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

Get Your Singles (1999)

Svenonius-core (though the ideological core is supposedly sharing/liberation) Gospel Yeh-Yeh. Get yours, you fifth member. Fire your boss. Replace your bourgeois rock n roll with Svenonius-core rock n roll. Pretend participate in this collection, ready and awaiting your consumption. The joke's on you in one way or another, but the songs are good and there are 23 of them.

get yours / you pig

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

These Immortal Souls - I'm Never Gonna Die Again (1992)

Although aimless deconstructed blues seems like a good place for junkies to hang out and growl and shock, I'm Never Gonna Die Again is the sound of Howard picking up those pieces and moving forward with them, which is at once more listenable/enjoyable than you'd expect and also more hellish. It's an aggressive, uncomfortable vision of junkie/existential hell that for whatever reason never threatens to fully simulate the experience for the listener. Whether this is a good thing as it gives us the space to fully assess/enjoy Howard's songs, or a bad thing as we never get to join him (that whole empathy thing), is entirely up to the individual.

B+

here
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B-Sides & Rarities (2005)

• The acoustic Deanna gets to the No carpet on the floor/and the winding cloth holds many moths/around your ku klux furniture/I cum a deaths-head in your frock part before going into the gospel Oh Happy Day showing where he got the idea for the song and while not exactly ending on a positive note unless ejaculating ominous moths is a good thing, at least there's no murderous rampage! Oh happy day!
• Roy Orbison's Running Scared is one of the best songs ever. Nick Cave's version is SO b-side/rare.
• I always like Cave doing Black Betty
• I like when Mick Harvey gets credited with guitars and Blixa with feedback guitars
• Another x song?! Weeping songs, ship songs, now TRAIN songs. Straightforwardly sentimental, train as a metaphor for escape or missed opportunities universalizes his narrative
• Someone bought me The Bridge: A Tribute to Neil Young for my birthday a few years ago and I still think it's a special record and Cave's Helpless and Pixies' Winterlong are pretty heartbreaking as is. Helpless is on here, not Winterlong 'cause that'd be weird
• (I'll Love You) Till the End of the World from Wim Wenders' 'ultimate' road movie Until The End Of The World sounds like Tom Waits set to ridic Nature&Organisation cornballishness
• Leonard Cohen done noise-Elvis is always fun compared to 80s Cohen groan-core originals
• The What A Wonderful World duet with Shane MacGowan is the sole justification for this b-sides & rarities collection. Fuck your dorky collector impulses!
• Straight after that is a cover of Rainy Night in Soho from The Pogues' Poguetry in Motion. I prefer MacGowan's haggard original. Weird 'cause I usually dig MacGowan more as a poet and Cave more as a singer!
• 3 O'Malley's Bars
• Where the Wild Roses Grow with Blixa instead of Kylie!
• 3 Discs!
• I was lying about collector impulses and What A Wonderful World being the only reason to get this. The video is much more fun
• 
  
• Hmmmmm
• How to assess something like this
• Are the versions on here better or worse than the ones we already have?
• What are we meant to do with three discs worth of b-sides and rarities?
• Collect them, I guess
• Dork
• B-
• try 1 / 2 / 3
• buy

Pussy Galore - Right Now! (1987)

Similar to Harry Pussy and it's not just 'cause both their names mention pussy which is arguably the reason both bands exist- hipper than thou deconstructionist rock for (uh) hipsters and sexually frustrated losers. But where Harry Pussy began to understand their noise and use it to express something genuine, Pussy Galore collapse in a heap of postmodern rock n roll mockery and excess. To channel the Stones' drug-ness and blues-ness but have your tongue in cheek in order to mock the Stones' drug-ness and blues-ness regardless of your own drug problems and blues riffs

Dumb but thrilling. Fuck You, Man is him screaming Fuck you, man! White Noise is white trash!

A+

sample

Nikki Sudden and Rowland S. Howard - Kiss You Kidnapped Charabanc (1987)

More special than groundbreaking or match made in heaven-y, Kiss You Kidnapped Charabanc is Nikki Sudden (Swell Maps) and Rowland S. Howard (Crime and the City Solution, The Birthday Party) going blues, or placing emphasis on the blues or the acoustic found in their punk. The genre switch (or emphasis) finds them comfortably concerned with life, death, and pining lyrically, atmospherically, and musically

B+

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stream (lol@RowlanHoward)

Alex Chilton - Like Flies on Sherbert (1979)

1. Boogie Shoes

2. My Rival

3. Hey! Little Child

4. Hook or Crook

5. I've Had It

6. Rock Hard

7. Girl After Girl

8. Waltz Across Texas

9. Alligator Man

10. Like Flies on Sherbert

11. No More The Moon Shine On Lorena

A strange album from Alex Chilton, master of perfect pop songs. Intentionally terrible in every way: production, musicianship, what is and isn't being recorded. I'm unsure whether he's deconstructing and leaving imperfect rock & roll like Neil Young did on Tonight's the Night to expose a song's constituents and capture the artist's anguish, or whether he's being chaotic and punk rock just for the sake of it. Either way I like it. True, nobody would care about Like Flies on Sherbert if it didn't have someone like Chilton behind it, but it's interesting because it's someone like Chilton being so unlistenably amateurish

B+

here
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Crime & the City Solution - Room of Lights (1986)

Everything we want from a record with Rowland S. Howard involved: that disorienting mix of slow, wailing, meandering, yet chaotic, urgent, pining.

A-

here
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The Birthday Party - Live 1981-82 (1999)

Whoever recorded these Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari weirdos forgot the general rule that in rock the voice is central, accidentally allowing for the guitars to share prominence with the shrieks. All the better for it, a band like this benefitting from the emphasized duality of Cave’s pretentious primitivism (Freudian, Nietzschean...) and Howard’s pretentious Romanticism (Poe?). That is, beside (rather than behind) the shock and aggression there’s a direct, defeated, desperation and vulnerability. 16 songs is too long, but it has Junkyard live 1981 on it, so A

A

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Rowland S. Howard - Pop Crimes (2009)

I contracted liver disease a while back and I've basically got liver cancer, I'm waiting for a transfer, if I don't get it things might not go so well...so..
-Rowland S. Howard, 2009 

And so we have Pop Crimes. In my baseless view of the story of rock n roll he's the guy who made The Birthday Party the sick surf punk weirdos they were, rather than the tedious elitist post-punkers they might've been (although I couldn't imagine any of the members producing anything too hip, jerky, or intellectually arty). Pop Crimes would be his last album and it's a good one full of "surf guitars gone to Hell" (Henry Rollins) and monotone low-pitch singing. It's a really sad listen given the tragedy of Howard's death and when reading Cave's statement that he was "Australia's most unique, gifted and uncompromising guitarist," it leaves a kind of hole in the listener's stomach, like, man the guy really was a legend in the underground. But then Harvey's "Sometimes people are ready to go because they have been sick for a long time, but Rowland really wanted to live. Things were going well for him outside his health and he wanted to take advantage of that, and he was very disappointed that he wasn't well enough to do so," elevates Pop Crimes as a statement, not just a reason for music magazine obituaries. It becomes sadder- dude really wanted to live- but also better- Howard's own statement on the album becomes life-affirming rather than defeated, and that permeates the album. Shut Me Down might shove its hands down the listener's throat, pull his/her stomach out and stomp on it with the simple chorus I miss you so much- it's not just lovelorn but a real tear-jerker, particularly given the circumstances, but Howard's cover of Talk Talk's Life's What You Make It is so ballsy and optimistic that the previous tragic narrative becomes just that, a narrative. Pop Crimes is Howard's final statement and he's not gonna have you crying after crediting too much of his craft to existential introspection. A bold defiance of the Romantic image of the songwriter. So bold in fact that here I'm gonna quote Life's What You Make It and it can't be cheesy because it's one of Hollis', not Howard's: Beauty is naked. Life’s what you make it, celebrate it, anticipate it. The spirit of that is all over Pop Crimes. If it's gonna make you cry, cry tears of happiness a la Donuts


You fucking crybaby


;_______;


A

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The Flesh Eaters - A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die (1981)

1. Digging My Grave 4:22

2. Pray til You Sweat 2:36

3. River of Fever 3:55

4. Satan's Stomp 5:49

5. See You in the Boneyard 3:30

6. So Long 3:30

7. Cyrano de Berger's Back 3:22

8. Divine Horseman 7:09

Suitably named after a 60s horror/sci-fi film (as garage bands should be), The Flesh Eaters are often discussed in regard to the better known X (with whom The Flesh Eaters shared some members), and punk blues bands inspired by The Flesh Eaters. This is a pity as vocalist Chris D. has one of the best punk voices I've ever heard and his lyrics are fantastic also. And because it doesn't account for those parts where you think holy shit that sounds like Captain Beefheart and Half Japanese, so fucked up jazz is as much a part of their sound as punk and blues. What I mean is they're unique and better than all these foolish punk comparisons

A

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