Prolapse was a wonderful, unwieldy six-piece band of C86 misfits with a marked Fall obsession who managed to make four full-length albums, a million singles, and a whole hell of a lot of racket over the course of their anarchic eight-year existence. They made some of the spikiest, strangest, and Dadaistic pop music I’ve ever heard.

That’s right, I said pop music.

(Granted, to call them such you might have to squint a little. Bend the rules. C’mon, do it for me.)

Even at their most angular and thorny the band had a canny ear for crafting songs that had “anti-melody” scrawled all over them in biro but managed, against the odds, to become firmly wedged in your brain for days on end. Songs like “Pile Tent” and “Day at Death Seaside” had an undeniably propulsive drive and acid-drenched lyrics that proved the name of the band was hardly an idle threat. Pointless Walks to Dismal Places’ “Black Death Ambulance” adapted Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” to elegiac effect —“My scars are your scars” —a line that summarizes just about every Prolapse song ever.

With Prolapse, there was never a dull moment. Not on record and certainly not in the live arena, where the dueling vocalists —the coolly remote Miss Steelyard and the hyper-kinetic Mister Derrick— would enact their own version of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” while the band, deceptively workmanlike in demeanor and content to remain in the background, threw out volley after volley of guitar mayhem. As with most great bands, the effect was thrilling and disturbing at the same time. Prolapse earned their designation as a “violent Stereolab,” and their music —even when relatively smoothed out on later releases like The Italian Flag— never lost that core of dramatic, coiled sexual tension.

The following article was first published in the late, lamented Puncture in late 1996. I hope this reprint spurs at least one of you, dear readers, to seek out some of this band’s music. I promise you won’t regret it.

++++

Prolapse, “Lapse It Up”

[originally published in Puncture #37, late 1996]

An emotional blitzkrieg rages back and forth between Prolapse’s two vocalists —and it’s not just for show, as Andrea Feldman discovers. This Anglo-Scottish band is about tearing things down —pop conventions as well as each other’s egos— and then rebuilding them. [cont'd >>]

“You think you see my smiling —but I can see the sky’s caved in! I can see the sky’s caved in!” Prolapse vocalist Linda Steelyard sings this line like a threat —as though she’s the last sane person on earth. Or the last insane person…

Prolapse have taken he stage of their first-ever show in Boston. They’ve been whittled down to a mere five-piece (guitarist Dave Jeffreys has been called back to England to tend to his new baby). And so the task of whipping up Prolapse’s carefully constructed guitar chaos rests solely on Pat Marsden’s shoulders. Luckily, he’s more than up to the task. He’s aided and abetted by bassist “Geordie” Mick Harrison, who supplies rumbling, sinuous bass-lines. As drummer Tim Pattison unleases a volley of sharp, precise beats, perpetually dueling vocalists Linda and “Scottish” Mick Derrick take a moment to glare at one another. As they launch into a song just hours old, appropriately entitled “New One,” Mick quips, “Hello, we’re Galaxie 500.”

***

Those in attendance that night got the joke. Prolapse couldn’t be further from the elegant somnolence of Galaxie 500. While Galaxie buried tension under a smooth, icy surface, Prolapse have a maximalist aesthetic; Dean Wareham always sounded exhausted, but Prolapse unleash so much energy that it’s virtually exhausting to listen to them. They don’t pull punches —they throw them, gleefully.

Prolapse are about tearing things down —pop conventions, each other’s egos— then destroying and rebuilding them. Songs build and crumble at the same time, straddling the fine line between head-bobbing and head-banging with perfect aplomb. They’re the chaos to Stereolab’s harmony, if you will.

Prolapse’s influences and inspirations lean heavily towards the knotty and gnarled sounds of bands like Gang of Four, Au Pairs, Chameleons, Joy Division, and, of course, the Fall (Manchester must be Prolapse’s spiritual home, even though most of them hail from Leicester). Throw in some Red Krayola, Neu!, and Faust for good measure.

This beautifully clangy racket is topped off by the surreal, often mischievous vocal altercations betwixt Scottish Mick and Ms. Steelyard. Their personalities exemplify some generalizations one could make about Prolapse: she’s melody, he’s dissonance, she’s control, he’s chaos.

So —if listening to Prolapse’s 1994 debut Pointless Walks to Dismal Places is like getting caught in the middle of a knock-down, drag-out fight, not knowing whether to interfere or merely listen in, then Backsaturday, its successor (Jetset), documents the point immediately after —where both parties sit there, seething with rage at one another. In a way, it’s more disturbing, because the tension is obviously there, roiling just below the surface.

Backsaturday was recorded in a day. Or maybe two. Scottish Mick spent most of the session down at the pub, only entering the studio to record the vocals, which are, in keeping with Prolapse tradition, largely improvised. Prolapse don’t believe in “practice makes perfect,” preferring instead to let inspiration (rather than “production values”) dictate their sound. Lest you think the dreaded word “improvisation” means some sort of wanky half-hour-long endurance test, rest assured that Prolapse are quite good at creating actual songs, thank you very much —from the slow, haunting “Zen Nun Deb” to the tralala single “TCR” (short for “Total Control Racing”) to the 15-minute, blistering rush of “Flex,” which features Mick’s most inspired vocal absurdities to date: “I will never pledge myself to be at one with fellow man…I will never conjugate the verb ‘to be’ when all else fails…I will always push the cart because some prick’s wandered off…I will never leave this life wi’ my mother’s disrespect.”

Prolapse formed at Leicester University, where the members were studying archaeology, physics, and literature, among other subjects. Linda takes up the narrative: “Apparently, they were sitting at a table at a disco, feeling really miserable and wanting to express this in music. They decided to form a miserable band and call it by a miserable name. So Prolapse was born.”

Scottish Mick elaborates: “We got drunk one night, went into a darkened room, and played a bunch of boyish guitar crap!

Linda goes on: “They played me the demo tape they’d made. It was people playing on bottles and tables. It was kind of crap, but there was something good in there, I could tell.”

Initially, Linda wasn’t in the band at all. As she explains it, “someone came up with the idea that my best friend, Angie, and I could stand at the side of the stage during Prolapse gigs and peel oranges, looking really mad. But when the gig happened, she never turned up. They said to me, ‘Why don’t you come anyway?’ And I did.”

Linda explains Prolapse’s idiosyncratic songwriting process: “Whatever anybody performs in the band, they’ve written themselves.” She adds, with a touch of wonder, “And at the end of the day, we’ve got songs!” I ask if it’s hard to keep that sort of momentum going. Wouldn’t it be easier having a dictator in a band, rather than six people going in opposite directions? “I think it would be hard for a lot of people,” she answers. “It’s different for us because we’ve always improvised. It’s not like we started with a songwriter. A band that starts with a songwriter can’t really progress into improvisation. But it’s easy for us, quite democratic.”

The band’s theatricality came naturally: both Linda and Mick have acted in local theater and on television, including Chez Lester, which Linda describes as a “weird, surreal soap opera,” in which she and Mick get to “show off and be different characters, and be a bit stupid!”

Early gigs had Linda pacing the stage and leafing through a bread bin filled with old issues of Melody Maker. Sundry items (potatoes, oranges, toy prams, televisions, etc.) ended up being broken or thrown. “That’s how we got our energy out onstage, but then, when the press started to notice it, they said things like, ‘See Prolapse, they throw things at the audience!’ So we had to stop doing it, because that was all people picked up on! That killed it for us!”

With no objects on stage to hurl at each other, Mick and Linda are content to give each other significant stares. Live, Mick’s whirlwing-dervish persona is thrown into stark relief compared to Linda’s quiet intensity. He’s hyperkinetic, rail-thin and a bit scruffy in thrift-store polyester shirt and bone-bag jeans, stalking around the stage looking menacing.

Between songs, Mick adds droll commentary to the proceedings: “Now that was from the shambolic to the ridiculous,” he comments after a slightly ramshackle version of Pointless Walk’s “Headless in a Beat Hotel.” “Is there any more beer? We’re dyin’ up here!” Someone complies with a pitcher. Mick takes a swig, then quips: “I love American beer! It tastes like water. If you ever get drunk on American beer …feel a bit embarrassed!” When Linda mentions that the next song is one they just made up for a radio session that afternoon, and that it could go “horribly wrong,” Mick adds: “If it goes horribly wrong you’ll know not to listen to the radio tomorrow!”

So they have a talent for self-deprecation.

***

I have to repress the urge to put the opening strains of Pointless Walks’ “Tina This is Matthew Stone” on my answering machine. I gleefully imagine that the sound of Linda screaming, “Why don’t you shut your mouth until you think of something good to say?” will strike fear into the hearts of telemarketers everywhere.

“Tina” documents a violent, crockery-smashing battle between Mick and Linda. At first, she seems to be winning: her impish ability to cut through his bluster with a well-aimed barb seems to anger him into near-silence. “What? Cat got yer tongue?” she taunts. “If you tried speaking with your brain instead of your bloody arsehole we might get somewhere!” “Oh, I hav’na heard that one before!” he bellows. “Can we talk about somethin’ else instead o’ somethin’ we always talk about?” “I can’t believe the shit that comes out of your mouth!” she retorts. “I want to kill you!” It ends with the sound of blows being exchanged —“don’t you ever hit me wi’ anything ever again!” Mick screams, as Linda retreats, sobbing.

During the recording of the song, producer Steve Mack had to leave the studio. “He thought it was a real fight!” recalls Mick. “We managed to knock over some equipment in the studio. We were throwin’ each other about! At the end it sounds like Linda crying, but she’s actually laughing ‘cause it’s so ridiculous!”

Linda remembers it somewhat differently: “I can’t bear to listen to that song. Can’t listen to it at all. That’s why it’s annoying when people say, ‘Did you choreograph that?’ That’s not what it’s about at all!”

The unflinching intimacy of songs like “Tina” and Backsaturday’s “Flex” is one of the most compelling (and disconcerting) things about Prolapse. At times Linda seems exasperated by her partner’s never-ending bluster: “What are you wearin’ those glasses for, you slimy git? What are you trying to hide?” she growls on “Every Night I’m Mentally Crucified (7000 Times),” her voice almost drowned out by the unrelenting percussion. Her composure is the perfect foil to Mick’s disjointed harangues. She and Mick know how to play off of one another. Linda remarks: “Most people in bands don’t know each other so well. They wouldn’t dream of going near each other, which is why most people just stand there and get on with it. Mick and I went out together. We know each other well, we can throw each other around.”

***
Prolapse, "Black Death Ambulance" [right-click-save-as, s'il vous plaît]

For more information on Prolapse please visit Graham's most excellent Prolapse page. Or, you can always add your 2¢ over at Wikipedia or the ever-entertaining Prolapse: Classic or Dud?

Posted by Andrea at 07:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

The second volume of Soul Jazz’ “New York Noise” comes out this week, and if anything promises to be even better than the first. I’m intrigued by the inclusion of UT, a band that rose out of the ashes of Robin Crutchfield’s Dark Day [Nina Canal was in Dark Day briefly, but there was really no overlap with the two groups], got picked up by the label that introduced Sonic Youth to the world, Blast First!, and then disappeared in 1989 or thereabouts. UT’s music wasn’t quite as concise and declarative as its name, but it reveled in pitting the primitive with the sensual. The constant tug-of-war became a sonic texture in and of itself, pitting low-end assaults with tape loops, hums, and fierce drumming against coolly sexy vocals.

UT survived the move from NYC to the UK but finally imploded after the release of the Steve Albini-produced Griller. Founding member Jacqui Ham went on to form Dial, which released one album that I know of, infraction [Cede]. It’s a haphazard affair at best, but for moments at a time it owns the room. This track, “Little Eye,” is incredibly heavy with dread, almost unlistenably so. But it’s Ham’s howled, mewling, almost inarticulate vocals that pull the track out of the gutter. The effect is quite haunting —it grows on you, transmuting from sludgy noise to something keening and oddly delicate. The more you listen to it the more compelling it becomes,

I wonder if Jacqui is still making music? If she is, the internet isn’t telling.*

*There's a new Dial record due for release very shortly [late Summer 2006]...

***
Dial, "Little Eye" [right-click-save-as, s'il vous plaît]

The Dial album is available from Forced Exposure.

More info on "New York Noise 2" can be found here. There's a fantastic UT track posted over at 20Jazzfunkgreats if you're curious.

Posted by Andrea at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

The Knitters
The Modern Sounds of… the Knitters [Zoë/Rounder]
Live at The Paradise
Boston MA, 2005

There are a few things you should know about the Knitters: they formed in 1982 as a side-project to the members’ primary bands (X and the Blasters) with the intention of playing only benefit shows. They released their first album, Poor Little Critter in the Road, in 1985; this year they finally released the follow-up,
The Modern Sounds of the Knitters. The band is made up of three-quarters of X (namely, guitarist/singer John Doe, singer Exene Cervenka, and percussionist DJ Bonebrake), guitarist Dave Alvin (formerly of the Blasters, now solo), and stand-up bassist Jonny Ray Bartel (of Los Angeles group the Red Devils).

Watching The Decline of Western Civilization, Penelope Spheeris’ documentary of the nascent LA punk scene, recently, I was struck by the sheer aggressiveness of the scene that spawned them. And X gave back as good as they got, encapsulating the paranoia and decay of LA life with songs as narratively concise as Raymond Carver short stories.

The Knitters, on the other hand, put a different spin on similar themes. Even if some critics place the band firmly in the long shadow of X’s legend, I don’t think that’s something that concerns them overmuch. If anything, the joyful noise of the Knitters —an energizing mix of traditional ballads, rockabilly and bluegrass classics (they’d fit CBGB’s titular credo more than most bands who’ve actually played there, X included), and re-worked versions of X songs— refuses to trade in nostalgia. They don’t dwell in the past, nor do they peer especially far into the future. They’re firmly, blissfully rooted in the now. [cont'd]

Critter must have seemed decidedly anomalous back in 1985, even with a pedigree of bands who’d always stood out in the rather hegemonic LA musical landscape. Wedding rootsy, traditional influences (be it blues, rockabilly, bluegrass, or country) to the raw, blunt, stubbornly a-historical sound of punk was something new then. In the intervening years such plundering of the past has become practically de rigeur for bands finding their footing, but the Knitters —along with their peers the Gun Club, Alvin’s the Blasters, Los Lobos, Lone Justice, Rank and File, and (of course) X— were pioneers of alt.country, to coin the accepted but rather odious phrase.

OK, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way: none of this explains what makes the Knitters special. It’s an elusive combination of charisma, chemistry, and wit; what formed as a pick-up band, a casual aside to more pressing projects has slowly but surely come into its own. As Doe notes in the press release for Modern Sounds, “The Knitters, like their music, don’t do anything hasty.” But they do careful. and in the intervening years since their deliciously sloppy debut they’ve certainly struck the perfect balance between spit n’polish and spontaneity.

Live, they bring new meaning to the term “loose knit.” I mean it as high praise when I say that they’re the world’s greatest roadhouse pick-up band, but they kinda are. Somewhat more slapdash than David Johansen’s preservation project the Harry Smiths, any instinct towards building a new canon or dusting off slightly stale classics (Steppenwolf’s hell-raisin’ standard “Born to Be Wild” comes to mind) is out the window when the band get onstage and tear through their set with reckless, marvelously casual abandon, making each song wholly their own. It’s a glorious sight, vibrant and vital. Every time I’ve seen the Knitters they’ve torn the roof off the place with their sheer, restless exuberance —its gale-force is undeniable.

At the Paradise they kicked up their glorious, nervy skiffle for a good hour and a half, their energy never waning for a second.

The element of reclamation is central to the Knitters’ agenda, not that they would be so formal as to call it an “agenda” per se. breathing new life into fond but mostly forgotten songs. Or even some not-so-forgotten ones —as always, they played some beloved X favorites, done as countrified rave-ups. “In This House That I Call Home” gets sped-up, losing some of the mournful, creeping paranoia of the original along the way but gaining a sexy swagger. I was desperately hoping for "The Have-Nots" (possibly my favorite X song) but was contented to get "Burning House of Love" (sung with heartfelt ache by two singers who’ve certainly been there) and "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts" (a very prescient song, considering the current state of world affairs). They give us “Poor Little Critter”, of course —it’s the band’s thesis statement, and by now a classic in its own right. Like “The Have-Nots”, it’s about finding oblivion in the bottle and waking up to a new day (whether you like it or not). “Skin Deep Town”, an X song first heard on Live at the Sunset Strip, becomes, in the Knitters’ capable hands, a scathing critique of Hollywood’s legendary self-absorption, couched in a riotous hootenanny. The plaintive sound of Jimmy Driftwood’s haunted folk lament “Long Chain On” (made famous by Odetta) presages the mournful country-tinged sound of X songs like “Burning House of Love.” And then there are songs like Flat and Scruggs’ wry “Give Me Flowers When I’m Living” and the Doe’s own “Try Anymore (Why Don’t We Even)” that harken back to a simpler time, when men were men and women were women and they solved their problems with a whole lotta drinkin’ and arguin’.

Pretty much every song features the patented call-and-response vocals from John and Exene. The interplay between them is, as always, one of the great joys in modern music. There's such richness to their interaction: sometimes they harmonize perfectly; other times they taunt and tempt. But they’re never anything short of perfectly attuned to one another. They know just how far they can push one another —it’s an intimate, powerful dynamic, and an electrifying one. The love they have for this music is clearly palpable. It’s a deceptively simple thing, this heart-on-sleeve quality they have. But it’s rare enough in these days when every band being so goddamn cooler-than-thou that it’s important. And, even better: they make rollicking, unselfconsciously fun music. That’s worth a hell of a lot.

While there wasn’t a mosh pit at this show (as there was when I saw the band at San Francisco’s far more spacious Great American Music Hall), couples were square-dancing with abandon up on the balcony. Just another sign of how far things have come since they started playing shows back in 1982. “From moshing to square-dancing: the true story of the Knitters.”

It’s a fine tall tale.

Posted by Andrea at 09:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Lisa Crystal Carver
AS220
Providence RI

Lisa Crystal Carver is a fearless cultural adventurer, an endlessly optimistic raconteur who’s always followed her own idiosyncratic path —ever since the fateful day she first took the stage at age seventeen as leader of the infamous anarcho-performance troupe Suckdog. From there it was one adventure after another, some more harrowing than others but all grist for Carver’s incisive, easy wit and droll, conversational tone. Her new memoir Drugs Are Nice [Soft Skull, 2005] chronicles her early years, starting with the day her drug-running, grifter father told her he’d killed a man and ending with her working her way back to her own version of normalcy.

The “reading” at AS220 is anything but normal, but that’s hardly a surprise. Lisa’s co-conspirators for the day (her friends Rachel and Erik) are stuck in traffic, so we play Lisa’s version of Truth or Dare until they show. The Doctor is in, and she’s asking questions we may not be all that comfortable answering. Embarrassing, embarrassed confessions have a way of tumbling out when Lisa’s in the room. Even better if the answer is unsettling or awkward or just plain icky —because our foibles, our flaws are what make us human. They can even be beautiful if looked at through the right lens.

In this way, Lisa’s interest is humanist and brilliantly democratic. “See?” she seems to be saying. “We’re all the same under the skin, equal. We’re all freaks in our own special ways.” She doesn’t sit in judgment. Rather, she helps us illuminate all the dark spaces we’re afraid to look at. And she always shares her own stories first, with the same unflinching candor that she expects in turn. And that’s what makes her so refreshing. She’s like your psychotherapist and agony aunt all rolled into one ebullient package; the Cookie Mueller for our apathetic, post-irony generation. And she doesn’t have time for all that bullshit Gen-X pose. She’s not post-modern or post-anything. She doesn’t subscribe to any philosophy other than her own. In her warts-and-all confessional zine Rollerderby and again in Drugs Are Nice, she seems at home everywhere —even if, sometimes, her fearlessness is feigned and she’s really just making it all up as she goes along. She’s her own muse, wildly optimistic even at the worst of times.

After all the confessions are blurted out, the rest of Lisa’s troupe finally arrives. They end up acting out scenes from Drugs Are Nice. Lisa acts as MC. There’s copious amounts of ketchup blood and bad fake French and death by potato peeler and a date with GG. Erik, who’s playing GG with unerring accuracy, right down to the leather jacket and jockstrap ensemble, won’t sit in the puddle of ketchup leftover on stage from the death-by-peeling incident. “GG wasn’t afraid of any damn ketchup!” someone from the audience yells out. Chagrined, Erik sits in the goddamn ketchup. Rachel plays Lisa. She and GG half-heartedly make out, until he gets annoyed and cuts open her white flapper dress. Afterwards GG goes to heaven and comes back with angel wings and a halo. We all have a moment of silence for poor old GG, before chaos erupts again.

There’s never a dull moment when Lisa’s around.

Afterwards I buy a copy of Drugs Are Nice from Lisa. I tell her how much I miss Rollerderby. “So do I,” she says, a bit wistfully. Suddenly an old friend tackles her in a big hug and, not wanting to interrupt, I turn to leave. Rachel and Erik and Co. are having a smoke out in the chilly Providence air. “You guys get hazard pay for this?” I ask. “Nah,” Rachel says. “In real life I’m a biologist. So, I love getting to act out once in awhile.”

We all have Lisa to thank for that.

Posted by Andrea at 10:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Celebration/The Double
AS220
January 6, 2006

This double bill by Baltimore-based trio Celebration and Brooklyn-based foursome the Double promised a lot and thankfully, delivered. Although, frankly, I wasn’t sure anything could top seeing the Double play a blistering, frenzied, and focused set on a sweltering summer night on a cramped and crowded sunken ship moored in New York harbor, but this show came tantalizingly close.

The pairing offered a study in contrasts between two bands with certain aesthetic sensibilities and influences in common, but a marked divergence in their use of tone and texture. Not that this is a bad thing —far from it. Too often I go to shows and all the bands on the bill have a certain monochromatic style palette in common. In which case: next stop=Dullsville.

Celebration’s Katrina Ford is a powerhouse. Before the start of their set she wandered aimlessly through the thin crowd, nervously alighting on stage. Then drummer David Bergander and multi-instrumentalist Sean Antanaitis (who’s also Ford’s husband and collaborator with her in previous bands Jaks, Lovelife, and Birdland) launched into the first song and —bam!— Ford sprang to life, howling and cooing and shrieking into the mike, a whirling dervish of boundless energy and restless movement.

In fact, the whole band is about frenetic energy. Largely thanks to Antanaitis’ organ fills and fevered guitar, Celebration’s overall sound is loose-limbed, rollicking, and eerily carnival-esque. (Imagine Fourwaycross chopped up Tzara-style with “From Her To Eternity” and Coil’s “Ubu Noir.”) With the addition of Ford’s sensuous, rich vocals, it becomes irrepressibly sexy, sensual, playful. It’s deceptively simple, this music, but the seemingly inexhaustible energy of the players and vibrancy of their playing gives the music a full-bodied, irresistible pull. This is one group that makes the most of its minimal means, creating something lush and heady that never once lets up in intensity.

Setting one’s textural focus so narrowly can get a little samey after awhile. Thankfully the band’s short set was well-calibrated to build in intensity, culminating in “War,” an anti-Bush paean that ended the set with a real sense of emotional (not to mention percussive) catharsis.
Although Ford vented some serious spleen in “War,” the music itself swung and swaggered with sexy insistence, sounding subversively kicky and freewheeling, like a long-lost post-punk Busby Berkeley number. As Ford’s howls grew increasingly fervent (“got more guns than any-bod-yyyy!”), she punctuated the ramped-up, almost feverishly sped-up finale of the song with some aggressive percussion of her own (in addition to Bergander’s dogged backbeat). (The tambourine ain’t just for the Archies anymore.)

After the bold, brassy strut of Celebration’s raucous set, the Double came off as introverts in comparison—detailed, exacting, their music reflective and downtempo. But that’s not the whole story. While they are a very detail-oriented band, expert at layering sounds and playing them off one another (they utilize negative space as expertly as the positive), they’re hardly dour. They’re wry romanticists, too post-modern (post-post-modern?) to buy into all that letters-and-sodas bullshit, making music that —while hardly dryly ironic— is subtly wary. An Escher-esque sense of imbalance and foreboding informs songs like “Standing on a Levee” and “Firecrackers in Sawdust”; the near-constant sense of disorientation underscored by ringing keyboard trills and distortion skittering back and forth. Their influences may be hard to pin down —echoes of dub here, some Jean-Jacques Perrey synth-cheese there, some Joy Division (more “Decades” than “Love Will Tear Us Apart”), Eno, United States of America and of course the Smiths— but with music so texturally variegated such trainspottery is almost beside the point.

Live, much of this textural detail was lost by necessity. The band seemed a little sloppy and even a bit muted compared to when I saw them over the summer. Tour fatigue? Possibly. But they gained momentum and surety as their set built towards songs off their recent Loose in the Air —the jittery, melancholy “Hot Air” crackled with longing and languor, while the echo-laden, feedback-drenched “Up All Night” brought us all back to the dance floor.

Celebration’s debut is out now on Beggars/4AD. ¶ The Double’s Loose In The Air is out on Matador. Or you could visit their their website. (Nice use of Flash, by the way).

Posted by Andrea at 10:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It’s been three long years since the last Terrastock. And almost ten since the first festival, which took place in Providence and brought together bands as disparate as the Silver Apples, Pearls Before Swine, Flying Saucer Attack, and thee Hydrogen Terrors (among others) in an incredible venue (the Rogue Lounge on Manton Avenue).

This year’s festival —which will run from April 21-23, 2006— is again taking place in downtown Providence at two venues: AS220 and the Pell Chaffee Performance Center. Tickets are $110 for the entire event. They are available from the Ptolemaic Terrascope or by PayPalling $110.00 to terrastock6@secreteye.org.

Providence is actually a friendly, lovely city in which to spend a long weekend. It’s small and very walkable. There are tons of reasonable food options in walking distance of the venue —and (for you coffee addicts) there’s a Dunkin Donuts next door. (Coffee snobs, there’s a better class of coffee to be had nearby as well.)

I’d advise getting hotel reservations early because there are not enough hotel rooms to go around.

LINEUP SO FAR: Avarus, Bardo Pond, Black Forest/Black Sea, Charalambides, Cul de Sac, College Girls Gone Wild, Damon & Naomi, Fursaxa, Ghost, the Green Pajamas, the Kitchen Cynics, Kinski, Sharron Kraus, Landing, Larkin Grim, the Magic Carpathians Project, Major Stars, Marissa Nadler, MV/EE, Paik, Jack Rose, Salamander, St. Joan, Spacious Mind, Spires that in the Sunset Rise, Tanakh, Thoughtforms, Urdog, Windy and Carl.

If Lightning Bolt turn out to be the “Special Guests” I will be really, really annoyed. I can only hope for Matt Elliott. Or Foehn. Or Pram. Or His Name is Alive...

A girl can dream, can't she?

Posted by Andrea at 10:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’m not going to do a Top Ten, because I’m not even sure I have a Top Ten for the year. It was that kind of year. (And, to be honest, I haven’t even bought the Ladytron or Broadcast albums yet—both of which need to be evaluated for a true Top 10 List).

I listened to a lot of Wolfgang Press this year, rediscovered Arto Lindsay and DNA in a big way, enjoyed the new Electrelane, Franz Ferdinand, and Knitters albums quite a lot. New Stereolab six-song EP was passable but more of the same, and hence, a pleasant enough disappointment. (I think I’ve maxed out on the ‘lab, sadly. Although I did find myself listening to Switched On and Peng! quite a bit so maybe it’s just new ‘lab that’s irking me with its drab meanderings. Hmm.)

Anyway, the list. Short but hopefully sweet: [cont'd>>]

1) THE OCCASION, Cannery Hours (say hey!)
Live, Sin-é [August 2005], Middle East Café [October 2005]

I’m not even sure at this point when or how I stumbled across the Occasion. But I do remember the precise moment that I heard “I Can’t Stop Falling.” It’s a song so compelling you just fall effortlessly into the little world it creates, this pocket fiction you want to take with you and study with rapt, slightly stunned attention. The refrain “I can’t stop falling,” repeated often and with a slowly escalating sense of desperation, is punctuated by sharp, startling whip-cracks of percussion. It is by turns quiet and poetic, furious and tense. “Sooner or later it will come to me,” singer Jordi Wheeler whispers, sounding like a man resigned to a peculiar sort-of hell that he both fears and welcomes.

After some investigating, I found out that “Falling” was off of their self-titled debut [Say Hey, 2004]. Their new album, Cannery Hours [Say Hey], is equally intense, building on similar timeless, enigmatic lyrical concerns and playful sense of sonic experimentation. Musically, the band paints in watercolors —sometimes in broad, dusky swathes, sometimes with bright, pointillist delicacy. Equal parts fitful and elusive, songs like the epic “The Maiden” and the stoic “Register My Complaints” evoke parched soundscapes —deserts where one or two hardy species of plant survive, seemingly against all odds. “You May Know Me” is touched with a rare, effortless sense of grace and buoyed by double-tracked, gentle harmonies and Brent Cordero’s plangent piano. In addition to the somewhat formal, elegiac quality, there’s also a subtle, surreal sense of whimsy at work. “What is this?” Jordi sings on “Register My Complaints”, “Is it the work of some imaginative florist?”

Loosely speaking, The Occasion traffic in a kind of pastoral psychedelia. Psychedelia is, at heart, about freeing music from earthbound limitations, and in turn invoking a trance-like state in the listener. And the sum total of the Occasion’s music offers no such balm. Songs often begin with undulating, gentle waves of sound, lulling you into a false sense of complacency, only to stun you with distortion and rumbling basslines. From there, it builds to these incredible crescendos, pulling you effortlessly to the top of a massive swell and leaving you there, slightly stunned and wondering how in the hell you’re going to get down to Earth again.

The band is, in some ways, a bit of a Frankenstein creature —the push and pull of influences is sometimes internal, and they’re a better band for it. While their sound certainly has some antecedents in the 60s and 70s (the Velvets, Cale, Tony Conrad, echoes of the motorik mantras of Can, Amon Duul II, and Neu!) it also has the crisp single-mindedness and emotional raggedness of post-punk, post-rock groups like Savage Republic, Slint, and Scenic. (The S’s in a row were purely coincidental.) They manage to incorporate three singers —Brent Cordero (vocals, Rhodes piano), Charles Burst (vocals, drums), and Jordi Wheeler (vocals, guitar)— without compromising individual songwriting styles. Yet, somehow, everything coalesces in this incredibly organic way, aided and abetted by the equally impressive contributions of bassist Marlon Sporer and tape loop guru/percussionist Sara Shaw, whose deft way with splicing gives the songs their tenacious, slightly windswept quality.

I’ve caught the band live twice now —once during CMJ at Sin-é, and recently at Boston’s Middle East, where they were opening for Acid Mothers Temple. Both shows were impressive in different ways, The first because the band took their limited time and ran with it, giving us a concise set that never once let up in intensity. Seeing them a little over a month later at the Middle East, it was clear that touring with loose-limbed collective Acid Mothers Temple had liberated the band in some crucial ways. Songs that were organic to begin with became even more freeform, ebbing and flowing with a newfound confidence and innate sense of trust. That, and they seemed to be having a lot more fun.

Long story short: live or on record, they’re a fantastic band and you would do well to have a listen to the MP3s posted on the Say Hey website. Or over at Beekiller.

2) CITIZEN'S BAND [Deitch Projects]

This insane anarcho-cabaret collective/variety show spectacle includes Rain Phoenix, Karen Elson, Ian Buchanan (Twin Peaks) and (seemingly) an entire Coney Island Freak Show of insanely talented polymaths. I haven’t been lucky enough to catch one of their shows yet (they’re affiliated with Deitch Projects in NYC) but I can only imagine it’s like seeing Isadora Duncan, Mistiguett, Rasputina, and the Tiger Lillies playing Madame Nelson’s brothel on New Year’s Eve, a Gorey-esque, technicolor penny dreadful as bawdy, raucous, and wry as it is colorful. The group mixes originals with well-chosen covers, and plays music that is as mordantly funny (“Je T'Aime Scumbag”) as it is tender (Karen Elson’s heartbreaking reworking of the Velvets classic, “Candy Says”). I’m waiting (not-so-patiently) for them to release something officially, either an entire show on DVD or a cast recording/selection. I missed their latest opus The Trepanning Opera but hope to make it to whatever they’re offering up in the new year.

Karen Elson’s version of “Candy Says” is one of the most affecting songs I’ve heard all year. Given Elson’s background as a model, the song becomes a poignant exploration of a woman’s alienation from her own body —giving a nice, O. Henry-ish twist to the original’s plaintive longing of a transvestite to embody the feminine and understand the secret, elusive language of girls. Elson’s emotionally concise, nakedly vulnerable reading and her simple accompaniment on autoharp gives the song a tenacious delicacy that Candy Darling herself would have no doubt appreciated.

The Citizen's Band
Karen Elson with Citizen's Band, "Candy Says" [right-click-save, s'il vous plaît]

3) SONS AND DAUGHTERS, The Repulsion Box [Domino]

The Repulsion Box didn't quite live up to the short, spiky promise of debut EP "Love the Cup" but it came close. Live, this band tore into their songs with everything they had and it was special indeed.

From my live review of their October Boston show: “This spiky but tender gender-balanced quartet won’t pull their emotional punches when they can throw them (especially fitting when you remember that half of the group formerly worked with arch-miserablists Arab Strap). Led by co-conspirators Scott Paterson and Adele Bethel, the group draws heavily on folk and country influences: think Appalachian murder ballads and sinister, countrified rave-ups, a little Gothic and roughed-up —more Johnny Cash, X, and Gun Club than Grand Ol’ Opry. Their songs collectively inhabit some erstwhile Bermuda triangle between gray, smog-riddled Glasgow and a dusty roadhouse out on a lonely expanse of two-lane blacktop.

Onstage, the emotional intensity between Patterson and Bethel barely ever lets up. Paterson plays the stoic, silent card, while Bethel slinks across the stage, evoking such rock femme fatales as Poison Ivy Rorschach and Exene Cervenka but effortlessly holding her own.

The songs —narrative tragedies of love gone wrong, love gone sour, of love gone, period, full-stop— are tough as nails, but possessed of narrative breadth and delicacy that softens them just enough. Time after time they cut close to the bone with restless, harrowing precision. Take, for example, a song like “Gone”: with its use of handclaps, brisk syncopation, and “la la la” harmonies, it could almost be could be a long-lost demo by a stripped-down, slightly sinister Shangri Las. That is, until Adele’s girlish coo veers sharply into a harrowing banshee wail. “I cut you out of every photograph within an inch of your life!” she spits out with shockingly pure, unmitigated rancor.

Every Sons and Daughters song is full-on, all flash and heat. But they’ve spun something darkly compelling and singularly vital out of such impetuous, romantic fatalism. Live, they’re even better: vibrant and luscious and a bit harrowing. See them if you can.”

Sons and Daughters
Domino Recording Co.

4) GLASS CANDY, “Life After Sundown” 12”; Sugar & Whitebread EP [troubleman unlimited]

Any band that covers the Screamers, “Iko Iko” and the Rolling Stones has some cojones (not to mention a sense of humor). Glass Candy’s best release of the year by far was the incredible 12” single, “Life After Sundown,” a gloriously hi-NRG romp that plays out like the best song ESG never wrote, all dubby low-end and giddy hand-claps. If this doesn’t get you dancing around your office, there may be no hope for ya.

By comparison, “Sugar & Whitebread” is a pale imitation, but an enjoyable one. Tom Tom Club meets Blondie in a head-on collision of synth squiggles and cooler-than-permafrost vocals.

The band has posted on their Myspace page that they’ll soon be offering all their demos, remixes, and alternate versions of songs (over 50 in all) available as hi-res MP3 downloads. I’ll post the URL when it’s up.

Troubleman Unlimited
Glass Candy

5) HIS NAME IS ALIVE, Summerbird EP (online release)

There’s a new HNIA album on the horizon, called Detrola. This EP, released online this past summer, was a lovely preamble, a buoyant and lovely collection of four sun-drenched, lush songs.

His Name Is Alive

6) SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES, Downside Up

What can I say? My Goth roots are showing. I’ll always love the Banshees, and this box-set gave me a chance to own all the odds and ends I was missing over the years —including two of my favorite B-sides, “Tattoo” (memorably covered by Tricky for his nearly god project), “Are You Still Dying, Darling?” and “Something Wicked This Way Comes.” All this and the Thorn EP too. Beautiful packaging is always a nice bonus.

Albums I Didn’t Buy in 2005 but Should Have:

Psapp, Tiger, My Friend [Leaf]
50 Foot Wave, Free Music [throwing music]
Lali Puna, I Thought I Was Over That [Morr]
Matt Elliott, Drinking Songs [Merge]
Ilitch, 10 Suicides [Fractal]
Broadcast, Tender Buttons [warp]
Ladytron, Witching Hour [Ryko]
Celebration, Celebration [4AD]
The Rogers Sisters, Three Fingers [troubleman unlimited]
Amadou & Mariam, Dimanche a Bamako [nonesuch]
Kokono No. 1, Congotronics [Crammed]

Posted by Andrea at 07:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)