98 The Hard Way: EPs, Days 17-19

Coil: Spring Equinox (Moon's Milk or Under an Unquiet Skull) (Eskaton)

Spring might actually be my least favorite season if I were to rank these things. It could just be that the comedown from winter in my particular area is quite harsh and uneven - this year alone we've had 3 thaw outs that then refroze making the roads extra hazardous - but more than that, it's a transitional season. One where you can't go out and do much. It's too damp to start thinking about a game of touch football with your friends or softball. Outdoor volleyball's out of the question unless you like frequently slipping onto partly frozen ground. It's the one season where it's possible to feel stuck inside - the weather's nice on the surface, but underneath it's not ready for you to do much with it.

Coil get that feeling. The first of their 4 Equinox/Solstice EPs is the most uniquely foreboding, the most claustrophobic. The mix is simple and uncluttered, letting the usual elements of this era of Coil have ample room to breathe and resonate, which pays off wonderfully in the second part when William Breeze's acoustic guitar and violin enter the mix to add a soaring melody yet can't stop the tension that's been built up for the previous ten minutes or so. Jhonn Blanace's vocals are used as an unsettling underlayer to the mix, swirling around Peter Chrisopherson's ambient synth pads like a ghost in the machine. The pump organ that acts as a hook to both parts is just as haunting, sounding like a relic of a time long past that can't bear to never be heard again. Everything comes together in a quietly unsettling package, like a microcosm of all the things that would make the Musick to Play in the Dark LPs so wonderfully frightening. It may not sound like spring in the classic sense, but it captures something about the season that I can relate to; this is a season where you can't quite get to doing what you wish you were doing. This is the one season where you are trapped. [8.9/10]

Download link courtesy of The Pop Stalinist. Contains the full series of Equinox/Solstice EPs, all of which are worth your time and the others of which I'll be discussing a bit later.

Modest Mouse: Other People's Lives (Up)

This one's a moderate disappointment. Think about it, all the other Lonesome Crowded West-adjacent singles were either epic, godly or at least featured one utterly transcendent moment. This one tries to have a bit of each in it, but it fails a bit. Neither "Other People's Lives" no "Grey Ice Water" are as good as they want to be. The former is too long without any of the interesting rhythmic flourishes that a lot of MM's longer tracks did, the latter is too slight and ephemeral to make any sort of impression. Both have their good elements - the harmony vocals on "Grey Ice Water" and the feedback rhythm of "Other People's Lives" - but they don't do enough with them to really cause me to consider either song a winner on any particular level. They're still good songs, but when the band had been on such a roll leading up to this one it stands out like a bit of a black mark by stopping there and not making the leap into being extraordinary. [7.7/10]


Third Eye Foundation: Fear of a Wack Planet (Domino)

Think of this as a step into the light. After the suffocating darkness of Ghost it's only logical that Matt Elliott might make overtures towards a slightly less downtrodden sound, and while this is still in his moderately foreboding wheelhouse it's infinitely sunnier than the material that came before. Part of that comes from it being much, much less oppressive in its darkness. Ghost was a suffocating album, one where any time you thought you'd found a patch of sunlight, Elliott would conjure up a cloud to mask it before you noticed. This EP though is much more open and dare I say inviting. The elements of Elliott's sound are still there, but there's space between them this time out. The trip-hoppy percussion skitters where it used to crash. The melodies that used to crawl along like they'd just washed down their uppers with Nyquil here soar almost angelically, be they the choral vocals o nthe title track or the string loop on the extended take of You Guys Kill Me's "A Galaxy of Scars." The atmosphere that used to roll in like a dense fog is reduced to a fine mist. And yet at its heart this couldn't be anything but a Third Eye Foundation release. It's still foreboding, but it forebodes with a much more subtle touch than previously. [8.4/10]

The Beta Band: Los Amigos del Beta Bandidos (Regal)

 This is probably the most overlooked of The Three EPs. I can understand why at least; if you're listening to the whole compilation it's the final set of songs, and since there's no real stand out track here there's nothing to draw you into it the way that "Dry the Rain" did for the Champion Versions section or "Inner Meet Me" did for The Patty Patty Sound. I know that when I first got The Three EPs none of these songs stood out no matter how I approached them, but in the end that becomes their charm to me. This is the most unassuming of the set, I guess. The one that goes about its business with a sort of quiet, professional confidence that doesn't need those big moments to assert itself. It's by far the most consistent of the set too, not having a high point as towering as "Dry the Rain" that the rest will never reach, nor a point as low as "The Monolith" to drag it to a halt. On its own it's probably the most fully realized EP of the bunch too, much more unified than Champion Versions but much less one-note than Patty Patty Sound. All that's a way to say that it's definitely better than many would give it credit for on first go round. Each listen makes it rise a little bit in my estimation, and while I doubt it will ever usurp Champion Versions as my favorite of The Three EPs, the much more subtle joys it offers are well worth revisiting. [8.4/10]

Boredoms: Super Roots 7 (Warner Music Japan)

Step One: Don't think of the remixes as such, think of them as the build up (EWE) and comedown (EYE) necessary to make the centerpiece (Boriginal) have the impact that it does. Think of the EP as one 33 minute piece, not a mammoth, all destroying 21 minute slice of manna from Yamatsuka Eye's heaven bookended by pointless remixes thereof. I won't ever claim that they're teh best parts of the EP, but I will also never claim that they aren't essential to my enjoyment of it.

Step Two: Know your context, part one. The concept of this release pulls it into focus a bit. It's one riff, explored for all its worth for 33 minutes. That riff, from Mekons' "Where Were You" pops up in various contexts, forms and variations over the course of the EP, but it's never not recognizable. The core repetition announces itself quite clearly, but the variance therein gives the release an out from being dismissed as too one-note. It's almost like the original song was handed to bands as diverse as Neu, Boards of Canada, Talking Heads and Sick of It All to cover, themn those covers were played sequentially by Boredoms as they would interpret them. Yet for all the jarring changes of pace and mood it plays out as a unified piece. Quite an achievement, really.

Step Three: Know your context, part two. Think about where this falls in the Boredoms chronology; they've just released Super Ae, which was a big departure from the noisy, ADHD punk of their early material (and even from the refinement thereof that gave us Pop Tatari) into the fields of rhythm heavy nirvana. After that would come Vision Creation Newson, which might be the most trance-inducing album ever made by humans. This is the bridge between the two, taking the somewhat rudderless exploration of Ae and giving it a focal point. The results from the basis for what the band would do on VCN; go far afield but keep it all in focus and tied to something tangibly of that song.

Step Four: Listen to it on headphones. Like with all later period Boredoms, this is the key. [8.7/10]

Can Can Heads: The Formation of Oxen With Fire (Bad Vugum)
Putting it bluntly, this EP sounds like shit. It's impossible to describe the sound of this particular release without the descriptor 'as recorded on a late 70s model tape deck' being tacked on to any sort of comparison point. Those comparison points, however help redeem the whole endeavor; it's obvious from the first blast of "Happy Birthday Jesus" that these guys studied their Dog Faced Hermans and Contortions albums about as diligently as they could before they recorded anything, and that dedication to the right influences gives even the most tape-hiss addled, overly trebly moment of this release a high enough base value that the irritation of the recording method is minimized somewhat. It also helps that the recording style has a bit more charm in this context than in most others. Noisy no-wave is one of the few genres out there where horrible recording quality can come close to enhancing the experience, and on a particularly forgiving day I might even say that the 6 songs here benefit from the lack of production value - "Deep Bed Granular" especially has a high degree of grit in this circumstance that makes it bite a bit more than might be expected in a better recorded format. So let it be said that even I, who rails against the purposeful fucking up of a recording by means of tape deck recording, can find a circumstance where I'm grateful for its presence. Just barely. [7.7/10]

98 The Hard Way: EPs, Day 16

Modest Mouse and 764-HERO: Whenever You See Fit (Up/Suicide Squeeze)

Collaboration is all about filling in the gaps. Think about any group project you've ever been a part of: each individual brings something different to the table, and if you've got a good group the things that each person brings fill in the things that others in the group lack. So why is it that most musical collaborations don't take full advantage of this phenomenon. Most of the time you wind up with either two bands that are so similar that in the end they just wind up basically doubling each other, or two artists who only really engage in collaborating at one level or another as opposed to fully integrating into a new band as it were. Perhaps the disappointment I have with collaborations rarely working ideally is what makes me so enamored by "Whenever You See Fit," but that's still only part of it - even without the more collaboration-y flourishes there's a great composition at the song's heart that even a straight run through would reveal.

There are two ways that the collaboration aspect elevates the song though . Most importantly, there's the way that each of the 6 members involved here fill in the gaps that they perceive, mainly because it's like they were already tailor made for the purpose they wind up serving in the final song. Both bands have their strengths and their weaknesses when compared to each other - yes, I'm saying that Modest Mouse at their peak had weaknesses, deal with it fanboys - but they're much more complimentary in that sense than I might have imagined. Isaac Brock may have a unique style of guitar playing and an equally unique and expressive vocal style, but both can come off as overly unhinged and without context. John Atkins' guitar and vocal styles aren't unique or particularly noteworthy, but he's got much more of a keen melodic edge than Brock. Polly Johnson is a competent time-keeper who goes about her duties with minimal flourish - think Meg White if she could use the whole kit consistently - while Jeremiah Green is occasionally so much about the flourishes that the beat is only ever implied (note: this is one of his best assets in my eyes, but for the sake of this discussion let's pretend it's not.) Both Eric Judy and James Bertram are great bassists, but the bands they spend their time with use them in such different ways that when they come together it results in a much more complete - and huge sounding - bass presence. That's the key word for the way that the two bands work together here: complete. They complete the picture that has gaps of varying sizes when they only have their part.

The other way that the collaboration benefits the end result is that the sound is much, much bigger than either band on its own. It's not just the doubled instruments, though that does help a lot, but there's a sense of epicness to the song that I don't think 764-HERO or Modest Mouse ever achieved on their own. That's certainly saying a lot w/r/t MM since they had an epic streak of their own to contend with, but at this point that streak resulted in much more fractured wholes that the one on display here. I think of this as what a song like "Trucker's Atlas" wanted to be but didn't quite get to: a cohesive, 14 and a half minute piece that feels like it could go on for at least five more minutes without wearing out its welcome. Just listen to how smoothly the song moves from each part to the next, the way that the false ending and re emergence flows so logically...these are moves that so many post-rock bands fail miserably to realize yet here we have a one-off collaboration between two indie rock bands that gets them almost effortlessly on the first go round. That's the reason I love this song so much in a nutshell; it gets everything right without sounding like it worked to get there. Effortless genius is hard to pull off convincingly, so I can't help but reward it when it happens.

I'm not mentioning the remixes in too much detail because that's not the point here. sure in the scope of the complete release they should be talked about but as far as I'm concerned they're not a detriment or an asset. If anything they highlight the reasons that he original works so well as its own entity by isolating and amplifying certain aspects of it on their own, so they can't really ruin the release the way that some people would claim they do. They give context to the preceding 14 and a half minutes, and that's a valuable thing. [9.3/10]
 
Burning Witch: Rift.Canyon.Dreams (Merciless)

It makes a lot of sense that the compilation collecting this and the Towers 12" was one of the first releases from Southern Lord Records. You can pretty much hear the beginnings of most of their flagship acts in Burning Witch, though like many beginnings the steps are a bit unsure. The ideas are much better realised here than on Towers, mostly because these ideas plant the seeds from which Khanate would grow a few years later as opposed to just sounding likea more fully realized version of O'Malley's previous band Thorr's Hammer. The Khanate similarities come down mostly to the vocals, and while Edgy 59 (why would anyone refer to themselves by that name?) is a long way from Alan Dubin's unique yelping he goes for that same uncomfortable place, making the vocals as ugly as he can to compliment the heavy, bludgeoning backdrop. It's definitely a step in the right direction for all involved though, O'Malley's gradually getting more varied in his guitar playing - check out the spacey interlude from "Stillborn" - and while the people he's surrounded with here aren't as great as the one's he'd find for his next few projects they fit with the more Sabbath-y aesthetic on display here quite well. [8.1/10]

Download link and image courtesy of Angry Chairs Redux.
 
Dirty Three: Sharks (Anchor and Hope)

The comedown from Horse Stories still retains enough of the scope and aggression that makes it my favorite Dirty Three release. Given that of the four tracks here only one is truly 'new' material - the stately "Two Am" - it's debatable whether it should be thrown in the 'odds n sods' compilation bin or not, but the material here is definitely worth looking into if you're a fan of the band. Specifically, the demo of "Hope" here is close to usurping the final version in my affections, if only for the uniformly squeaky violin line finally coming into focus in the final few runthroughs, and the live version of "Running Scared" with Nick Cave is exactly as great as it sounds like it would be on paper. "Two Am" and "Obvious Is Obvious," rescued from their split with Low from the previous year, are quality side-takes from this era too, not quite in the same mold as Horse Stories but a ways away from the calming landscapes of Ocean Songs yet. So yeah, stopgap measure or not it's a nice little release to have around. [8.2/10]

Saturnus: For the Loveless Lonely Nights (Euphonius)

This barely qualifies as metal if you ask me. I'm not saying that as a good thing or a bad thing, just an observation. I mean, sure, there's a bit of death growling on "Starres," but outside of that the new material on here reminds me more of a slightly doomier, not blessed by female vocals version of any number of Projekt Records artists from this time frame than any even borderline metal artist. Maybe that's for the best though, I have yet to hear the band's debut album, but the live tracks from it on here don't get me as excited to explore it upon re-listen as they did initially. They're essentially second tier My Dying Bride tunes, not bad bad but certainly not as intriguing as the new material here. Most intriguing is closer "Consecration," which may feel like a one-off experiment moreso than a definitive change of direction, but the results show much more potential within the band than their earlier material might have hinted at. Outside of that, "Starres" uses textbook metal growls to punctuate a nice, moody and gothic tune quite effectively, and both "For Your Demons" and "Thou Art Free" forego traditional vocals for straight up recitation over similar backdrops. It's tangentially metal-ish, but whether you like it or not might have more to do with how you feel about Lycia et al than how you feel about My Dying Bride. [7.5/10]

Tarentel: Tarentel (Temporary Residence)

What would happen if post rock bands never quite got to the 'rock' part of the equation? The more I listen to Tarentel's early material, the more I think that that was their primary mission statement: Take this whole post-rock thing that's developing and rob it of its logical endpoint. This is an EP that's all about holding back, never letting the pieces hit their climax even when that seems to be all that's left for them to do. Yet for all the implications that that might raise about the music, it never feels like a tease. The pieces are designed from the get go to be wholly satisfying as pure build up, developing a full-blown hypnotic quality in only a few minutes that any drastic change in volume would only mess up. Essentially, the band are subverting the expectations of their presumed genre, edging closer to Labradford's immersive ambient rock than to something like Mogwai. The sparseness and subtlety are its greatest assets, whether they explore them meditatively as on the fist track or in a more upbeat manner as on the second track. The highest compliment that can be paid to this one is that the 30 or so minutes it takes to listen to it go by much more quickly than I ever expect. [8.5/10]

98 The Hard Way: EPs, Day 9

Jeromes Dream / Amalgamation: Split 7" (Ricecontrol)

Ah, the first blast of Jeromes Dream material. Even if the stuff here doesn't come close to what they'd do on their later stuff it's kind of amazing how fully formed their sound is this early on. They've got that heavy yet undistorted guitar tone, complex structures that actually make sense in terms of progression (though not as fully realized as the stuff on Seeing Means More Than Safety) and of course, Jeff Smith's unique vocal delivery. It's rare to hear a band's first release come with a sound this well executed and really just in need of a small degree of polish to get to the top of its game as it were, so that alone makes this release stand out even without the second side. However, Amalgamation aren't going to go down without a fight it seems. The two tracks they offer up are light years ahead of the material from their earlier release, this being especially obvious on the re-recording of "As I Slip Into Roles" which does everything right that the first take struggled with and then adds more color to the margins to makes the song really come alive. Forbes Graham's trumpet is well integrated to the overall sound, Jacob Long's vocals are stronger and the band sound like the two years between  releases was just what they needed to gel together properly. All told there's a consistency across the two sides, sonically and in terms of quality that gives it a much better overall feel than a lot of split releases I've come across. [8.4/10]

Download link courtesy of Today and Tomorrow.

The Yummy Fur: Male Shadow at Three O'Clock (Vesuvius)

Think about it in the abstract: this is Interpol with a wry, sardonic sense of humor. This is Franz Ferdinand with a bigger debt to Wire. This is about 4 years too early to make any sort of non-cult impact. Now think about it more specifically: this is a band that doesn't give a fuck. They've got their sound, they play their songs, they sprinkle in a good dose of catholic-bashing and sexual humor, they don't do anything to go beyond that. This is the sound of a band that knows that it's audience is what it is, knows what they want and won't hesitate to give it to them without much fanfare. Their sound is also directly in my wheelhouse, arty punk with a modicum of guitar interplay and production values. So where does that leave it in the grand scheme of things? Well it's sort of the baseline for what I'd consider to be a good album of this style. There's nothing here that you can't find done better somewhere else, but in and of itself there's nothing wrong with it at all. It doesn't need to be better, but I kind of wish it was regardless. [7.0/10]

Reversal of Man: Revolution Summer (Independence Day)

It's a bit telling that the song that stands out the most here is the briefest. That's not necessarily a knock against the other six tracks here, but "Get the Kid With the Sideburns" is easily the most potent of the bursts of rage and frustration presented here perhaps because it's so direct and unadorned. Sure, "Hollowbody" is easily more realized on a musical level - that guitar breakdown mid song coupled with the quick muttered vocals is as stellar a moment as RoM have in their canon - and the whole first side is an ideal progression from the band's earliest material, but all it takes to make those seem a bit lacking is a 45 second screed against Earth Crisis and Victory Records. Maybe it's that it's a direct attack as opposed to the other songs which deal more in concepts, but it feels so much more purposeful for having a specific target. Regardless, as I said earlier, this is a logical and positive progression for RoM, further tightening their fusion of first generation screamo and more straight ahead hardcore. It als sounds much more like Orchid than Orchid did at this point - the second part of "The Set Up" especially calls to mind the breakdown from "Destination Blood" - though a bit rawer and more freewheeling. Essentially, if it's not a blueprint for second generation screamo it's as close to one as I've come across while also being fairly high quality throughout. [8.3/10]

Download link and image courtesy of Conserva tu memoria.


Modest Mouse: Never Ending Math Equation (Sub Pop)

Think of this as The Lonesome Crowded West distilled from a double LP to a single 7". "Never Ending Math Equation" sums up the more aggressive parts, never quite reaching the maniacal apex of "Doin' the Cockroach" but handily demonstrating what sort of racket they can get up to without going too far. Of course by distilling it down to a relatively scant 3 and a half minutes they sacrifice giving it much build up; the coda is good on its own, but feels unearned to some extent because it's only perfunctorily foreshadowed. It does, however, feature another example of how turntable scratching can add to rock music without feeling like a gimmick, so credit where it's due for that.

That leaves "Workin' on Leavin' the Livin'" to sum up the calmer moments of the album then, and it succeeds at that goal without any caveats. I'd even venture so far as to say that it's better than most of the slower songs on West, if only because of the hypnotic, lolling quality that the band imbue the track with from the get go. something about the combination of the subtle, siren-aping guitar in the background combined with the open chords and Jeremiah Green's expert drumming - always the factor that takes MM to that other level so many "indie" bands want to reach - makes the nearly 7 minute run time pass like a blink of the eye. Add in the interpolation of the lady in the radiator song from Eraserhead and the chiming guitar riff that punctuates each chord progression and you've got one of their better songs, bar none. And that's not even factoring in the last part of the song, where it seems to be slowing itself down without ever actually relenting - Green again, gotta love that guy - before a random, somewhat dissonant riff pops up for a few bars and then fades out. Seriously, every time I listen to it I hear something new to love about it, and that's the mark of a great song if ever there was one. [9.0/10]



Download link and image courtesy of Blewharvest.