Here is the long delayed second batch of reviews of 2021. I've had a bunch of personal stuff going on this year that has vacuumed up what little free time I had coming into the year so its been tough getting done the amount of writing I want to, let alone getting anything done on a regular monthly schedule. I still have a bunch more great stuff to write about so stay tuned. I'm hoping the second half of the year will allow for more time to dedicate to writing.
Eyes and Flys, Buffalo’s best band nowadays (at least in the purview of this coastal elite), dropped a new single earlier in the year and not only does it continue their strong showing, it might be their most complete and best single to date.
This 7” finds the Flys doubling down on their punk energy [times] pop touch [divided by] sub-par fidelity (the sweet sounding kind) formula they’ve been experimenting with. I think they’re getting somewhere. The titular “New Way to Get it” is one of their finest songs yet. Acoustic strums and peppy handclaps are nestled into the band’s slashing energy with Pat Shanahan’s raspy shout made even more sandpapery with plenty of gain on the mic. The song functions as the band’s modus operandi in my mind. In a world where everyone seems to be lost in the 21st century spotified wilderness (and incessantly complaining about it), Eyes and Flys have returned to the ways of the DIY forbearers making home-made 7” singles of (seemingly) home-recorded tunes with all rough edges kept intact as valuable, essential qualities. New way to get it, indeed.
“Free to Go” is squeezed onto side A, with measured amounts of jangle sprinkled into its fast ‘n chunky riff formula. The B-side is a Nerves cover, “Many Roads to Follow”, which features some Spector-y bombast at bargain basement costs.
Three songs, all good and all unified in their aesthetic. Eyes and Flys have tried a few different things in their previous singles but I think they may be honing a “sound” now. I’m excited to hear what the next one’s like.
More high quality shit from the Big Apple’s most highly respected cultural center, Ever/Never Records. Ormens Väg is the Swedish duo Monokultur’s second LP for the label and if the caliber of this record is anything to go on, I hope they snapped the act up to a six-album deal. Monokultur have the rare ability to seem really strange to the straight-laced crowd and deliciously poppy to a weirdo like me. From track to track they aren’t even weird in the same way, nor do they deliver hooks in the same way.
I have a hard time pinning down Monokultur which is the most exciting/aggravating thing to encounter as someone tasked with writing about music. The duo manages to show many sides of themselves while maintaining a seamless atmosphere through the album. “Demokrati” has me asking “are they the 39 Clocks of the new millennium?” “Pennen I Handen” recalls the bleary-eyed folk-pop of Ignatz. At times I’m getting a kind of somnolent Comet Gain vibe (like on “Bär Deras Saker”). If David Lynch ever plans on making another Twin Peak he oughta book Monokultur for a month-long residency at the Roadhouse. I can already envision the molasses throb of “Decennium” and its 50s rock & roll meets synth spook stew playing over the end credits. Monokultur might be at their best on tracks like “För Sent” and “Människor Och Träd” which marry a strong grasp of melody with a detached, sometimes mumbling vocal. The songs seem to be blown along like a leaf in the wind, drifting but determined to find a home.
I might be zeroing in on an analog for Monokultur and it’s Maths Balance Volumes (if they weren’t quite so damn weird). Both groups are similar in that they seem creatively restless, willing to try new things and break a few rules, but will never (or may be unable to) get away from whatever special recipe makes them sound like them. And, hey, if Monokultur turns out to be my new Maths Balance Volumes, they are indispensable.
Just because 2020 was the year of terrible surprises, doesn’t mean it was bereft of kickass surprises. #1 on the list: new Mystic Inane!? I had long given up hope that arguably the best discography of the 2010s would grow any larger but it fuckin’ did. I don’t know if these were recordings from years ago when the band was active. I don’t know if the quartet reconvened for one last rodeo. And I really don’t care. I got more Mystic Inane, something I never thought possible. I’m playing with house money for the rest of my life.
Natural Beauty tempo-wise is the most hardcore MI record as we don’t get any nasty “Deep Creep” trudges or unhinged frothing at the mouth a la “Eggs Onna Plate”. But that’s a-okay because we still get four great, speedy songs out of the deal.
Lead by a sick riff and riotous snare rolls, it is impossible to not start a mosh pit on the disco floor when “Death of a Disco Spiv” is blaring. “Mystic Ignorance” (pronounced “muh-sssstic ehhhh-nunce”) might be the best of the bunch shifting between an angular riff and ringing chords lending bombast to MI’s workmanlike punk ethos. “Peckerwood Nero” is my daughter’s favorite, as she started singing along to the “ooh ooohs” at just 1.5 years old. Mystic Inane really knows how to connect with the children.
Candice Metrailer is one of the finest guitarists of recent times and she kills it on this record as usual. Her lead at the end of “Mystic Ignorance” is so good and so brief it kills me. Her interplay with Nathan Cassiani’s work on bass is one of the things that has always made Mystic Inane special and this is no different on Natural Beauty.
Mystic Inane was one of the best bands around during their brief tenure so (if you haven't already) buy all their records and enrich your life.
Ah New Zealand, surely the greatest contributor to rock music on a per capita basis. Must be something about the culture there because they’ve cracked the code. Great bands have stayed together and stayed great making strong records one after the other, avoiding burnout and conflicting egos and whatever other reasons that cause bands to splinter.
Well, here comes a member of the new guard, Opposite Sex (who have been around for at least a decade themselves―not exactly new), with a new record High Drama on a label named for one of the country’s greatest contributions to music of any era. I have Opposite Sex’s last record Hamlet (they got a thing for drama) and it has some great songs (noise rock excursion “She Said”, chamber ballad “Complicity” and the Snapper-y kraut-punk raveup “Regicide” to name a few). The LP found the band trying on several different hats and looking good in most of ‘em, but High Drama seems to strive for a more unified sound. There are no guest contributors or dramatic left turns into different genres and as a result the band sounds even more confident. I don’t even hear any overdubs, very much a band in a room vibe. Opposite Sex is clearly comfortable with their sound and who they are as a band.
High Drama opens on a ferocious note with “Shoots Me like a Knife”. With male-female vocals playing off each other, a rollicking rhythm section and mangled guitar, Opposite Sex sound like the B-52s if they were the types to beat your ass with a bicycle chain. Equal parts pep and savagery. This idea of taking two sides of a dichotomy and smashing them against each other carries on throughout High Drama. There are two main poles in NZ underground history, Flying Nun and Expressway, and while the band sits somewhere in between, they lean heavily toward Expressway’s oddball embrace of noise and distaste for convention (especially on a track like “Nico”). “Robotica” captures both sides with a an Aislers Set-sy evocation of 60s girl groups existing simultaneously with Live Skull-esque guitar grind. The drifting twang of “Breath in a Dish” vaguely calls to mind The Renderers, another NZ band that carved out its own little hole, not quite sounding like anyone else.
“Combine Harvester” swerves all over like an intoxicated driver, bopping along in aggressive but bouncing fashion. The jauntiness brushes uneasily against a wah-wah’d feedback frenzy and bassist and singer Lucy Hunter's serene singing of the chorus “You were the love of my life / Now I don’t care if you fall / Into the long, long loving arms of the combine harvester”. Behind the mellifluous veneer, Hunter sounds pissed and hurt and pulls no punches. Discarding any sugarcoating whatsoever, Hunter gets as blunt as possible on the unfettered indictment of misogyny, “Dick on a Throne”, over a slinky bass line and freelancing guitar recalling one of my favorite Birthday Party tunes “Yard”.
High Drama’s centerpiece, however, is clearly the nine minute “Owls Do Cry” which features Hunter’s best vocal work. Working from a coo to out and out rage and back again, her peculiar phrasing leads the loping, feedback dappled tour de force through its peaks and valleys before unleashing her voice at the summit to rip the song apart seam by seam. Closing on “Dinosaur” is a bold move since it stands well apart from the preceding album. Lead by male vocals, its loose, rambling nature belies the simmering tension that steadily builds with no release granted. The gambit pays off as High Drama leaves you with more questions than answers, eager to flip the record and start again.
Philadelphia’s Von Hayes first came to my attention with Moderate Rock, a fine CD of GBV-indebted pop perfectly suited for my car stereo. Wa La! is the two-piece’s follow up (naturally named after a quote in a letter from Tobin Sprout included on the jacket) and a massive step forward in my eyes (and ears). Top to bottom this is a great set of songs, not a runt in the litter, and there’s more variation and inspiration to the arrangements as well.
Wa La! is loaded to the hilt with earworms, I’ll only touch on a handful but rest assured they’re all present and accounted for on record. The album kicks off in perfect fashion with 65 unplugged seconds of “Topy” forging headlong into the martial snare rolls of home-brewed stadium rocker “I’m Tired”. Von Hayes know how to bookend as they send you off on the soaring “Message to the Sparkled Egg Star” so in love with rock & roll you’ll want to start your own garage band. Between those high points are a bunch more high points: the solemn, weary “No Title #11” takes its chances throwing a lonesome vocal on a bed of scraping violins and it pays off in spades, “Zamp” is smeared with Like Flies on Sherbert-ish idiot-savant guitar overdubs colliding into one another, “I Had No Idea it was Today” is a soulful mid-tempo number that’ll get under your skin like a depressed tick, “Decades in the Breaking” is a “California Dreaming” for a new generation, and some Strapping Fieldhands influence comes to the fore in the shambling psych-folk spectacular “Quarantine Dreams”.
I’ve been listening to Wa La! for months now and its charms have yet to fade. This is one that’s gonna stick. I don’t make year end lists but if I did Wa La! is the kind of thing that would go on ‘em. Recommended!
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