13 posts tagged “rock”

How's Monday treating you? Mine presented me with 5:30am dogshit cleanup and a dead car battery. Then there was work...so here's a song about that.

You know Elvis Costello, right? Sort-of-but-not-really punkish icon of British rock/pop, revived the chunky Buddy Holly glasses look basically single handedly (and anyone who mentions Rivers Cuomo here gets bitch-slapped, OK?), thumbed his nose at SNL and their parent corporation on live television, produced the first Specials album, worked with everyone from Burt Bacharach to No Doubt...what hasn't he done?

So yeah, the debut track from his first album has one of the best masturbatory euphemisms I've ever heard ("Now that your picture's in the paper / Being rhythmically admired..."), and it should be mandatory listening every Monday morning.

Most remixes tackle the raw material of a single song, sometimes adding some additional elements of the remix producers creation, but generally keeping some relation to the original structure. But this remix by Sientific American gathers fragments from several tracks on the 1999 Red Stars Theory album Life in a Bubble Can Be Beautiful, and reassembles them as something entirely new, yet recognizable. It sounds like something the band could perform live, with the exception of a few stutter edits.

Red Stars Theory was an Pacific Northwest indie rock supergroup of sorts, featuring 764-Hero bassist James Bertram and Modest Mouse drummer Jeremiah Green, and a rotating cast of assorted other musicians. They made a lethargic and deliberate version of indie rock that bordered on post-rock, indebted as much to Mogwai and Tortoise as to their local contemporaries. This remix by Sientific American, a longtime fixture of the Seattle electronic scene, comes from the B-side of the Naima 7" single (yes, it's a John Coltrane cover) from 2000.

Two songs, since Minor Threat tracks are incredibly short, as a rule.

This isn't necessarily where it all started (that would arguably be Ian MacKaye's high school band, the Teen Idles), but it's definitely where it got interesting. Minor Threat embodied the ferocity, idealism, and awareness of the early 80s DC hardcore scene, with lyrics that spoke out not only against the injustice of the world they lived in, but also the unquestioned assumptions of their own scene. "Out of Step" sums up their ethos quite succinctly: "I don't smoke / don't drink / don't fuck / at least I can fucking think."

While their sound can mostly be described as loud, fast, and aggressive, their cover of Wire's "12XU," from that group's seminal Pink Flag album, shows that they had a wider range of influences than might be apparent. Though still a punk band at the time "12XU" was released, Wire was on the forefront of post-punk by the time Minor Threat formed, introducing electronic elements and skewed pop structures into their  music.

Following up his full-album dismemberment of John Vanderslice's Cellar Door, comes Scott Solters remixes for Pixel Revolt. This is a full-album reworking that basically ignores the original vocals and takes an ambient dub approach to all 14 tracks from the indie rock album. It's rough and dirty, and scratchy around the edges like the first few Pole albums were, with plenty of tape echo and analog filtering. Solter has successfully transplanted Vanderslice's singer-songwriter sty;e into the realm of the Dead Texan and Brian Eno.

The entire remix collection is online in high bitrate .mp3 and uncompressed .aiff formats.

Continuing on from yesterday's Hum post...

Even though Hum's disappearance was (in my ever so humble opinion) a great loss, true believers can take comfort in frontman Matt Talbott's post-Hum project, Centaur. The put out one album, In Streams, recorded by Keith Cleversley, who was responsible for the complete sonic mindfuck that was the Flaming Lips in the 90s, as well as the penultimate Hum album, You'd Prefer an Astronaut.

Centaur took the puzzle pieces that Hum had been playing with, and put them back together in a different order. It sounds similar, crushingly heavy at times, and richly textured, but the devil is in the details. There are some great arrangement and production moments on this track, most notably the layers of sighing vocal harmonies that almost disappear into the mix, and the chugging,almost metal-influenced guitars in the later verses that lead into a reversed guitar line. It's these disparate pieces that somehow work together, like they were put together with the utmost care.

Hum is a misleading name for this band. More appropriate, perhaps, would be Crash! or Roar! or Fuzzzzzz!!! Their bombastic and fuzzed-out take on melodic, album-oriented rock fit right in with other ambitious bands of the time like the Smashing Pumpkins and Bends-era Radiohead, but never really got the same level of attention (the sole exception being their alt-rock radio hit, "Stars"). Still, they left behind a couple of essential albums (Downward is Heavenward and You'd Prefer An Astronaut)that are better than 90% of what their contemporaries put out.

"Apollo" finds them stripping away all the noise and texture and fury that typically defines their sound, and leaving the barest bones of a song behind. It's tender and cathartic in a way that guitar histrionics can't convey, with just the slightest dynamic build carried by the drumming. As the penultimate track on an album full of ascendant fuzz pedal anthems, "Apollo" demonstrates some well-placed variety and versatility for the Champaign, IL quartet.

Clinic is one of those bands that's immediately identifiable, even when they're shamelessly biting snippets of other people's songs (as they do with the lyrics of the Velvet Underground's "Candy Says" at the beginning of this track, or the wordless vocalizations of Liquid Liquid on their track "The Second Line"). But I kid. One person's shameless biting is another's respectful homage, and Ade Blackburn and Co. in Clinic are certainly in the latter camp. Their takes on these songs (or song fragments, more appropriately) are transformative, using a tiny chunk as a jumping off point for their own twitchy, paranoid exploration.

"Distortions" might even pass for a love song, in some strange way. A love song delivered in a marble mouthed croon, backed by Farfisa organ and drum machine, and performed by a band wearing scrubs. The name, the outfits, the surgically precise transplanting of lyrics and melodies, it all ties together somehow.

Here's an uncharacteristically mellow track from Les Savy Fav, who are better known as wild, careening art school post-punks. It's rare to find them dialing down for a moment, but when they do, the results are often great. "Hit By Car" is certainly no exception. In the catalogue of some other bands, this could be considered a total rocker, but Les Savy Fav set the bar high enough that this is practically a ballad by their standards.

The first half is driven by an ominous distorted bassline, with impressionistic guitar filling in the edges, before exloding into forceful, though wordless,  chorus with keyboard accents. Frontman Tim Harrington trades in his typical shouted style for a more restrained delivery, perfectly suited to the song and subject.


This track was released as a 7" single (with companion piece "Hit By Train" on the flip) by the Australian label Pop Frenzy, as a tour-only single in 2004. It appears to be out of print at this point. Pop Frenzy also released a second tour EP by the band in 2006, entitled Plagues & Snakes, which is still available.

If creepy, atmospheric pop is your thing, Thee More Shallows should satisfy. This insomniac lullaby combines unnerving textural elements, like a wailing chorus and pleading vocals, with an off-kilter 5/8 time signature rarely found in rock and pop styles. When performed live, it's equally haunting, despite being stripped of its layers. The San Francisco trio will be releasing their third album, Book of Bad Breaks, in Anticon on April 24th.