|
Hoot
and Howl
 Complicated
Shirt
Strigine (self-released)
 According
to Hutchinson’s Dictionary of Difficult Words, the
word “strigine” means “owl-like.” Shamefully, I have yet to
determine how that relates to Complicated Shirt’s second release
of the same name. Perhaps, as was the case when submitting
this CD for my perusal, they will write me on the back of
a NiMo envelope and clue me in. Me, when I think of owls,
I am reminded of the time when I literally rode into one on
a moonlight mountain-bike ride in the Pine Bush. Damn mouse
eater knocked me right off my Litespeed. It was like getting
hit by a flying raccoon.
Whatever the tie, clearly the mind of Drew Benton exists in
a hallucination of almost total metaphor, which harvests vast
assassinations of character and scathing sociological assessments
and he scrapes his way through this aural assault, which is
also kind of like being assaulted and left to bleed in sandy
dunes by winged, garbage-feeding nocturnes. In a good way.
Benton’s lyrical cadence, accompanied by Greg Graffin’s thesaurus
and flair for internal rhyme schemes, reveals a sharp wit
and at times a surprising allegiance to hiphop, each composition
waxing harsh on life’s rich little asshole indulgences and
firefights. And it’s not without an alkaline sense of humor,
for example, this outtake from CD opener “Pitch Doctor Slogan”:
“Just ’cause it exists don’t mean you must use it/And you
don’t fucking care that you’re ruining music/As long as everybody’s
ears and eyes are on you/Here, dress up like a deer and I’ll
go get Ted Nugent.”
There is much flotsam floating in the vitriolic sea of Albany’s
burgeoning garage-rock scene, but Complicated Shirt’s low,
no-sponsor concord and willingness to integrate rap, electronic
and folk into its hepatic rock fury put them ahead of the
cigarette pack. I don’t know where the band draw their influences
from, but their little oddball guitar interludes and spastic
hockey-helmet short-bus sorties between verses bring pre-Bob
Ezrin era Alice Cooper to mind. I see chicken feathers, I
hear the shriek of man as he refuses to punch the clock. A
hailstorm of abrasive guitars (most likely some old Gibson,
and rightly so) and Jonathan Pellerin’s Dick Van Dyke drums
literally pummel the listener into a rather mute sense of
awe. I’ve always been envious of drummers who ride that delicate
cusp between efficacy and complete disaster, like an amusement-park
ride with a very poor maintenance schedule (your local Scrambler,
perhaps). One reckons that any minute he’ll tangent off into
anything but the song at hand, which adds a tremendous, uplifting
anxiety to songs like “The Sound of Sirens” and “The Lowest
Blow.” In contrast, Benton is a frighteningly deliberate player,
which makes the interstellar “Tear Party” and his mournful
“Centripetal Pills” as viable as they are disloyal to the
low-fi rank and file. Hopefully they can hammer it out live.
If not, they should be banned, like lead paint, for rousing
the hopes of bleary-eyed voyeurs and hard-drinking warehouse
workers everywhere.
Recorded directly to eight-track, the CD could have just as
easily been dubbed by boombox, but to the garage set this
is just as intentional as the pride the band take in disclosing
exactly which analog machine they used (an Otari half-inch
tape machine). Unfortunately, this prevented me from playing
the disc loud enough to rally the neighborhood animals into
a howling chorus, as I am wont to do, especially midweek.
Even at modest volumes the low end is somewhat of a laxative,
my subwoofer poised to explode like an old man’s colon. I
realize, of course, that garage ethics practically demand
adherence to lower or alternative modes of quality (and lack
of cash always helps that along nicely), but I couldn’t help
but fantasize how momentous and cutting Strigine would
be if laid down in a proper studio as to maximize the fruit
and frequency of this infectious affair.
—Bill
Ketzer
Various
Artists
Garage Beat ’66 Vol. 1-3
(Sundazed)
Like a mirror to the culture at large, rock music has become
stale, processed and boring over the years. It’s harder and
harder to find bands to absolutely transcend us, and most
that come close are usually trying too hard. So it is that
everybody wants that old-time rock & roll. Soon enough,
everyone comes back. It’s just too good. Either the 12-bar
form is so perfectly tailored to the designs of the human
brain or we’ve just succumbed to its melodic simplicity over
time, but there’s some ingredient too pure and too awesome
that will never be denied by our ears. “Louie Louie” will
always get people in a tizzy, and early Kinks will always
be sought after. So the story goes: Hurricane Beatlemania
hit our shores that fated night of Feb. 9, 1964, when more
than 70 million tuned in, and American teens cleared the storm
with guitars, drumsticks and scorched vocal chords. Even John
Kerry served a dutiful tour on bass with his prep-school group
the Electras (who have recently reissued their self-released
LP, available on www.electrasrockandrollband.com.)
The best of the explosion’s recordings were documented on
Rhino’s Nuggets box, four discs of hits, near-hits
and plain greatness from that first era of British Invaded
rock. As Nuggets drew up the extended family tree of
’60s garage and psych, this new collection from Sundazed collects
their estranged, vengeful stepbrothers, eager for our attention
and all the louder because of it. This is the raw underbelly
of America’s rocking ’60s, from the bands who kept that basic
R&B-based format alive during the post-Invasion wake (from
1966 on) by cranking it up and weirding it out.
From bands with names like the Concepts, Moss and the Rocks,
and the In, few of the cuts featured on these three volumes
have ever been heard outside of beat-crazed extremist circles.
Most of these bands were only given one shot in a studio,
usually resulting in a single or two—now standing to represent
their entire lifespan. Not surprisingly, they made it count.
And yes, maybe they were too dirty, or too fast, or too primal
for the masses to handle, but whose fault is that? Thankfully
our friends down in Coxsackie know better, smartly reminding
us that the best way to deal with a tedious present is to
dig deeper into a much cooler past.
—John
Suvannavejh
Komeda
Kokomemedada (Minty
Fresh)
It’s been six years since the Swedish band Komeda released
their last album, titled What Makes It Go? The passing
of time made me assume that they’d come to a stop. Well, I
am now delighted indeed that the quartet are intact and have
just stepped forward with the playfully named Kokomemedada.
The band’s music is full of curious tensions. Carefully constructed
songs have been arranged and produced in a manner that makes
them shiny on the outside. The jaunty rhythmic bearing and
inviting melodies are like a siren song, pulling you in. However,
once you are fully within their alluring embrace, Komeda reveal
themselves to be a more complex and demanding creature.
While doubling the syllables in their name makes for a fun
and funny new word and album title, it also mirrors some qualities
of their music, with its insistent propulsion tied to cerebral
frolics. The rhythm section of brothers Marcus and Jonas Holmberg
have a watchmaker’s precision, but it’s slightly loopy, like
a circus run by mathematicians. Lena Karlsson’s vocals, sung
by someone for whom English is a second language, have a careful
enunciation to them, evoking a cool reserve. But at the same
time, the pure sonorities of her voice are haunting and mysterious.
The opening song, “Nonsense,” plays along like a lullaby as
she slyly delineates a litany of faults, squarely placing
all blames in a crumbled relationship on the one left behind.
Komeda play deliciously subversive pop music: It sounds so
sweet and simple, but once inside of it, you’re in a funhouse
of trap doors, trick mirrors, and blind corridors.
—David
Greenberger
|
Columns
& Opinions
