3am REGULARS
SUNGLASSES AFTER DARK I
"As diagnoses go, hailing the death of English rock is a bit like a doctor who tells his patient that a common cold equates to a terminal illness. John Harris does have a point to some extent, but I wouldn't order the wreath just yet. Besides, the 'death of rock' thesis has been played out to death of late (cf. John Strausbaugh's Rock Till You Drop)."
by Andrew Stevens
COPYRIGHT © 2003, 3 A.M. MAGAZINE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The concept of a covers band (as opposed to a tribute band, which is just plain daft) sits very uneasily in my mindset. I mean, their compositions are just rip-offs of other people's. Fortunately, while the Detroit Cobras might be a covers band plain and simple, there is the quality of their interpretation to keep them the right side of credible. In any case, the choice of material is so obscure, you couldn't tell anyhow and they deserve an award simply for bringing these lost garage rock gems back into circulation. Hence their inclusion among the pantheon of bands currently putting the Motor City back on the map.
Seven Easy Pieces, an elongated EP following 2001's Love, Life and Leaving sees the Cobras on familiar territory but in restrained mood, inflecting their own gloss on a similar array of garage rock and blues obscura. 'Ya Ya Ya (Looking for My Baby)' provides a sing-along number, suggesting the prowess of Rachel Nagy's vocals. There's a diverse range of material on here too -- from Four Prep Ed Cobb's 'Heartbeat' to blues star Willie Dixon's 'Insane Asylum'.
For all their seeming restraint, there's still some room for the likes of the revved-up '99 And a Half Just Won't Do'. 'Insane Asylum' ends the EP as a slow number, droning guitar and torch singer vocals. I think Life, Love and Leaving is the band's touchstone offering but, whinging aside, this is a worthy inclusion on any stereo. If I were female, I could imagine getting dressed to go out to that record…
LP Review: French Kicks, One Time Bells, 2003 (Cooking Vinyl)
Like The Make Up before them, French Kicks (or should that be 'Freedom Kicks'?) have their roots in the hardcore scene of Washington, DC. As someone who used to hand out flyers for Dischord bands to otherwise indifferent punters outside the Black Cat club there, that's something I can respect. And they aint French either my friend.
Initially hailed as one to watch in the post-Strokes A&R feeding frenzy, their 2002 offering, Young Lawyer, released on Poptones as an EP, hinted at a more raucous direction that hasn't been seen through on here. French Kicks are aiming for the angular post-punk of their peers Hot Hot Heat and to some extent that aspiration is delivered upon, although without the same commercial aplomb. That's not to denigrate or dismiss their record, but merely acknowledge that it has its awkward moments. French Kicks barely make it out of second gear for the first few songs, with the vocals on 'When You Heard You' failing to compete with the towering bass. With 'Close to Modern' magisterial tones and by the considerably more upbeat and Strokes-like '1985' however, it is more than apparent that we have something more precious on our hands than we previously thought. With the New Wave on my stereo and the thoughts of girls in brown suede boots on my mind, tonight I'm gonna party like its 1985…
Opinion appears to be divided on this album (split between those who find it polished and those who dismiss it as pedestrian), even by myself with my vacillations depending on each listen. I've tried it at different volumes, everything. I guess I'll just have to try it some more.
LP Review: Mooney Suzuki, Electric Sweat, 2003 (Columbia)
Although they are named after two vocalists from the legendary Can, it is hard to detect much in the way of krautrock influence on Mooney Suzuki's second album Electric Sweat. Not since the Thee Hypnotics have we seen such a contrived Rob Tyner impression and this, their second and more polished LP, possesses some of the most derivative rock and roll that can be picked up on a trip to Berwick Street.
Title track 'Electric Sweat' has soaring promise and ebullient qualities, but it's just MC5 all over again. 'In Young Man's Mind' is pure psych-garage in the vein of Nazz and Count Five, like a lost track off Pebbles or something. 'Natural Fact' is equally as derivative, or adept, you be the judge. The showmanship and Farfisa boogie on 'It's Showtime Part II', exemplified by the driving solos, is there, but it's not theirs to call their own.
For those who like straight down the line, good time rock and roll with a distinct Nuggets psych feel, Electric Sweat will have it all. Otherwise you'll be left thinking that Mooney Suzuki are the latest in a line of wholly derivative MC5 clones to drop off the conveyor belt. But either way, you will have an opinion.
Literature Review: John Harris, The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Death of English Rock, 2003 (Fourth Estate)
As diagnoses go, hailing the death of English rock is a bit like a doctor who tells his patient that a common cold equates to a terminal illness. John Harris does have a point to some extent, but I wouldn't order the wreath just yet. Besides, the 'death of rock' thesis has been played out to death of late (cf. John Strausbaugh's Rock Till You Drop).
Having been previewed through edited highlights in The Guardian's Saturday magazine, The Last Party has seen the contemporary history of British music, British indie music at that, discussed in an inordinate number of high(er) brow places. Harris had something of a ringside seat, as Editor of the now-defunct Select (which was to alternative music in the 90s what Creem and Oz were in the 60s), he had unparalleled access to the key protagonists in the 'scene' and something of a direct role himself. His editorial decision to include a poster image of Tony Blair in a 1997 edition of the magazine (and this was entirely non-ironic/sarcastic) probably did more for the iconographication of Blair as a Britpop figure than the ill-fated and (now) casually derided Downing Street reception for rock and showbiz figures, politics being "the new rock and roll" etc etc.
As such, Harris has the necessary credibility to write this book -- any other music hack would have made a ham-fisted attempt to understand the political context, whereas a political scribe would have omitted crucial musical background. Red Wedge, Labour's previous unstable flirtation with the world of pop in order to achieve street cred, is given a long overdue assessment. Harris also does not waste any time on dishing the more salacious elements of indie-schmindie history of recent past out either -- from the relationship between Suede's Brett Anderson and Elastica's Justine Frischmann, to Menswear's hitherto undocumented skag habit.
I can't go the full mile and endorse Harris' thesis that Blair and Britpop killed British rock. If British rock is dead then it killed itself. 'Indie' music in Britain has been in structural decline since Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, never mind Tony Blair or John Major. Harris may cite the closure of his former employer Select and the more established Melody Maker in 2000, but Sounds closed in the early 90s, not even making it to cover Kurt Cobain's suicide. The monopolisation of the charts by major label acts such as Coldplay, Travis and the Stereophonics, may have sterilised the content of the remaining alternative music press for a short period in 2000 and 2001, but 1992 and 1993 were hardly golden years for British indie, suffering under the presence of Grunge and commercial dance music. The current crop of Yank invaders have allowed for rock and roll to be 'the new rock and roll' and have generated interest for all manner of great bands, both stateside and homegrown, that would have otherwise been destined to languish at the expense of 'emo'. So in the same way that Oasis saved British indie from various obscura (from Bastard Kestrel to The Voodoo Queens) in 1994, a bunch of New Yorkers who attended finishing schools in Switzerland subsequently allowed it to live to die another day. Do you want fries with that, love?
LP Review: The Kills, Keep On Your Mean Side, 2003 (Domino)
Hmmm, a new album by PJ Harvey? No it's The Kills' debut. Though any comparisons to other boy/girl dirty rock and roll duos from the states should end there too.
Recorded in East London's Toe Rag Studios (the most undigital studios on God's earth) The Kills' brash lo-fi recordings are the soundtrack to a degenerate life, from the opening track 'Superstition' to the raucous 'Cat Claw' you want to become embroiled in VV and Hotel's (yeah it's probably best they don't use their real names) seediness. Coming across like a non-PC Bikini Kill, the album's intensity borrows heavily from the likes of PJ Harvey and Pussy Galore (and therefore Boss Hog and Royal Trux) and it's hard to listen to the album and do something else at the same time (like write a review of it, for instance).
'Kissy Kissy' abandons the gritty rock sleaze in favour of stripped-down VU minimalism and at 5.02 is unusually long for these three minute heroes. 'Fried My Little Brains' takes us back into Kills country for some strung-out messy rock and roll, though at 2.08 in length it didn't make an obvious single I have to say. 'Hitched' comes with a promise to "get my name stitched on your lips so you won't get hitched" and is something of a jaunty number, which is unusual for such an elegantly wasted and down key band (it's also where the album's title comes from). 'Black Rooster', from the EP of the same name, gave the world the taste of things to come from The Kills and, for once, the hype was justified. I must admit that Hotel's vocals (a kind of subdued Thurston Moore) don't match the straightforward and direct quality of VV's and this is evident on tracks like this. The fucked-up guitar work, which is present in abundance, more than makes up for this though.
'Wait' slows the album down some, a slow build-up with an implied crescendo that never happens. 'Fuck The People' is boogie-laden and a filthy track to boot, restoring the fuzz eminence to the album. 'Monkey 23' demonstrates, more than abundantly, where the Royal Trux comparisons come from, it being a collage of noise. Finally, 'Gypsy Death and You' ends the album's magisterial fuzz and scuzz on an altogether subdued and melancholy note.
The verdict? An essay in unclean living.
LP Review: Pink Grease, All Over You, 2003 (Horseglue/Mute)
The grimy rustbelt city of Sheffield in the People's Republic of South Yorkshire is more associated with dire disco revival cash-in flick The Full Monty than campy Cramps take-offs like Pink Grease. Making the New York Dolls look like the night shift from a Sheffield steel mill is some mean feat and Pink Grease carry it off with great aplomb in all of their camp excess.
It would seem that there is no little left in music to rip off -- we've had revivals of garage rock, blues, adult orientated rock (well perhaps not…), you name it. After a few years of all-too sullen and anally retentive indie-schmindie bands hogging the column inches in the music, it's good to see the spectacle restored back into rock without the reliance on gimmicks, cliché or ridicule.
Opener 'The Nasty Show' begins like some Camden lurch song of the early 1990s, opining that "I wanna fucking die for you / I wanna die fucking you", but the saxophones are more Rocket from the Crypt. But make no mistake, Pink Grease might take the Cramps' camp and fondness for rock and roll cliché, but they are pure Buzzcocks venal sexual appetite, imbued with the whole 1977 thing. 'More Than Woman' veers more in the sax-laden direction but on 'The Beast' howls like Lux Interior on any of the Cramps records. That lead singer Rory Lewarne has more than a passing resemblance doesn't hinder them though. 'Susie', with its 'Greasettes' girl backing vocals retinue, does suggest something of a comedy number unfortunately, but it's only an album track ("Oh Susie what have you done / Darren he could been the one"?). If 'Shake' hasn't sampled the intro to Cabaret Voltaire's 'Nag Nag Nag' then it has at least 'borrowed' it and despite it being something of a local influence, it's a killer track, though its "pussy-eating" lyrics may be a little delicate for anyone of a post-feminist disposition. 'Lou Reed', despite the comedic backing vocals (which the band would be advised to ditch quick-smart), caps the album off in true revved-up style.
Actually, 'revved-up' would be a good way to describe this mini-album, a promising offering from this troupe of smooth-talking bastards from South Yorks.
LP Review: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Fever to Tell, 2003 (Polydor)
The music industry is an unforgiving sort. Who three, even two, years ago could have predicted the rise and return of the Noo Yawk rock lineage? If I were a betting man I would have laid my money on whatever corporate supergroup was gracing the cover of the NME that week retaining its dominance, with 'ver kids being forced to seek rock and roll in the likes of Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit. Yes, music was done for and late 20 somethings were left in trite pose to smugly remark that the 'new bands' were no match for what had passed before. What has since transpired is the generational equivalent of when punk supplanted prog rock and the likes of Supertramp in 1977. 25 years on, we were about due.
If you need any proof of the nadir that was the closing part of the last century and the beginning of the new one, look at the Sonic Mook Experiment. Back in 2000, the SME was an eclectic night at The Scala in Kings Cross, with the playlist relying more on leftfield electronica and hip hop than any aspect of rock. Now SME is at the forefront of what it terms "Future Rock and Roll", with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs championed by the Mooksters from early on. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs' debut can fairly be described as 'eagerly anticipated'. Here is a band, who on the strength of a clutch of singles, has constantly sold out London venues and spawned a haircut popular among girls of a certain age.
It's easy to dismiss the Yeah Yeah Yeahs as another CBGBs throwback riding on others' coat tails. Except, like the debut offering from The Kills, this record oozes attitude (though it's more sass than scuzz). As a band, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have relied on the upfront presence of singer Karen O and this record is no different, from the opening track of 'Rich' to the closer 'Modern Romance' we are given the 'Karen O Story' whether we like it or not. Fortunately we do like it. Fever to Tell labours under the same influences as half the records that will be released this year, though thankfully the interpretation remains original and delivered with style. Well it is New York. Tracks like 'Date With The Night' will be familiar to many through their early single release, though 'Tick' is upfront and brutal in its rock and roll intensity. Guitar doesn't come that abrasive and that infectious that often really. The boogie of 'Pin' will be familiar to many too, though it is equally matched by driving riffs. 'Maps' also relies on searing guitar work and is something of an album highlight.
The album is blessed with the presence of Alan Moulder, who seems to be having a revival in terms of ubiquity compared to his work in the early 90s, on the production desk (he's also produced the new Raveonettes LP). Another beneficiary of recent musical events is Dick Green (of Creation Records fame), owner of Wichita Recordings, who snapped the Yeah Yeah Yeahs up before the press interest kicked in. Otherwise they'd probably be on Corporate Cock Records with a telephone number figure contractual advance. Wait on, now they are! Oh well.
With its glam punk sensibilities, Fever to Tell is one of the records of 2003 so far, merely for its ability to push the right buttons and act as testimony to the ability of honest, decent and ebullient rock and roll to grab the music scene by the balls and tell it who's boss. It's records like this that make you act like a kid again and get all enthusiastic about gigs and new releases… after years of cynicism and all. Although derided by some as a fashion journalist's idea of a punk band, like any good Face band, they photograph well and put out nice record packaging too.
LP Review: Hot Hot Heat, Make Up The Breakdown, 2003 (B-Unique)
It's as if Stiff Records signed an act in 1979, allowed them to record an album and then hid it away for 20-odd years. Hot Hot Heat started out as a synth-driven act and while to some extent the synth sound has taken a backseat to spiky guitar riffs, it remains there to augment the tunes. On first listen, Make Up The Breakdown immediately recalls the quirky English post-punk of XTC and Joe Jackson and you can't help but get the impression the band have heard XTC's English Settlement at least once. Though they are no mere epigones…
Hot Hot Heat have, aside from "Canadian Strokes" pigeonholing, enjoyed disproportionate media coverage of late through their single 'Bandages' being banned from the airwaves lest it cause offence because of events in Iraq. Because the band are so clearly derivative, any consideration lent to their songs will inevitably take in their influences rather than their own output. Opening track 'Naked In The City Again' sounds like The Cure's post-punk anthem '10:15 Saturday Night', whereas 'No, Not Now' has its own charm though and synth arrangements aside, it wouldn't be hard to imagine it being put out by a Sub Pop band in 1993. However, by the time we reach 'Get In Or Get Out' we are back on nervy post-punk ethic territory, although at least The Cars influence suggests they have some time for American acts. 'Bandages', that infamous track, revolves around the kind of organ riff found on The Stranglers' 'Hanging Around', with some Wire riffs thrown in for good measure. 'Oh, Goddamnit' provides the album with some homespun domesticity, as while the influences are there, it manages to be devoid of any obvious comparison.
'Aveda' is an obvious Elvis Costello tribute, bringing their Stiff Records obsession into focus considerably. If Hot Hot Heat are the Canadian Strokes, then 'This Town' is their 'Last Nite' -- a raucous, infectious little number. 'Talk To Me, Dance With Me' is much more contemporaneous, sharing much of the disco-led ground ploughed by their peers Radio 4, with its swaggering rhythms. Penultimate track 'Save Us SOS' is, again, distinctly without obvious comparison, demonstrating that the band have some original ideas of their own, though it does rely on the post-punk template nonetheless. 'In Cairo', the album's final track, restores the concept of the epic into modern songwriting and displays some hope for the future if they can come up with tracks this original under their own steam.
Being on Sub Pop, it was no surprise to see Jack Endino (Nirvana, Mudhoney, Soundgarden) in the producer's chair on this, though pleasantly surprising to see the band's Anglophilia retained in the end product. With Sub Pop's grunge cash-cow well and truly milked and sent off to the slaughterhouse, it also comes as no surprise to see the label branch out in order to keep up with the times. The post-punk era of the late 1970s and early 1980s has seen revivals before -- the likes of Blur and, especially, Elastica in the mid-1990s plundered the back catalogues of the likes of Wire with much aplomb. Again, it appears to be undergoing something of a renewed interest on the part of acts like Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks. Hot Hot Heat's debut album will ensure the era sounds fresh a quarter of a century on, despite the fact that most people who buy the NME these days weren't even born when XTC released 'Making Plans for Nigel'. With a keen sense of melody, Hot Hot Heat are streets ahead of anyone else who's stepped foot in a recording studio recently…
Literature Review: Randall Sullivan, LAbrynth, 2003 (Canongate)
An immensely readable account (even for those, like myself, who otherwise give the genre a wide berth) of not only the bizarre circumstances surrounding the late 90s slayings of gansta rappers Notorious B.I.G and Tupac Shakur, but also corruption and race politics in the beleaguered LAPD and the sinister past of Death Row Records. From start to finish, the reader is presented with a compelling and fast-paced narrative of these themes, without the bluster and self-reference of other recent books devoted to this case.
In all likelihood, we never will find out who really did kill either star or what their motives were, as Sullivan attests, because of the way in which any attempt to make sense of either killing has destroyed the career of any detective charged with investigating the case. Sullivan relies on some heterodox voices in his enquiry and wades through the bullshit to expose the endemic institutional racism and corruption in the Los Angeles Police Department. Not exactly bedtime reading after a night out on Sunset Strip…
LP Review: Ex Models, Zoo Psychology, 2003 (French Kiss)
Fans of 1976 'video nasty' Driller Killer will recall how, faced with an inability to sell his paintings, a spaced-out lesbian lover of his girlfriend living in his apartment and a no wave band next door playing 24/7, the film's protagonist (played by Director Abel Ferrara) flips and subverts his frustration with random drill attacks. Any neighbours of the Ex Models' rehearsal space will feel a certain degree of sympathy here...
'Zoo Psychology' has 15 tracks condensed into 20 minutes and anyone adverse to a screachy vocal style would be well-advised to stop reading here. The Ex Models come to us through the patronage of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and ordinarily this would be enough to evoke suspicion. However, the band's output on 'Zoo Psychology' will probably have the same effect on half the adult population. Again, if stop/start signature changes and sheets of white noise don't do it for you then click here.
I have no doubt that this record will sell well, given the cunning ruse of marketing men to attach it to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' coat-tails (they're in bands together, you know). But what a set of coat-tails! Now where's that drill?
LP Review: A.R.E. Weapons, A.R.E. Weapons, 2003 (Rough Trade)
With the currently wave of bands coming straight outta NYC, plundering the city's rock and roll lineage (emulating everyone from Blondie to Television), it was kinda inevitable that a Suicide take-off was going to be on the cards somewhere along the line. To their eternal credit, New York's A.R.E. Weapons have been around as long as The Strokes and created an initial flurry of press interest back then, it just so happens that it's taken them a little longer to record their debut album, that's all…
The A.R.E. Weapons story began in 2001 (cue Henry Rollins VH1 'Behind the Music' voiceover) with the assembly of a collective based around Matthew McAuley, Brain F.McPeck and Tom, who sought to put on wild confrontational live performances. At the time, Jarvis Cocker was doing his best to export NYC culture to England (remember Princess Superstar? All his fault…) by the shedload and he ensured an A.R.E. Weapons demo ended up in the lap of Rough Trade's Geoff Travis. Initial press interest circled around the glamour potential (as if Studio 54 was still open…) offset against the group's hirsute appearance and apparent penchant for violence. At some point or other, Tom parted ways with the band and manager Paul Sevigny (brother of actress Chloe, of Kids and Boys Don't Cry fame) was drafted in to replace him. Rough Trade appear to have done well from the recent crop of New York bands (their roster reads like an NME contents page) and there was me thinking they were destined to enter the history books as the label of The Smiths…
I'll be blunt: A.R.E. Weapons not only want to be Suicide, they think they are Suicide. That's the point, plain and simple. The whole street fighter rhetoric might sound a bit Warriors walk-on part but it's also borrowed directly from Suicide's Project of Living Artists. A.R.E. Weapons remain peerless in terms of their Suicide sound, though there are some in the so-called 'electroclash' movement who would gladly count them as their own. "People think you're a loser / a drug abuser / cos you like to get high" opens the track 'Don't Be Scared', apparently a conversation between a mother and her offspring suffering city sickness. City sickness is present in spades on this album. The confrontational urban paranoia here evoked more hardcore leanings for me, though its seering guitar and stripped down synth and beatbox suggest more orthodox and well-documented influences. 'Strange Dust' again relies on menacing street violence imagery in its lyrics, although a frequent cut of heavy distorted bass fulfils a more contemporary sound. 'Changes' is an ode to the benefits of different psychoactives ("Heroin's a sin / Cocaine messes up your brain / and Dexys keep you thin") on something of an existential note ("War turns me on / the fact of the matter is / we're all gonna die"). 'A.R.E' appears to have more in common with Austin TX career screw-ups the Butthole Surfers but remains in the menacing vein. Otherwise the tracks are very much cut from the Suicide cloth, which is certainly no tragedy or cause for concern. The final track, 'Hey World', despite its apparent aim to be 'Moulty' by The Barbarians, has worrying tendencies (the handclaps of J Geils Band's AOR staple 'Centerfold' and Pink Floyd's 'Another Brick in the Wall Part Two' child choir, for instance) and sanctimonious lyrics to boot. I'm not sure if this is misplaced irony or something similar, but it would have been a candidate for non-inclusion in my book.
A few years ago, with the corporate indie hegemony in full flow, a band like A.R.E. Weapons would be unthinkable as NME cover stars. With the bit between their teeth now though, anything seems possible.
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