MELOMANIA Bite One keeping you busy listening this holiday weekend. Working on..
another CRYSTAL BALL full of future hits for you as well. More coming very soon.
INCENTIVES AND SHARING
One of the facets of this great and wonderful host is the panoply of opportunities they present through new options. While the idea that fantastic subscribers like you sharing this page can help us spread the word, we can only humbly ask you to do that because you enjoy what is here. Three years down the road and we are thankful for each and every one of you. If you feel like you have friends who would enjoy this glimpse into the realm of discerning music reviews and lists, please share. We have only more excellent reviewing to bring you and yours.
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This week is a bit low on new releases. Spouting out that we have Swedish Christian Music from the Sixties and smoking Argentinian Garage would have made a dandy opening for this edition. Like all good farm teams - they were moved to the big leagues! Also, if you would like to subscribe to that - check us at https://www.tbonescafe.com/
bdrmm -I Don’t Know [LP/CD](Rock Action/Redeye)
The common issue with Post-Punk is “Am I listening too much like I heard this before?” The common issue with Shoegaze is “Am I digesting this because it is Shoegaze, or is that like enjoying comfort food rather than an actual meal?”
Hull’s bdrmm has been a band that we have followed for years now. Their 2020 album “Bedroom” was a real turning point. They mastered the whole minimalist/dreamy side of Shoegaze but still maintained some sense of forward motion. However, the closest antecedent to “I Don’t Know” is strangely Radiohead (and not in that annoying copycat way either.) The drum machine skipping/looping opener “Alps” is a fresh piece of composition like none we have heard from the band before. Like the inverse of the underrated Clark album from this year, here is Electronic music played like Rock. “Alps” piles on the effects and wild ideas, but always manages to stay in the Shoegaze lane.
The difference between bdrmm then and bdrmm now is that their tracks have developed an undefined lightness. “Be Careful” is a spellbinder that could be part Beach House but with a funky drummer. Apparently, that is what bdrmm is going for here - the mixture of two slightly opposing ideas. For instance, “It’s Just a Bit of Blood” sounds like it is drifting in, and then pummels you like label parents Mogwai. While “We Fall Apart” adds motorik to the beat map, it counters it beautifully with an insistent but melodic Cure-ian bass line. Even when they lean back into the most recognizable Shoegaze trick of playing against the springy chorus on “Hidden Camera,” they wisely match it with an off-kilter Post-Punk rhythmic whack.
To their credit, the effects are never jarring - but they serve as a notice for you to absorb the songs differently (following our analogy - therefore a meal, perhaps.) “Pulling Stitches” is the closest to bdrmm 2020 (that Swirlies-guitar unwinding is very impressive,) but the double-tracked vocals are a new definition of dreamy - not a redefinition of DIIV or someone else. Now they do meander a bit too much on the closer “A Final Movement” and Ryan Smith’s voice can sound a little too much like the singer of a certain band. “I Don’t Know” takes huge chances with dynamics, a new “interlaced” guitar sound, and wisest of all - coloring their music to take a seat right on the fence of hopeful and mournful. Even after multiple plays, you cannot help but listen as if you have never heard it before.
Various Artists - L80’s: So Unusual [LP/CD](Numero/Secretly/AMPED)
Eighties music today carries a certain amount of nostalgia due to how it sounds. However, that sound typically carries with it built-in expectations that can too often prevent one from really listening to what was put into the writing/recording process. Take a song like Harry Styles’ super-popular “As It Was.” It works because it has the familiarity of an Eighties song. However, it is wisely filtered through the nervy, updated sound of Eighties admirers, The Strokes. Next, it hits the spin cycle of this stonewashing process, its modernization to sound all “bleepy” like The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights.”
These fantastic women braved whatever comparisons there were to record as “state-of-the-art” as possible. So, you are hearing the same synths as “Take Me Home Tonight” in Suse Millemann’s “Patterns” or Anita Baker-ish phrasing of De’Monica Flye over sultry sax and big drum machines on “Someday You’ll See.” Once you separate the familiarity and dig in you can see that Jeff Phelps and Antoinette’s simple and effective “Hear My Heart” is an extension of the sincere balladeering of Minnie Riperton. Or the deep, almost droning low voice on Vazz’s mesmerizing “Breath” as a sort of Post-Punk/Pop version of Sade. Like most Eighties singles, the magic was in the production. Isabelle Antenna’s “Naughty Naughty” is fairly by-the-numbers until a key change in the chorus builds some real tension that is further aided by the multitude of overdubbed voices behind her. Elisa Waut’s twangy guitar and angry Dusty Springfield-ish sense of attack on “Being Strong” is made even more interesting in its commitment to staying wordy and still being very European.
“L80’s: So Unusual” is another in Numero’s Cabinet of Curiosities series. Like the previous editions, they are fun to play “spot the influence” or even marvel at how they sound so of their time. However, this one does not seem to be played for giggles. It is true some are slightly innocuous, but these are women in a studio finding their own identities. There is something admirable about that.
LISTENING JOURNAL
SWANS - Filth (1983)/Cop (1984)/Young God EP (1984)/Greed (1985)
In deference to their latest album, "The Beggar" (16!), we thought it might be an excellent time to travel back and see how it all began. Subtracting the 1982 "Swans" EP (which appears on the "Filth" Deluxe version,) Michael Gira's post-"Circus Mort" band is the basis for the more abstract, disturbing, and repulsive noise that follows in its wake.
Why Swans? It is dangerously simple. Do you know that point on the first Stooges album where Iggy and the boys "stumble" into THAT beat? Then out of the first seven songs they ever played, "No Fun" bludgeons you with its riff and possibly the most rudimentary set of lyrics for a song in the Rock N’Roll Hall of Fame. Iggy has nothing to say and yet everything to communicate. He preens, grunts, growls, howls, and then pauses to do it again. In short, Iggy wants you to feel just how "No Fun" this is.
On "Filth" Deluxe, there is a monstrous live show from 1982. While we are never sure just how Gira is orchestrating his players, "Weakling" rumbles through like a garbage truck losing control and taking casualties. The bass sounds subterranean. The drums sound primal and feel like high-tension wires hitting your central nervous system. Guitars sound like machines at power plants switching on and off at oppressively loud volume. Gira is truly out to have "no fun."
So as Gira is shedding members and playing to whoever is brave enough to show up for them in 1982, Swans are learning the fundamentals of what we will call "communicating the message," Gira's original Swans were out to reflect how gritty the urban wasteland of New York City had become while staunchly abandoning all rules of making music. Gira alternates between bellowing and screaming his bloodthirsty minimalist poetry. The combination of bending low notes that rattle the atmosphere and shrieks of undeniable terror is like those recordings of Captain Howdy/Pazuzu from "The Exorcist" soundtracked by early Throbbing Gristle.
1983’s “Filth” is an exercise in slow, grinding noise. In between all the crashing machinery and squeals, Michael Gira is developing his message delivery. While that message is not quite here yet, "Filth" is where Swans differentiate themselves (it’s Gira, Jonathan Kane, and drummer Roli Mosimann.) “Big Strong Boss” matches the lyrics to the violence of their music. On top of that, it is made even more clear when the track just stops, pauses, and goes into “Blackout.” “Weakling” also shows form, “Freak” overwhelms you, and "Power For Power" even hobbles into polyrhythms. "Filth" is Frankenstein's monster taking the first breath of its next carnivorous life.
1984's "Cop" is a staggering, bone-crushing mess. Like the Richard Kern photographs from those desperate years, you want to look and then flinch at what you see. "Job" is a nightmarish mixture of PiL-style guitar snarl and the aforementioned Stooges-ian repetition and oversimplification. The noise of "Filth" is becoming more mantra-like. The title track's mixture of fuzz bass and slapback-echo-covered snare is becoming the Swans’ sound, leaving the closer "Thug" dangerous in its bludgeoning, relentless throb and Gira's Lydon-esque delivery.
The "Young God" EP is the first complete sonic vision for Swans. The No Wave screech and skronk are wearing off, and the hangover of industrial-strength noise call-and-response is dissipating. The title track and closer "This Is Mine" are particularly noteworthy as Gira begins to use the space between death-knell-like moaning and instrument strikes. Casting his emotional cries deep in the mix against each pounding of a note is their smartest move yet. "Young God" is the moment where the recoil gives you an idea of just how far down the abyss truly is.
Having mastered the art of transferring physical pain to music and establishing that the only constant in life is misery must have given Michael Gira a new perspective. As the slumbering nation recovered from its decade-long bout with inflation/stagflation, 1985 saw Swans attack that most fundamental of deadly sins - “Greed.” The brutality is being replaced with the use of silence and the development of stamina. Opening with the chilling piano piece “Fool” is inspired, especially listening to Gira bellow breathlessly in places like these are his last words. The digital drums are a real change. Their natural decay (“Anything For You”) and oft-killer pounding (“Stupid Child” create an audio image, where the other sounds can enter in newly distinguishable patterns. However, the biggest difference is the addition of haunting high vocals of Jarboe (“Greed.”) Suddenly, she is the siren drawing you into industrial noise that repelled you just a year ago. When “Heaven” revisits the lumbering bleakness of old, it is now the funereal first stomp of Doom Metal. Over four years, Swans have taken you through fire and bloody wrath.
We hope you enjoyed this music. We always leave hoping that there is something on the list or the page for everyone. Support these artists. They are working on music that they love and firmly believe could be loved by others too. Glad to be your musical sifter/selector. Thank you.
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