Couple new reviews

THE LOST DOMAIN An Unnatural Act LP (NEGATIVE GUEST LIST) I first encountered this long-running Australian band in the early 2000s when the trusted Rhizome label brought us a CDR of their music called Something Is.... It was just two tracks, the first a whopping 46 minutes, the second almost 30, and I gave it a couple intensive listens, but I confess it left me cold. The musicians had clearly built a confident and personal sound together, but it sounded like stuff I'd heard before . . . long-form instrumental minimalist desert-landscape mood music . . . and it seemed to take a very long time to not go very far. Years went by and I forgot all about them, but then along comes one of the greatest rock zines I've ever encountered, the Negative Guest List from Brisbane, Australia, and I'm reading as many issues as I can get my hands on, $7 import cover price be damned, and what should be published in #18 but an extensive history and discography feature on The Lost Domain. It turns out they're from Brisbane as well, described in fact by NGL writer/publisher Brendon Annesley as "Brisbane's first band," and I think I know exactly what he means by that. I had grown to appreciate and admire Annesley's taste in music, and even though I'm sure there was some hometown pride and bias behind the article, it made me want to give Lost Domain another chance, this time through Brendon's ears, as it were. Right away I pulled that Something Is... CDR back out -- it was still right there where I had last filed it almost 10 years ago -- but to be honest, it still left me almost as cold. The article had maybe thawed things out a few degrees warmer, but it wasn't enough, and I refiled it again.


Ah, but this time I was not going to forget them; just a couple months later, what should arrive on the Blastitude doorstop but a package bearing Lost Domain vinyl, on none other than the Negative Guest List label. Annesley-approved material! It's called An Unnatural Act and wow... I like it better. A lot better. For one thing, they sound like a much different band. Where Something Is.... had that dry-as-dust desert noir thing going on, this starts out like a really messed-up noise band, and then goes into absolutely primo swirling and spinning psycho-blues. Believe me, after the side one closer double shot of "Sweet Haunch Woman" and "Funeral March for Charley Patton," you will be moved too. You'll have no choice. The intensity doesn't let up on side two either, though it does have some more elongated space-out instrumental sections to help the medicine go down. After re-perusing the NGL article, I learn that this sweet skree is an LP reissue of their very first record, which came out in 1990 about a year after they formed, when it was self-released a few times on cassette. It was reissued as a CDR by the Foxglove label in 2006, and now, with fewer tracks, it has come back to life on this LP. To sum this review up, when a band debuts with something this revelatory, it's going to shed light on their entire career and pretty much guarantee them a lifetime pass, which means I'm going to have to re-evaluate Something Is... yet again! Good thing I know right where I shelved it. (NOTE: This and many other new releases from Australia are available stateside from Easter Bilby Distro.)

http://blastitude.blogspot.com/

Yowzer

A couple of forthcoming releases on AARGHT:

EASTLINK - Wild Dog - 7''
OOOGA BOOGAS - LP
EXHAUSTION - LP
LEATHER TOWEL - 7''

AARRGHT! Records is dead, long live AARGHT.

Lower plenty accolades continue

No-bullshit record of the year

http://onebaseonanoverthrow.blogspot.com/2012/12/here-we-found-your-stupid-bike.html?m=1

lower plenty - hard rubbish

#1 with the M+N Critics
http://www.messandnoise.com/articles/4545242

#4 in the people's choices

http://messandnoise.com/articles/4546172

reviews from the counselor

ANTI-CLEANSE

Degreaser

Sweaty Hands LP

Negative Guest List NGL-040

A band named after my favorite cleaning product puts out a another solid record on my favorite Australian scum label; tis a hard day at the office! This, Degreaser's follow-up to 2011's quaking Bottom Feeder, continues main duder Tim Evans's well-illustrated commitment to the hungover-and-cranky corners of punk weirdness (see also his take on Pop Group dynamics in Bird Blobs and the mope-grind of Sea Scouts). Scoff if ya must at the Birthday Party apeage howlin' around these parts (i.e. Brooklyn) of late, but these folks don't fanny about like some. Though guitars rasp, throats moan and bellow, and the rhythm section clamps like a 1000-year-old die-cutter, as they have elsewhere and many a time before, it ain't always what ya do but how ya do. Feel me? Right from the jump on "Lizard," these lead-sinkers reach stoner-metal depths of heave-n-wheeze with nary a second to call out the fathoms. The focus remains a desperate thud on the deck of a listing boat, even through what I take to be a cover of "Eyes Without A Face" (?) on the flip. (No titles on this one; just guessin' from the Discogs entry.) Never do they leave the confines of their grem-clotted alley, but the hypnotism this lot casts was enough to keep me glued down. Nice!

 

EXHAUST-DJINN: A PAIR FROM ANTI-FADE

Useless Eaters

New Program b/w Expensive Taste & Smoke Alarm 45rpm

Anti-Fade ANTI-011

Bout the closest I ever get to garage is when I need help diggin' a spike outta my left front tire. Always thought there was somethin'...underachiever about it; for those about to maybe rock, ya know? But I reckon that's what folks find so galldern American about it: desperate, entrepreneurial shots at convincin' some local, maybe regional, and perhaps national, tail to shimmy. Just a little. It's that very attitude that makes it so suspect to me; I say, go XXXL or go sit a spell. Anyhoot & holler, perusin' the Anti-Fade back catalog gave me the spins, so I called up ol' Bertrand Russell for advice. Bein' a  loud skeptic of garage rock himself, I figgered he'd know the score. "In studying [a garage rock label], the right attitude is neither reverence nor contempt, but first a kind of hypothetical sympathy, until it is possible to know what it feels like to believe in [its releases], and only then a revival of the critical attitude, which should resemble, as far as possible, the state of mind of a person abandoning opinions which he hitherto held. Contempt," ol Betrand warned, "interferes with the first part of the process, and reverence with the second." Whatever you say, chief; I'll give it the ol' college. Maybe there's some new tricks a-turnin'?

Useless Eaters is helmed by one Seth Sutton outta Nashville, Tenn. A Nashville one-man garage band on a Victoria, AU label? Why not. Hell, he's already put out about 5 other records this year alone, and 9 others since turn of the decade; ain't many spots on this circuit he ain't shot through. A-side cut is either an indictment or winking endorsement of corporate drudgery in the guise of an android march. Another "why not" herein is Sutton's application of positively classic Athens GA moves. I detect the liver-spotted claw of Peter Buck on "Smoke Alarm," though it be fed through some homegrown Johnny Marr effects. In fact, this is near the Blank Dogs cult philosophy of tryin' to apply cheapie-creepie goth tactics to mopey drug punk. It's still a fair bit better--but just about anythin' is an improvement to that late model! But keepin' ol' Bertrand on the dome, I didn't mind the half dozen flips I gave it one bit. And I ain't about to jeer the folks that find the fun in this one second more.

Five hunnid hand-numbered.

The Bonniwells

Yesterdaisy 7" EP 33rpm

Anti-Fade ANT-008

What a pwecious wittle wecord. From the knitty-witty packaging to the Victorian cats & mice in eternal pursuit on the labels (wabels?), I was expecting either a So Cow offshoot or something light, feathery, with a sturdy inheritance. Which is to say, I was prepared to gag. But actually, this trio bears more marks from early K Records, the Vaselines and the Marine Girls than what I'd call garage rock. Maybe the rug on this whole genre done got yanked from under me, but these sunlit melodies, mid-tempos, and titles like "Pigeon Pizza" gimme those twee goosepimples. Some kids somewhere in Melbourne are dancin' their couch cushions to pieces and the sophomore in me kinda wants to join in. If it wasn't for my trick knee and all...

300 pressed on colored vinyl. Mine looks like rain-soaked pavement with a chewed gum smear. What you got?

 

http://fuckyoucounselor.blogspot.com/

 

Some new reviews from still single

Southern Comfort – “Silver and Gold” b/w “Don’t Cry No Tears” 7” (Black Petal)





RECOMMENDED



Fuck this Blanche Blanche Blanche shit, how about Angela Angela Angela? That’s as in Bermuda, standing at the center of the storm that is (was?) Circle Pit, rockin’ hard in the Straight Arrows and Ruined Fortune, and stepping into the wind tunnel with Harriet Hudson of Ratsak for some two-guitar/no-drum steel-eyed staredown. Rock Music can exist without percussion, particularly when all the ambient room sound and peals of reverberated distortion coming out of their amps fill in the blanks for you. Anyone looking for that King Blood/Dum Dum Girls collab that never happened may get their insane wish here. Plus they gently push the Neil Young cover to its limit, with some seriously echoed-out soloing that punches a hole right in the horizon and sweeps upward. For me, right now, this record is perfect. Silkscreened looking panel covers, 265 copies. (http://www.blackpetal.com)

(Doug Mosurock)



Straight Arrows – First 2 Singles 7” EP (Anti-Fade)





RECOMMENDED



Straight Arrows’ full-length It’s Happening wasn’t the cleanest-sounding record (and come to think of it, sounds a good bit like the template for the way Owen Penglis produced the Royal Headache album), but the singles which came before it threaten to break the stylus and eat through the turntable, so corroded are they with blown-out, room-mic’d splay. If 2007 taught you anything, it should have been that crazy dimestore saturated recordings don’t cover up the bar band stink beneath, but there’s something about those who are so utterly ENTHUSED about the process that breaks through the layers of dead skin and crust to the spine of punk rock, and gives it a good hard squeeze. The Hospitals got there, Eat Skull got there, and the Straight Arrows got there on these records, a standalone 45 and a split 7” with the Creeteens from as many years back, the sweet SA songs from both comped on this #’d-to-300 reissue. “Can’t Count 1-22” is so fucked it was hard to tell if it was even on the right speed. Holy shit this record. #1 In Noise, plus bonus points for having a song called “Jeepster” that’s not a cover. (http://antifaderecords.webs.com)

(Doug Mosurock)



http://still-single.tumblr.com/