know, sometimes you're hungry, but not just for anything. And maybe the spot you find the most fresh-dipped is closed for remodeling or the line's around the block. So you take a walk down a street that's kind of familiar but you don't recognize a single face. You see an open booth through a window framed with patterned curtains and you go inside and sit down. The menu looks appealing, nice layout, staff is mint, floor's pretty clean. Food arrives quickly. It doesn't change your life, but it's not cloying and now you've assuaged hunger. Doesn't mean you'll be back, but who can say. Who can say?

Davenport Family - At the Foot of Zodiac Mountain (Meu Dia De Morte 2007)

The Korean lady at World of Beverage tried like hell to convince me the 8oz flask I was buying was lined with glass inside so the hooch wouldn't taste like steel. And the whole time I'm waiting for her to bag my shit up, some round-faced greasewig is asking me what part of CT I'm from. New Haven, I say. Might as well be from Harlem, he says. I laughed right in his face. What else was there to do? Anyhow, I didn't buy the glass-lining bit for a second, but I did buy the flask. Astounding what someone will convince herself so she can convince you to drop eight more bills. Round here we call that carny.
The Davenport Family sure is trying hard to get the money of many a bearded, fussy-shoe-wearing clown on a fixed gear. Go ahead. Judge the cover. If you must, you can even put it on and revel in the unexciting, aping, gaping, yawning smudge upon your boombox. Jackie-O Neck Blues Band of the Occult Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants.
Available wherever v-neck t-shirts and things with stripes on them are waiting outside. Or hoof on over to Fusetron, if you must.

FEEL THE MEDIOCRITY

SISTERS OF SLAB - Two splits of dichotymous proportions

Tyvek & Cheveu - Split 7" (S-S Records, 2007)
Y'all read my Cheveu-sponsored jissom last time around, so all I can do is echo. Their track, "El Tortuga" is about 5 brands of swank in under 2min. They inhabit that space where teenage debauchery turns into a spin off the road while the speakers blow and the tires haven't hit the mud yet and all there is to feel is the beauty of the change in wind direction and that sinking uneven feeling in your gut. Can't say I'm as in love with the Tyvek side. Don't get me wrong, it does 1980 real well, but so did 1980. Nice dipped-out ending though. Fresh enough you could probably still buy it. Check the dudes themselves.

Michael Yonkers & Little Claw - Split 7" (X!, 2007)
Now I know Messer Yonkers is an outsider of Jandek/Skidd Freeman proportions, but I think he might be looking over his own shoulder too much. At least at the outset. "I Think" is like a Kim Fowley pisstake on Big Black, which doesn't really need to happen. "The Drain" on the other hand is like a Richard Kern nightmare party. It could be 20 years old, or it could be brand new, but it's bound to irritate you right out of your chair any which way.
I'll take Little Claw any day they're free. Kilynn makes none of the lady sounds usually found in these bang-and-clang bands--not sweet, not aimlessly snarling, not screechy, not childlike. She comes across like a person, not a person personifying an idea. Meantime, the band stirs and steams like a Warren Oates flick waiting for the moment to smoke. Their "Ice Age" reaffirms my position that Kim and Thursty should've squalled their last like mad years ago. Fuck a...Jesus, I don't even know what the last record was called. Pretty In Pink? Ah, there was some kinda alliterati for the literati in there. Fuck it. You know.
And, of course, only then do I notice they've kicked jams on Ecstatic Peace. Ha! The dish is officially passed, I guess. Why not catch it? Look in the horse's mouth to find the tools of Paypal conquest.

NO AND YES, and then MAYBE AND YES... So that's TWO YESES

21st CENTURY SCHIZOID RUBE - Keeping Up With the Jaspers

In an effort to be less mud-stuck and snarky, which I assure you is both noble and aimless, I'm going to try to catch up on the goings on of two much-oozed-over acts and see if I actually give a shit or if I can convince some other sap to do likewise.

JAY REATARD
I think I've heard everything he's put out this year by his lonesome--so far. We are talking about a scene full of people who have fallen in the YouTube-gen trap of thinking everything is worth preserving, even if it's only in an edition of 4.5 & given to dudes with bigger beards than waists. This shit's been a club for longer than I've been breathin y'all's air, so no surprises all around that the Reatard club's a piece of junkmail with fancy packaging while I'm waiting for a letter from a nice girl: when I actually surpass my irritation and give it 5 minutes of my time, I get the dull taste of being right the first time around. Not offensive, sure, but basically just passable. They're songs. You know. Songs. I remember liking the B-sides on the Night of Broken Glass 12", but that's probably because I hated the A-sides. Anyhow, the whole thing is amazingly unremarkable and totally worth your time and eBay watch list. Available through places that have things that I also didn't want so I don't remember them.

CHEVEU - My Answer Is Yes 7" (Rob's House, 2007)
Okay, I'll bite. I actually really liked this. I keep expecting to be massively underwhelmed by all this post-punk-post-punk coming out of the seams, but then a lot of it cooks and I get all blushy. Cheveu take their master's tools out for the weekend and give you a Saturday and a Sunday unlike anything those old dudes would've thunk of but still make them wanna put their new boots on. Some glorious Pstone Suicide with the bloke from the Tronics sangin'. Or something. I didn't check my facts. It's fussy in a vintage-keyboard-not-some-shit-Rebirth way, and not in a balalaika-over-Hagstrom kind of way. This should become suitably huge and then jump the shark like most good things. Hey, you've got to learn to love the cycle or love being mad all the damn time, right? Plus, in the meantime I get to take a modicum of pride in my home's own Rob's House Records seeing the power & the glory and bringing this to my neighborhood. Go get it at S-S Records or Fusetron if you please.

YOU WANT HALF OF THIS

KVLTY WORKRATE REPORT! Skaters - Dispersed Royalty Ornaments (LP, Ore Wabana Limited 2007)

Okay PR is PR and I ain't talking San Juan, but damn does Wabana lay it on thick! They set these here Skaters to share a booth with Coltrane, Sanders, and Ayler like they was gonna nosh. Dubious, right? So, who picks up the tab & who's shooting up in the alley?

WHAT WORKED:
-Mint cover and mint title. Land of Make-Believe dowries blow right up me.

- I can't blame zeal-overload on the poor put-upon Skaters. They didn't write it and I'm sure they could care less what some bloke called Justin thinks of their bedroom disturbance.
Still, I didn't so much get the free-jazz linkage as the far more obvious Sun City Girls and Far East-jocking. What with the mysterious monkey cackling and bowed strings and under-production, you know. Dom's Edge of Time occasionally came through the Minsk-y warble to bury me in space dust, so this isn't all one-point perspective.

-It's got that Finnish underground structure that the kids seem to love and I've got my soft spots for. You know, where the things are all doing one thing or another and then they do something harmonious and then they do something beautiful and unexpected and strange and then it all comes to a klunky hault? Yeah yeah, like that! Pop Gold, right? Well...

WHAT DIDN'T WORK:
-This just isn't going to catch many spins from me. Once more around the track is probably as far as the Skaters will get. Too much of one thing, not enough of anything else--at least for 38 minutes of my undivided.

NOT ENOUGH MELTED KNOWLEDGE