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Part Three:
MIKA MIKO – C.Y.S.L.A.B.F. (Kill Rock Stars)
I’m so pissed off that I missed the Mika Miko / No Age show at the Luminaire back in June. I even had a ticket. Damn birthday parties! Anyway, point is, Mika Miko are an all-female punk band from Los Angeles, only two of the thirteen songs they recorded for this debut album hit the two minute mark, and OMG, they absolutely SLAY. “The Slits being Black Flag” is what somebody or other said. The Slits comparison is slightly erroneous as there’s no reggae here, but Mika Miko definitely have that wild, self-sufficient !GIRL-GANG! energy going on, so we’ll let it slide. As to the `Flag comparison, well, yeah, I guess I’ll take it. Mika Miko may work the kind of spidery guitar-lines and stabby white-funk rhythms that seem to come as naturally to modern kids as ‘Louis Louis’ did to the ‘70s punks, but that can’t hide the fact that the vibe here is pure early Californian hardcore, and all the more thrilling for it, recalling a time and place in which the punk bands were still desperate weirdoes, unhindered by generic convention, grabbing influences from all over and hammering them down as fast as they could on the cheapest recording equipment in town. Maybe it’s LA’s status as a giant, soulless suburb that allows it to throw out some rock n’ roll this vital and crazed every now and then: “white, suburban delinquent music”, just like Iggy intended. To understand Mika Miko is to understand mic cables tangled around limbs, incomprehensible vocal takes yelled down what sounds like an international phoneline, Lorna Doom learning to play bass as she went along in The Germs, grazed knees, too many sweets, Robert Quine’s guitar solo on ‘Love Comes In Spurts’, songs that finish before you realise they’d started and drum beats whose sole purpose in life is to go BOUNCE!BOUNCE!BOUNCE!BOUNCE!BOUNCE!
This is decadent 2007 though, the key advantage being that instead of having to make a virtue of misery like the old punks, Mika Miko are content to just sound like they’re having Tons O’ Fun. 2007 also means that instead of toiling in vinyl darkness in the SST mines, Mika Miko can be part of arty partying type cliques, can pick up a bunch of hype from crappy free magazines, can wear stupid hats without fear of ridicule and can make groovy videos like the one below. Most of the time I hate 21st century po-mo hipster-media culture by default, but maybe, just maybe, there are occasions to stand and salute the moments of righteousness it can bring us: link.
And no, I don’t know what C.Y.S.L.A.B.F stands for. And I don’t know what any of the lyrics on this album are about either, but I suspect they’re probably about being awesome.
Mp3 > Jogging Song (He’s Your Mr. Right)
NO AGE – WEIRDO RIPPERS (FatCat)
I’m still pissed off that I missed that Mika Miko / No Age show at the Luminaire back in June. But at least they have the good grace to be close to each other in the alphabet, so that they follow each other in my album round-up. Anyway, No Age are ostensibly two guys from LA who play guitar and drums and used to be in a hardcore band, and I did a review of this record by them for Freq back in April. I’m actually quite surprised to see it popping up so prominently on my best-of-year list. Because you see, by any conventionally applicable standard, ‘Weirdo Rippers’ is NOT a great album. It’s patchy and it’s self-indulgent and it’s really badly recorded, and I’d be unlikely to play it to anyone and expect them to be immediately impressed. So what’s the score? Well basically, ‘Weirdo Rippers’ is *exciting*. If you’ll permit me to quote myself again:
“‘No Age do noise, No Age do pop (in a manner of speaking), but only infrequently do the two meet. These meetings prove to be the most interesting bits, and it is the tension between the two approaches that helps make Weirdo Rippers such an attention-grabbing singularity. All things considered, No Age's 'noise' tracks are exceptionally good, betraying a level of forethought and imagination that eludes many. […] Batteries of cheapola guitar effects summon up the kind of melancholic fuzz-scape dreamt of by post-MBV shoegaze disciples, interspersed with warped found sound textures and other intriguing sonic wreckage. […] Chopped and spliced into this nodding-out-on-petrol-fumes extravaganza are examples of the 'other' No Age, playing flailing guitar and drums beat-downs, recorded in classic dictaphone-in-the-rehearsal-room style. Here, No Age wisely reject the post-Lightning Bolt consensus of testosterone-fuelled sensory overload, instead playing up their relative technical inadequacies, thrashing sloppily at some distant horizon, strangulated geek yelping expressing mockery and self-belief in equal measure, eventually rallying around some semblance of a melody and coalescing into outbursts of refreshingly straightforward surf-riffin' guitar pop, imbuing No Age's noise-trash hardcore approach with a cracked strain of humanity and humour […] One of the most exciting thing I've heard from the American underground this year, No Age's positivist approach makes Weirdo Rippers a shot across the bows of the increasingly complacent noise scene, and suggests that, given some studio time and a crate of new toys, these boys are likely to return with something truly special.”
So there you go. “My Life’s Alright Without You” is still my favourite tune from the album, and I think it sufficiently demonstrates everything that’s great about No Age, circumnavigating The Dead C via Weezer over the course of 90 seconds. What’s not to love?
Mp3 > My Life’s Alright Without You
OM – PILGRIMAGE (Southern Lord)
Somehow I’ve managed to miss out on Om’s output over the past few years, so I can’t really comment re: how this record measures up to their previous work, but let me simply say…. Whoa. On ‘Pilgrimage’, Om demonstrate their mastery of the essentials of metal, raising the form to a zen-like plateau wherein heavy music no longer even needs to be loud to achieve heaviocity…. it’s simply spiritually heavy. Quiet music somehow hewn from lead weights, dumbbells and monolithic boulders. And then, after a good, long while, it does get loud, and it’s like, WHOA. Old Testament. Avert your eyes from the majesty of The Riff, lest ye be smote. Or smitten. Or whatever; you get the point. The God whose praises Om sing doesn’t piss about, so it’s a pretty hard one to miss.
I’m not posting an MP3 because this is half an hour of music that is clearly meant to be experienced in one go, preferably whilst laying down in darkness with the bass on the EQ cranked really high, and such is the grace of the transitions between segments that placing one in isolation from the rest would seem kind of sacrilegious.
PANDA BEAR – PERSON PITCH (Paw Tracks)
Well, you knew it was coming. ‘Person Pitch’ seems to have become this year’s default list-topper across the board of indie-media, even achieving the dubious distinction of triumphing in Pitchfork’s 2007 run-down. Unlike the vast majority of previous years’ list-topping buzz records though, ‘Person Pitch’ is also lucky enough to be what we here at Stereo Sanctity would consider to be a really, really wonderful album, and as such it’s heartening to see that so many people seem to dig it. For the uninitiated, what Noah Lennox, aka Panda Bear, has essentially done here is looped some particularly ecstatic moments from his record collection and other found sound sources, warped them beyond recognition with pitch-shifting, delay and vast, oceanic reverb and crafted them into palaces of dense, hypnotic, dub-pop symphony over which he harmonises with himself in his distinctive high-pitched croon, applying the logic of song and instinctively pulling beautifully formal, cyclical, endlessly comforting melodies out of what in lesser hands could have simply emerged as a big mess.
I’ve always thought of Panda Bear as being the more ‘difficult’ member of the Animal Collective – quite a boast considering that Avey Tare put out a whole album of music played backwards this year – but eventually also the most rewarding; his initially baffling but ultimately quite moving ‘Young Prayer’ being a case in point. Thankfully, ‘Person Pitch’ is a little more immediate, its ingredients sequenced with such a perfect understanding of what constitutes a *good, warm, human-pleasing sound* that it’s hard not to be drawn in to some extent, but nonetheless, full appreciation definitely requires the listener to be in the right mood, particularly as regards the music’s length and repetition. I daresay many people will NEVER be in the right mood to find a place for fourteen minutes of “Good Girl / Carrots” in their lives, and that’s ok, they shouldn’t waste time tearing their hair out wondering what they’re missing, there’s no big secret. But when you do find yourself in the right mood (I recommend a very long walk, near a river, on a day that is either very hot or very cold), ‘Person Pitch’ is a conduit for pure, drugless psychedelic transformation of an extremely pleasurable variety.
I’ve got this far without pulling out one of the inescapable Beach Boys comparisons that must have had Mr. Lennox launching fungal, technicolored psychic happy-daggers at reviewers throughout the year, but what the hell; let’s get it over with and conclude in lazy journo style by simply saying that ‘Person Pitch’ sounds kinda like what might have happened if, instead of being stuck in a world dominated by Spector and The Beatles, shyster doctors, abusive relatives and cokehead bandmates, Brian Wilson had instead woken up one morning in 1968 to find Terry Riley and Lee Perry standing on his doorstep, prototype samplers under their arms and ready to rock.
Mp3 > Bros (radio edit)
ROBERT WYATT – COMICOPERA (Rough Trade)
Beyond the music he makes, Robert Wyatt has great importance to me simply as a person, and as a cultural presence. The documentary about him I videoed off BBC2 a few years ago has seen many viewings, and each time, I am awed by what a basically amazing bloke Wyatt is. Personally, artistically, politically, philosophically – I just can’t fault the guy at all; almost everything he says seems to resound with wisdom, humility and righteousness. He’s a true hero. That confession out of the way, I’ll admit that on a musical level, he lost me slightly with the vocal jazz miniatures of ‘Cookooland’ from a few years back, but ‘Comicopera’ has me back on side and then some. It’s an absolutely astonishing record, one of his all-time best.
Split into several distinct sections, ‘Comicopera’ unfolds with characteristically off-kilter grandeur, drifting across continents and palettes of sound like a series of musical waking dreams, much in the vein of 1997’s excellent ‘Shleep’, rendering musical and lyrical content effectively inseparable as Wyatt does his utmost to present a full picture of the world as he experiences it circa 2007, moving from the confines of his own home and relationships through the quiet confusion of 21st century British life into the full horror and tragedy of international political turmoil, before concluding with some reflections on the possibilities for communication and mutual understanding between cultures now in the process of being forced closer together.
‘Comicopera’ is certainly a mighty musical statement befitting a veteran of the prog rock era, and summarised in terms such as those above it sounds like an almost ludicrously earnest, over-reaching, self-righteous undertaking, and in the hands of any other aging British musician it probably would be. But as Wyatt’s fans will already know well, his wit, subtlety, intelligence, musical invention and the unflagging sense of honesty and humanity with which he approaches his work, not to mention the assistance of his impressive band of international collaborators, makes Robert more than up to the task of emerging with what is easily one of the most beautiful, affecting and idiosyncratic albums of the year.
Such is the range of subject matter, emotion and musical form covered by ‘Comicopera’ that I could easily stumble through pages of clumsy verbiage trying to get to grips with it all. Far better that you just find forty-five minutes to sit down with a pot of tea and listen to it, and, if further info is required, let me point you in the direction of Thom Jurek’s excellent write-up of the record at All Music Guide, which does the job for me quite nicely.
Mp3 > Stay Tuned
ERIK FRIEDLANDER – BLOCK ICE & PROPANE (Skipstone Records)
This is out of alphabetical order because it’s a late entry; I’ve only gotten around to giving it a good listen this weekend. Erik Friedlander is best known to me for his sterling work providing strings on the last few Mountain Goats records, and here he presents an album of solo cello pieces inspired by memories of epic childhood journeys across the USA. And much like an epic childhood journey, the results are at times rather lugubrious, but also on occasion extremely dramatic, and are eventually guaranteed to prove good, wholesome listening to anyone who enjoys cellos and epic American landscapes and such like. Friedlander is a musician of prodigious inventive skill, and the improvised passages here howl, soar, shriek and moan in the manner of the more adventurous free improv bassists, occasionally sounding like he is attempting to channel a Slayer solo, whilst the more conventional, composed segments are beautifully lyrical, at their best recalling what might have transpired had John Fahey taken up the cello.
Possibly too abstract to appeal to many of the indie rockers who already know Friedlander’s name, yet too staid and sentimental for the majority of avant-jazzers to take an interest, this is the kind of basically bloody good music liable to slip between the cracks of currents music scenes, so I thought I’d find space to give it a shout-out.
Mp3 > A Thousand Unpieced Suns
I have also quite enjoyed:
Ectogram – Fluff On A Faraway Hill
Great sideways crab-walking Welsh spacerock; dense, fuzzy, warm-blooded, weird and lovely.
Electric Wizard – Witchcult Today
Jus Osborn’s new four piece Electric Wizard may lack the spark (or whatever the dark, doom metal opposite of a spark is) that led the original line-up to scale the heights of the Dopethrone, but no matter. This is still, in a profound sense, an Electric Wizard album, and there are times in life when nothing else will do. Specifically, times when you’ve just smoked an ounce of weed and watched five Redemption videos in a row.
Expo 70 – Animism
One man’s sub-bass buzzing double LP tribute to the glory days of Ash Ra Tempel, Fripp & Eno, Tangerine Dream et al = a very special sleepy-time for science fiction fans!
PJ Harvey – White Chalk
Relegated from a place in the main list simply because I don’t think the songwriting chops on display here can really sustain the chamber piano / high, echoed voice / ghostly Victorian waif concept across a whole album, but Polly can still command the kind of ancient, gut-level musical power that instantly sets her apart, and the title track and a few other songs when things come together here are really, really stunning.
Times New Viking – Presents The Paisley Reich
A great, thrashy guitar/keyboard/yelping punk trio with some killer songs, big noise and barrels of energy, sadly marred here by the fact that they seem to have been recorded on a dictaphone in the coat pocket of someone in the rehearsal room across the corridor. Obviously I’m always up for a good live-to-tape lo-fi blast, but y’know – there are limits. Maybe next time they can bring a microphone and a four-track and really kick some ass. |
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