Mothers (2016)

Whether or not the listener believes in Fat White Family as Stooge-ian fools / harbingers of the end of times plus gross-out humour as much as the listener wants to whenever she reads about Fat White Family as Stooge-ian fools " ", Songs For Our Mothers is one of the year's best pop-rock records so there

norman / -o- / spotify

Fever (2016)

Michael Morley doing disco tapes didn't surprise me, but it did worry me- with Fear of Music he aped rock riffs so as to belittle and destroy their 'power' and I hoped to god he was not going to try and give disco the same treatment. As it transpires I should stop being defensive and second-guessing people because there is nothing but affection for disco here and any way Morley at this stage in his career samples rather than mimics- it's soaring strings and repetitive grooves (the latter will not surprise, the former might) processed into 4 x ~10 minute songs where as is customary with Gate the sounds become a single oppressive texture, the songs deteriorate, the voice and guitars are exhausted from the start and either dissolve into the fabric of the song, or collapse along with it. What the uplifting/catchy structures do is reconfigure the guitars as an assault when that is necessary, which is exciting on its own, but I am more driven to the moments where the samples win out- the final stretch of Licker for example sends the heart soaring as the body disintegrates. as weary as it is hopeful

mie / -o- / juno

A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty (2016)

The Body announced that this would be their pop album and they absolutely were not kidding! Like a productive rapper, each of the band's output is to a large extent determined by whoever they've collaborated with in bringing it about, and whereas their (very good) collaboration with Full of Hell this year had The Body playing 'weird' as a foil, No One Deserves Happiness shifts the focus of their electronics from doomy atmospherics (e.g. handled by The Haxan Cloak) to dorky weird preset keys and sound effects, handled by I'm not sure who, maybe the band themselves. It's full of beats and jarring keyboards, and even reminds of The Ark Work in places for its glaring lack of interest in subsuming bedroom midi bits into a serious metal sound-world, but goes the extra step (forward or backward? I still can't tell) of still containing those serious metal sounds, and in The Body's case, arty excursions and weird collages to go with their very very (very) real fear of being human.

Thinking about Tim Hecker, Andy Stott, and Klara Lewis' 2016 albums there seems to be a trend in electronic music towards untreated sounds and textures (following from 2013's R Plus Seven and Yeezus), even within 'dark' electronics (where the sources have traditionally gone invisible). The Body noticed and consequently No One Deserves Happiness is as bizarre, 'contemporary', and bring the noise spontaneous as one could ever desire.

bandcamp / -o- / thrilljockey / norman

Moenai Hai (2016)

Juntaro Yamanouchi returns after disappearing for fifteen years and out comes Moenai Hai. It all begins with laughter which heard in light of the imagined Juntaro-the-person could either be life-affirming (a welcome back to the world of the living) or alienating (when we begin to think who or what caused the laughter). Surrounded by its sparse and tense ambient pieces is the fifteen minute The Gerogerigegege, an unexpected statement of intent from the officially living Juntaro which also happens to be the year's most beautiful guitar piece. The others might be private despair pulled from recordings of public spaces, but this one is performed to feel and to stir feelings in the listener as well- it is impossibly destructive but also pleading, desperate, and alive

-o-

that present (2014)

I'm gonna get you that present. Give me all your money, baby.

On the one hand, fleeting moodpieces. On the other, atmosphere (pulling that one out, lazily explaining why something appeals as being more than just the sum of its parts without having to put anything into words) and thematic coherence as flow (again...).

Which might describe the movie quite well, actually. Maybe it's secretly a musical!

Less about the presence of silence than the last JVW record I heard, more about the layering of cacophony into something pissed off, indifferent, and thoroughly felt. Cynics snort at rockist + Romantic clichés, but it's nice to think that if it's all gone to shit then what remains is love. And if that's too gooey, we've still got the Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light series for those who like their drones mortal.

try
stream
buy

(Dead) 2013

Oooooh I don't know, I put it up there with The White House!!!! Challenges and forces its audience to react while maintaining a level of admittedly unconventional entertainment and payoff. No senseless (noise philosophical) migraines, all mindsplit feels.

mega / buy

Vows (2013)

Things I'm reminded of when listening to Slave Vows: how much I wanted to like The Icarus Line before even hearing them 'cause they looked like a handsome death metal band, how The Icarus Line dissed The Strokes when I was still in love w The Strokes and people said 'diss', how The Icarus Line called The Strokes '$ellout$' or something even though The $troke$ always sounded cynically planned if not entirely manufactured (like heaps of good pop!), how Joe Cardamone went all Birthday Party and I stopped paying attention to his band having 'discovered' The Birthday Party/Jesus Lizard/whatever, probably thanks to being 'warmed up' to that shit prior via the much celebrated Penance Soiree which for all of its praise sounded to me, and this is why I liked it back then, like Marilyn fucking Manson, something about how Aaron North was mean to the crowd at their Auckland show, something about mental collapse, how that same year I went to a festival solely to see The $troke$ and $Metallica$ and left permanently suspicious of both epics and hipster apathy, I hear Iggy Pop (inevitably), and Damo Suzuki (surprisingly), and the bullshit rockist figurative-athons stemming from the same born-too-late anxiety that lead to the garage rock revival of the 000s (and helped Penance Soiree reach the ridic audience it did, no doubt) have become the go-to method for describing Slave Vows and what's worse is something like this, but I'm having an operation in 3 hours! and I'm bored and hungry and all I wanted from this, 'cause I don't care whether rock's dead or alive or in the process of being 'saved', was to be excited and engaged, and oh hey this one sounds like Suicide, and it's excited me, but I want it LOUDER, so I'm gonna lie in bed for the next 2 days with headphones and Slave Vows and see if maybe the born-too-late-rs are right for once again, and think about this, as corny as it is, I thought it was defining at the time I left that $trotellica$ festival, for those of us already dead or alone or in stasis who want anything other than music designed to embody this state (they call it ennui!) or avoid acknowledging it altogether (epix), something which impulsively or intuitively breaks from it, in spite of it, having lived with it, and hating it, like it's not some cynical and so profound truth of our age but an inevitable bad luck which maybe real expression can cure: Slave Vows may or may not be just this on an individual level, but it's intended that way and so well worth a shot:

“In previous years I’ve put out records that have been too long, because I’ve been working on them for like four fuckin’ years, and I’ve imagined it’s probably the last one I’ll ever do, so I just put everything on there. But at this point in my life, I don’t really give a fuck anymore. I know I’m gonna make records for as long as I’m alive, so I’m not as precious any more, I don’t care. This thing only exists so we can be happy and do something that matters to us, and to the people who need this as much as we do.”

try / where to buy(?)

PERISH (2013)

I love a good scream and it's a shame that in becoming a sort of staple of heavy music, it's so often reduced to something mechanical, obligatory, or matter-of-fact. Like the distorted guitar, it's frequently used without reflection, missing its potential for the simple empathetic transmission of feels from musician to listener. This year two albums (at least) have re-examined this potential (direct-expression-of-human-suffering-or-feeling)- Master, We Perish and Abandon, returning the scream to something startling, physical, and abstract- my first holy fuck that's a scream moment being the first time I heard Milk It having bought In Utero 'cause it was cheaper, and the nonsense line "doll steak, test meat" meaning infinitely more than any of the singer's sung poetics. On Master, We Perish I'm reminded of the guy singing for Weakling, shrieking in agony trying make his way out of the band's whirlwind of brootal noise. It's importantly human as the instruments shift and change- a tribal drum could turn into a jackhammer, and other voices seem disembodied- whether original or sampled, they become part of Master, We Perish's noisy collage. Vocals more typical of the slightly misleading 'sludge' tag might make it sound entirely like music in a blender, but the ones they've gone for seem to react to the collage's themes of devotion and ritual suicide (rather than say glamorizing or condoning these things), giving everything a real human consequence. The EP is a triumph of efficiency, the band do just about everything they need to in only three songs and each works for its own specific reasons. Also I really like this (is it real?):

bluecollar / insound / mega

Wreck Small Speakers on Expensive Stereos - River Falling Love (1987)

It's all very young and hopeful- Morley'd go on to destroy rock with The Dead C and examine the leftovers with Gate- but man is it ever depressing 'cause the thing just sounds like a damn haunting. He's singing to nobody at all and the 'experimental' elements just tease and distract, all broken and falling apart.

here

Slow Warm Death - Slow Warm Death (2013)

Emo gone garage pop. Another 2013 notable worth noting outside of a list of notables. Generously free just to rub it in.

bandcamp / storenvy

Mystical parasites (2013)

DIY psych so good it threatens you to mention its influences so it can ask do you feel better now? and enthralled you say not really and just experience it for what it is. It humanizes itself with an impressionistic breakup narrative whose details are lost in the noise- dynamic and repetitive, spacey yet dark. Through volume and improvisation the songs' feelings are expressed without any need for a literal narration any way. Without words the voice becomes our temperamental guide and protagonist within Pearl Mystic's chaos. It holds our hands through the first two tracks, but we lose it in the formless noise of i smartly sequenced just when it seems like nothing can derail Pearl Mystic's propulsive energy. It comes back defeated in the near-ballad In Our Time, and every time after that it's either seen attempting to fight its way out or just giving up. It's bittersweet when it tells us to say goodbye having found a pulse on What We Talk About, and the closer affirms this- free-form but weightless and blissed out like a grey cloudy sky just cleared.

A-

go / get it

Silkworm - In The West (1993)

I care less about Slint (beyond Good Morning, Captain) than the next guy, and maybe Pavement too (beyond Silence Kit)* and oh my hear that part in Raised By Tigers that's like straight lifting the noise guitar from In the Mouth of a Desert (!!!) but you should just HEAR IT come together out of that chaos, THAT'S why Silkworm exists, not because, as I said earlier, or intimated, they're a sad+alcoholic Pave-lint (or Slavement (!)), rather Silkworm is a mess that just can't keep itself together, a constantly moving shambles that's always falling apart and picking itself up again, forever damaged by the fall, but endlessly rebuilding itself. It creates its own chaos, because of its brain, and always wants to transcend itself, through using itself, in spite of itself (it being a collapsing, self-sabotaging mess). When Silkworm fall short of these ambitions, it's impossibly hard to look away. When they succeed it's like an against-all-odds situation that hardly makes any sense at all, a noise rock peoples' champion that hits as hard as Fugazi or even Shellac despite its messy origins, awkward gait, and disturbingly lean physical appearance.

*I decided to ask the guy next to me and it turns out I actually care more about Pavement than he does, and probably Slint too

A-

hey

a cruisy illusion (2013)

Despite knowing Beyond Living rocked hardest in 2010 and not knowing (and even kind of writing off before hearing) who the fuck The Men were until it was too late for me to hype Open Your Heart to myself as album-which-rocks-hardest-2012-edition in a way that would mean anything year-wise (though it still meant/means a lot rock-wise), I find it impossible to look at Cruise Your Illusion in isolation of The fuckin Men and everything they've done to make SST/noise rawk revivalism not utter shite (Metz etc). Initially it felt like Milk Music were kind of stepping in where The Men were vulnerable (New Moon) but now it's all become clear: this year both bands have made their heritage record, which is to say that 2013 is The Year Of Neil Young's Ghost Aka The Year Make-Pretend Classic Alt Bands Made Even More Explicit The Connection Between Something Like Dino Jr Or Husker Du And Neil Young By Sounding Like After The Goldrush Or Alternatively Zuma Depending On What Angle These Make-Pretend Classic Bands Are Make-Pretending Because The Story Of Rock Says He Invented It All Ages Ago Any Way Though The Classic Bands Weren't Really Classic Because Of Innovation But A Much Needed Return-To-Basics/Everyman Appeal Derived From Young As Like A Response To The Glitz And Glamour And Technicality And Superstardom And Misogyny Etc Of Rock At The Time Or In Sum Our New-ish Band Could Be Your Life Slash Hey Hey My My As Of 2013 Rock And Roll Still Isn't Dead

Glides and moans like Zuma and rocks noisy for a reason- (as cliched as it might be), at least it's something, and man those riffs kill

B+

rocks justifiably

new men masquerading as REAL old men (2013)

Though their deal was always theft, their gift was a punk rock recklessness towards punk rock conservatism and an understanding that both theft and recklessness could be used as tools for an unconventional refinement. New Moon is their most refined effort in that sense because it's their most brutishly, apparently offensively, reckless record yet. And as always it's about heritage.

Odd that those defending The Men's SST classics comp sound/continuity can't seem to shake the feeling that on New Moon they're taking the piss, presumably simulating the effect that a Let it Be, New Day Rising, Sister, or Green Mind release might've had in the era from which The Men so liberally take, and said supporters so glorify. If it's a trick then it's complex- is it weeding out punk rock conservatives by declaring from its first breath that it won't fulfill any of our expectations after Open Your Heart by sounding kind of like a drunken rehearsal of Til the Morning Comes? It mattered on Open Your Heart when they aped Stiff Little Fingers as if to declare THERE WILL BE NO L.A.D.O.C.H., and I'd say it matters here too. As with Turn it Around, they're concerned with honesty: what Open the Door does is sort of warn that they're exploring or paying respect to the ragged/self-destructive ancestry of the indie punk they for three albums plundered and recreant critics so celebrated.

What this means is a work and sound ethic inspired by Neil Young's 'looseness'- human error, and simplicity as a means to reinvigorate rock n roll, and Alex Chilton's subversive fuckupery- deconstructed rock n roll providing multiple angles from which to experience it- the musician's feels and the critic's snort, among others. Young's influence occurs whenever they'd otherwise just sound like Dino Jr or Wilco, and while Chilton is ever-present in the band's primitivist ridiculousness, the clearest audible nod and indication of their self-awareness is in Without a Face, its jarring harmonica recalling Radio City's Life is White. Then just as everything points towards collapse, the band jolts back sort of reminding us that it'll only be through the lens of 80s designer chaos and a 2010s perspective of that that we'll ever be able to witness it (whether they head into Third territory next is anyone's guess). As much as such a progression would make sense, they sound fine being just on the brink of punk rock devastation.

Smartly critic proof (in time), they've paid their dues and managed to piss off those who've grown too comfortable identifying with punk rock revisionists of decades past. New Moon is a shambles, respectfully, which strengthens the roots of their art as the band explore the vulnerabilities, headaches, and in spite of that, appeal, of the antecedents to their influences. Attractive or not, New Moon is a reflective detour or like sensitively planned identity crisis from a band who'd previously appealed in their image of carefree thieves and forgers. Unexpected, but smart, funny, affecting, and bold.

A

try / buy

You're Nothing (2013)

Sneaks in like it doesn't know any better. Like it's not from 2013 but 1979, 1987, or 1999. Like it's raw and artless. Like if Brainbombs awoke from their nihilistic fatigue and got in touch with their shitty feelings. Like if emo kept to power chords as an appropriate way to express these feelings. Like its garage-ness isn't planned but spontaneous. But it does! Know better, I mean. Know what it's doing, that is. More feely than raw and transgressive, its decided simplicity works because of its rugged physicality. Its familiarity works because of its influences. Its timelessness works because of its access to retrospection. Its intelligence is its arty awareness of the fact that heart should emerge from passionate ugliness, and You're Nothing works because it always makes sure to let that happen.

B

buy / try

One Plus One (2012)

Harry Pussy 2piece jams- new names new contexts new flows. Where we'd already done the hard work getting through the mindsplitopen abrasiveness of one jam by making sense of it in relation to the thoughtful melancholy of the next, it's that surrealistic interplay or dynamic which elevates their bullshit noise to the level I believe they sat on with almost no one else. One On One defamiliarizes it all over again, forcing its way into your head and stomach and feelings even if you've heard it before, and if you haven't then holy shit hurry up and get started

A

vinyl
try

Band of Susans - The Word and the Flesh (1991)

The kind of shoegaze which retains a punk rock-ish level of angularity in spite of the haze, and, interestingly, Shields' groundbreaking movement into complete abstraction the same year and within the same vague field (shoegazing?), what to do but make a superficial link to Rhys Chatham, they cover him on the last track, and to New York City rather than Dublin, noise rockers rather than feely abstractioners, Sonic Youth rather than Slowdive, thought rather than pure feeling, and so on, or whatever, a rare case of that trite yet inevitable comparison actually bringing out the record's best features

A-

here
non-ghetto fidelity version 1 / 2

Mclusky - Mclusky Do Dallas (2002)

Beneath the thrill of their fuck u noise punk lies better music than you make. Over that is a vibe which convinces that they're good dudes and assholes at the same time, which counts for a lot in noise rock. All over the place there's musical, vocal, and lyrical variety. All over the place there's inconsistencies. And over that is the thrill of fuck u noise punk

B+

here

Pussy Galore - Groovy Hate Fuck (1986)

You think you can handle the lo-fi, motherfucker? Uhm, huh. Both genders have their... uh. Hipster angst more provocative than, hmmm. Is that a chord? You look like a Jew? Is more than, the, amateur, provoc-

URRGHHHHHH HNNNNNGGGGGGGGG ALRIGHT

A

here

The Jesus Lizard - Down (1994)

Mostly overlooked/hated by fans, I felt the same way about Down until I started asking it what are you all about?! The follow-ups are bland/sell-outs, and that's obvious, but throughout Down you get that they're trying, just trying at something different to their celebrated first three records. That is, a sell-out's obvious, and Down doesn't once seem that way. It's a mysterious, subtle, feel-bad record where the others were worked-up screechy screech-a-thons, and I think that's what it's all about. Ostensibly accessible, but really just refined with a genuinely disturbing core. For one thing, Yow sings. Unconventionally, sure, but his voice is no longer used as an instrument, more an eerie wailing accompaniment to the music. The music, like the voice, is drier than ever and relies on repetition and even (OH MAN) simplicity although the guitars cut creatively and the rhythms are still bawse. I almost wanna avoid saying it 'cause they were beefing at the time, but it's got more in common with Shellac's Terraform than their other records (in my opinion!). Refined arguably to its aesthetic detriment, but to hanger onerers the minimalist approach and downer-ness seem bold and necessary. I dig the refinement and when Yow moans Just when you're about to learn to smile again I'm going to be the one to teach you how to cry on Elegy there's chills rather than noise rock shock reactions, and I feel that

A+

here