There are so many, shall we? Shall we dance around it all again, all those tall buildings with post-modernist baroque bits of clocktower, shall we dance around the architecture? Shall we try and keep up with all the demands and why haven’t you reviewed this yet? Did we say this last time? And the time before? Where were we? Catching up. Hey, too many albums not enough time, and (some of) these things do demand proper time and anyway, and, and then, and you do know we only have time for the good ones don’t you?
American Football – American Football (LP4) (Polyvinyl) – The long-standing emo band’s first album in something like seven years, I guess we do still call them an emo band, well in terms of the lyrics, the sentiment, the warmth, that sense of time and space, the logic of it all, the obvious emotion of the music. It is all still rather earnest, honest you might say, things eluded to, laid bare where others might keep it to themselves, a man overboard…
“For a band once defined by understatement, American Football has become something increasingly rare: one whose stature has grown less by nostalgia than through patience, self-interrogation and the long view. Since reuniting in 2014 after a decade-plus dormancy, American Football hasn’t simply returned to its past. It has moved forward in parallel with its audience, writing music that reflects the disorientation, compromise, grief and hard-won perspective of middle age…” Besides still wanting to say it is should read “returned to their past” and that a band is not a thing, they are a group of people, a group and yes, that is the hard-won perspective of grumpy middle age. Enough of that, American Football have never really grabbed hold of things before like they do here; well not so much grab as beautifully coax. This is a beautiful album and my indifference has given way to a quiet admiration.
So much expression here, musical expression, colour, and yes of course there is lyrical expression, emotion, that is almost a given. It is the musical expression this time though, the way the colour it all, the wistful post rock, the mathy details, the musical cleverness of it all comes together, the utter satisfaction to be found in the listening to it all. Yes there is Mike Kinsella’s alluding to (all) his faults; the drugs and alcohol abuse, the infidelity, the damage done if that’s what you want to explore here – it is all there in these very personal lyrics and the detail the devil hides. For all that lyrical emotion though, for all the blood on the tracks, for all the inward examination, the confession, it is the story found in the playing, the emotion in the music played and played out so beautifully. Complex without ever sounding complex, alive, positive, that sense that it is all going to work out (for everyone), that clever math rock joy of it all, that breeziness of The Smiths, those stories in those melodies and the positive hope found in the places the tunes point us to, the playgrounds the tunes remind us off, the rides. Some of this, pretty much all of it actually, really is gorgeous. As highly respected and influential as American Football are, they’ve never really grabbed me, until now that is, this really is a gorgeous gorgeous album…
The Flavor That Kills – Thunderbird Lodge (Shortwave Records) – Thunderbird Lodge is the fourth album from US noise/psych rock band The Flavor That Kills or so it says here. Four albums in and they still haven’s found their U, a band from Madison, Wisconsin where they can’t spell flavour properly. Some kind of at times slightly bombastic take on various flavours of psych rock that that sometimes kind of feels like a more rock-orientated Electric Six, at times get little indie-tinged Blue Oyster Cultish around the edges. I am guessing from the press release they want us to call them a Desert Rock band and yes some of it does nod towards Queens Of The Stone Age as they explore what they tell us is a “Mad Max style post-apocalyptic near future”. Does it feel like a Marc Bolan riff or two might have passed their way? Thunderbird Lodge is interesting enough without really massively grabbing anything vital and I have only just noticed that the press release tells us that have “built a cult following across the Mid-West and have recently supported legends Electric Six in an exclusive run of dates”. There you go, here you go… Bandcamp
Birth (Defects) – Fictional Days (Reptilian Records/Expert Work) – How Much Art? What have we here then, it all sounds rather early 90s North American Nirvana-like noise rock to us, no bad thing of course, and there’s a Comsat Angels cover (the PR company say its a Comcast Angels cover, hey, they can talk, we know they can, we’ve heard their case, intelligence will be the death of us all. PR companies provide us with endless amusement). Apparently this is a final collection of songs by the very guitar-based band, it including covers of things originally made by the impossible to avoid for even fifteen soup can infested minutes Sonic Youth, those aforementioned mentioned and criminally underrated Comsat Angels, and others. Hang on, here’s the full details, the facts as it were: “…because while the methodology for choosing the songs here is only hinted at, they very much have a fuck-you feel that I’d like to imagine befits a singer who has to work pedal boards and hold all 140 pounds of himself aloft for the better part of 30 minutes to get the job done at all. All while voicing songs from Sonic Youth (Sunday), The Comsat Angels (Postcard), Nirvana (I Hate Myself and Want to Die) and SSD (How Much Art) among other originals”. is that enough for you? Too much? That is a great version of How Much Art, something we know way too much about in here. Stop, I think I’ve heard this before, It it pretty much noise rock, back in the 90s an album or a tape or something of this nature would turn up at Organ central most weeks of of the year, you’d catch at least nine bands like this in any given week down at the Bull and Falcon, all Bleach-era Nirvana or Lemonade Handgrenade or Red Eye Express and loads of noise and even though you know where it is all going you love it all anyway. Yes, this drips with attitude, and yes, we all like to spend the limited amount of time we all have listening to this gloriously stupid shit. Writing about all this day after day surely is stupid shit?
“We have a limited amount of time on this Earth.” A.C. Thompson, author of Torture Taxi stood mouth to ear, and gave me an earful. “So if I have to choose how I want to spend this time I absolutely don’t want to spend any of it doing stupid shit.”
So this album is blasting away, I can’t hear the joins, it could be one of a million North American alternative noise rock bands from the last thirty or so years, hell, we’ve probably written about most of them at one time or another, don’t get me wrong, this is an excellent album, but really, we have heard it all before and really, who cares what I say about any of this?: “It was a cold and overcast San Francisco night but the words had the ring of the eternal and remembering them while listening to Birth (Defects) final record of alt takes, covers and unreleased from an underground songbook of significance, a rejoinder: you’re goddamned right” and it really is cold and wet on an overcast Monday morning in London in the middle of May (no bad thing, it hasn’t rained for weeks) and why do we do all this?
Let’s let our old friend Eugene tell it: “Which is the glory of those who do without concern/interest in recompense. That is, when no one gives a fuck what you do, you can do just about anything and here Birth (Defects) do exactly that and the sound to my ear wipes any and all slates clean and shows that they heard the Platonic triad working through these tunes, their heads and ultimately into a record that if you don’t listen to it means more about what you can hear than anything about what they didn’t do. Which is usually the case in the face of an almost perfect record. I dug it, and you should too” – Eugene S. Robinson, Bunuel.
yeah, I dug it as well but then I don’t think you’re listening, I think I’ll tell you again, I dug it and this clock shows only mythical hours, these books show only fictional days, one system is only as good as another, Does anyone read any of this stuff? Bandcamp
| I’m proud that we were able to finish this band the way we wanted to. These covers are important to me as a whole because they act as a soundtrack to the progression we had. This band had many challenges both personally and logistically. There were times where I think most bands would have given up — and we did for a moment. When the band started, both Rob and I were old enough to realize that this was something for the sake of making music and creating art together. We were thoughtful about what made sense for us. You can hear that in these songs and these covers. Birth (Defects)’ span as a whole is a body of work that represents accepting the shortcomings of those around you but — more importantly — accepting your own shortcomings. It is on yourself to own those shortcomings and grow. It never ends. Birth (Defects) will forever be a living document of that. – Sean Gray |
| Birth (Defects) was my first project back after a short hiatus from playing in bands in my teens and early 20s. I was going through a divorce, deciding how I was going to reorganize my life, and reconnecting with old friends. Returning to music felt natural. Birth (Defects) was a lifeline, an outlet — a renewed drive to create. I’d always felt most comfortable behind a guitar, expressing myself through sound rather than word. Everything was intentional. I replaced stage banter — and basically forbade it in this band — with harsh noise interludes. I did not want to give the audience a break. I wanted our performances to be endurance tests. I wanted to make ugly music you couldn’t forget — that you wouldn’t want to forget. – Rob Savillo |
Previously on these pages…
And so ends another page and a whole load of reviews that no one really needs and what was the point in the first place? Here’s another Hetty Douglas painting…. How much art?
THE ORGAN 