Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0005

Happy Tuesday from Washington Island, WI, a truly remote location. I’ve seen two gray foxes, climbed a tower, had some soup and stood next to a Model A refitted with tank treads to drive across the frozen lake in winter. Water runs clear in the lake to where you can see the bottom. I haven’t been anywhere this peaceful since last year, when I last visited. Perfect place to think about music.

Why did they make new animated Garfield look like Heathcliff in The Garfield Movie? His eyes are too close together.

New music can be sent to PO Box 25717 Chicago IL 60625 USA or emailed for review consideration. I do like records in the mail.

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New Discos

SWIFTUMZ Simply the Best LP (Empty Cellar)

Christopher McVicker released the last Swiftumz album Everybody Loves Chris around the time that my former music writing endeavor was starting to wind down, but I loved that one and his first. It’s fitting that I come back to the fold and he’s got a new one waiting for me. Simply the Best isn’t hyperbolic; this guy has been writing great songs for a really long time, and a new set of them is always gonna top, what, 98% of what’s currently in the field. I’m given to understand this was no easy endeavor between personal tragedy, a pandemique, and the various difficulties in getting a record pressed in 2021-2023, but in the context of creating a really memorable, bulletproof guitar pop record, you’re not gonna do much better these days – absolute wreckers, even the ballads (especially the ballads) will make you stop and pause, and nothing feels out of place. My personal faves are the cruiser/downer “Almost Through,” which starts at Twilley, slides into Verlaine, and ends with a “China Girl”/”Dangerous Type”/Chris Sarandon in Fright Night climax; and “Demoralized,” a brief snip which gets a novel, baggy electronic drum loop familiar with Cocteaus-level 12 string lead, and is screaming for an extension beyond its brief two-minute run. Remix this, record whatever needs to be done, make it the full side of a 12” single, whatever it takes. Chris has great help on this one, including Kelley Stoltz and members of The Aislers Set among others, and they all know what he wants. This guy also rocks the sickest Polo sets out there, and I’m on board and in awe of those fits. The feeling of getting burnt by power pop is nowhere to be found, no duds stuck on the B-side, etc. Scorch and aloe salvation action only. First blasted this last week driving between two destinations in NE Illinois in search of 12” singles, 90 degrees, windows down, and it hit, a remarkable string of songs. 250 copies and going fast.

WINGED WHEEL Big Hotel LP (12XU)

I’m half-sure most of you know about this one already, a little distance collab that’s now growing in presence and performing live this year for the first time. It’s a gathering of Whitney Johnson (Matchess), Cory Plump (Spray Paint, Rider/Horse), Fred Thomas (Idle Ray, Saturday Looks Good to Me and about 12 other Michigan acts) and Matthew J. Rolin (Powers/Rolin duo/trio), now joined by one-time Crucifucks drummer Steve Shelley for a second go-round, and as in-person as circumstances will allow. Again it sounds like everyone brought some good ideas and they got played around with to the right degree and laid into a song, so everything comes out both flowing with concepts and intentionally off-the-cuff, far beyond anything half-thought. Honestly, the “Sugar Kane Shuffle” could improve just about anything: open mic nights, guys trying out pedals at a Guitar Center, any band playing the Montrose Saloon, anyone attending a SXSW showcase from here on out. Hearing it work here as it should is the grand gesture you’d want it to be, as is Shelley’s full integration into the fold, to where his contributions seem to form the path the rest of these ideas can follow. Varied and adventurous, these nine songs keep pulling you back in, from a larger bag of tricks than the first effort.

THE EXORZIST III Gospel Jamming Vol. 1 LP (XRZST / Cardinal Fuzz)

THE EXORZIST III Fourth Coming DL (XRZST)

This popped up quietly after a digital release in 2022. Anyone who was into The Psychic Paramount or Laddio Bolocko, this is their guitarist Drew St. Ivany’s new thing, an occasional band with drummer Nick Ferrante and bassist Von Finger, delivering more of the full-on instrumental rock such a project would need in order to thrive. This group sounds a lot less claustrophobic and intentional than St. Ivany’s previous projects, but if it really is no more than three dudes jamming in a room, that’s fine –  it’s these three dudes, locked in and soaring, super fuzzed out and rhythmically straight ahead, force multiplying in real time. The group only allows limited glances into this world, with some lengthy balance-setting intros and abrupt endings, but do you want the part of the take where someone finally flubs something? You want that? A real word-of-mouth jammer, I guess they realized something was happening, as they quietly released a digital-only follow-up, mostly this half-hour track called “Fourth Coming” that is the blowout, at length, that the album promises. It’s a genetic recoding of “T.V. Eye” that just keeps at it, grinding down beyond the motive. Pick these two up, you’ll be set for a while; even if this is beyond you, there’s always that still of Angus Scrimm on the cover of the LP.

CHARLES GAYLE / MILFORD GRAVES / WILLIAM PARKER WEBO 3xLP box set (Black Editions Archive)

My understanding of free jazz, the kind being made in this lifetime, begins with and around a lot of NYC players that I’d hear on later releases from this timeframe – Gayle via Raining Fire and Consecration; Parker from his duo with Hamid Drake; Graves from the Tzadik CD Grand Unification and from there his ‘80s Soul Note quartet session Pieces of Time with Andrew Cyrille, Kenny Clarke and Famoudou Don Moye – why it was super important to be around a serious collection of jazz at a college radio station, getting to hear this stuff as it happened and being able, pre-Internet / everything machine hours to talk to people who knew it, listen to what they played, make these connections and form my own tastes around this stuff from a distance. I found my way here from a path laid down and obscured to most, and it snagged me, hard.

This set is special for several reasons. This trio never released any recordings, only performing a handful of times across a three-decade expanse, and this 1991 set in the box catalyzed the growing wave of creative jazz/improv expression in the city. Having had it in front of me for a few months now, it’s unreal that none of this ever made it beyond storage in Graves’ home, left only to the memories of attendees. Perhaps it was meant that way, so Graves could protect his understanding of rhythmic communique from closer dissection, but he does things on this that I’ve never heard any drummer do, in context of jazz or any other music apart from Graves’ own, and the absolute fucking fire Gayle encircles this with, and Parker’s ability to throw a rope to both players, both tearing loose and buttoning up this set when needed, is pressing all the buttons. This kind of expression absolutely made my exposure towards jazz on this level, and influenced my understanding of the sound, so to get a ten-ton touchstone dropping like this is shattering the realm over and over.

BOBBY WOULD Relics of Our Life LP (Digital Regress)

This is something like Bobby Would’s fourth or fifth go-round of anonymous, single-octave chanting mope against various styles of ‘60s tin garage melancholy. Some of these albums are a little more toothsome than others, and this isn’t one of them – the sting in the guitars is muted into a clear tone, a choice to be sure. It was kinda nice when it started, but these recordings are more or less interchangeable with one another, and are just piling up now. You gotta really like something such as this to still be on board; the point may be that new listeners are discovering this artist for the first time, but unless you’re OK with this level of monotony, those who’ve been following from the jump should feel pretty assed out by now. I await any sign of life or change in demeanor to prove that there’s something more to the story here.

More coming on Friday, stay up.

Requiescat Jim Laakso.

— Doug Mosurock