Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0006

Vacation’s closing up but it’s been restorative, and getting to write this from a distant outpost is reminding me of why I started writing about this stuff way back when in the first place: I wanted to know more about what was going on in music, and exposure’s the best for that.

My brain is kind of emptied out with the lack of urban/city input. I sat on a beach today and wasn’t bothered by any people, kids throwing rocks, weird holiday rituals I didn’t want to endure. Just me and my people, out like a quarter mile in the shallows of Lake Michigan, soaking it up. We had to find this place, because it’s certainly not on any of the recommendations I saw for Washington Island, and it made my year. Kinda like what records (still) do for me.

Thanks to all the readers and the increasing subscriber counts each day. This is getting to be fun again. Hopefully we’ll all get fully back in the swing together.

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RIP Shelley Duvall.

New Discos

SML Small Medium Large LP (International Anthem)

Los Angeles jazz/etc. quintet, onboarded with parts of other IARC ensembles and most notably half of Jeff Parker’s quartet – bassist Anna Butterss and saxophonist Josh Johnson – from the Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy set. Picture Ryuichi Sakamoto’s B-2 Unit era (or Tortoise, for that matter) being a little more jazz informed but still free to roam about the current climate, percussive strands punctuated by percussive playing across all members of the unit, unafraid to turn that guitar or synth into something like a steel drum. Seeing this play out live with no defined beginnings or ends might be the way to go, as I can’t think of any better ways for these tracks to close out than they can, but hearing their paraphrased “endless rotary connections” is winning out this eve.

R.E. SERAPHIN Fool’s Mate LP (Take a Turn/Safe Suburban Home)

Bay Area pop bands are coming out under the hissy clouter of still, non-sparkling groups like Cindy and April Magazine and returning the favor to the flavor of yore. This year alone we have Swiftumz, Neutrals and one hell of a live set by The Umbrellas last month to fortify the ranks for the not-quite-dead notions of songwriting winning the day over the right textures, cool vibes and unfussed arrangements, and we can add R.E. Seraphin’s second LP to that group. The whispering, breathy vocals, saucer-eyed riffs and productive rhythmic push amounts to a far better time than I remember having with an earlier work on Mt. St. Mtn., really accomplished stuff, like Rat Columns covering Tommy Keene. Someday you’re gonna realize how much you needed this, so just get ahead of it and go down this dusky alley, pronto. Sounds nothing like Peter Hammill’s first solo shot.

RAT COLUMNS “Galilee” b/w “Boyfriend” DL (Tough Love)

David West’s always coming back, and that wasn’t necessarily a blind connection made up there in the R.E. Seraphin review. I’m always coming back for more of Perth’s world traveler and his bedroom shaman pop sounds, and these two tracks (left off of last year’s ebullient, difficult Babydoll) kinda pick up the script dropped for that record to the efforts of not-quite-old. “Galilee” poliltely kicks off with stick clicks and wound up, staccato synth before breaking again and again into wider, more satisfying vistas. “Boyfriend” plays much more fragile, light keys and violin breaking into folk-pop eggshell. Good music should outlast short memories and evaporating eras, and David’s basically won that battle most of the time. This is one reason why you should follow new music more closely when possible: you need better markers for the passage of time than death and loss, and great songs are one hell of a balm against the bad times, and a prop for the good ones too.

THE SEWERHEADS “Diary of a Priest” b/w “Man of Finite Sorrow” 7” (Office Boy)

This Pittsburgh quartet, stormy violin-led rock with Eli Kasan from The Gotobeds/Kim Phuc doing what he does on the guitar around it, kicks off its recording cycle with this long-promised 7”. “Diary of a Priest” is pretty remarkable, a slinky, whispery, moody slow jam with some really smart interplay around all four instruments, that sort of mournfully celebration The Laughing Clowns were so good at, breathed on with airs of the midnight sun shades-on rock Silkworm were plying around Developer. Playing both sides of the quarter as well as the ridges, we’re just getting a taste now, with a full-length coming on Tall Texan later this year. Small singles are a hard sell these days but some efforts need to be made; maybe if bands could find a reason to manufacture more of them (like sales) we could get the prices down a bit.

Archival Discos

CHROMATICS Plaster Hounds LP (Gold Standard Laboratories), released 2004

With Iron Lung reissuing Dead and Gone’s masterful final LP The Beautician next month, they’re kinda saying what we’re all thinking: what’s up with all those records that came out on GSL to pad out the Mars Volta records at the end there? Especially given the three-years-but-it-felt-like-a-smash-cut between this final “band” era of Chromatics and the disco empire that followed, you’d think people would talk about this one more. 1997-2005 was the come-up and come-down for this kind of band, simply doing what bands without a lot of money did – make records on the cheap, tour, hope for some familiar faces, only to be frozen out of both the collector era and the struggles of punk/indie labels that didn’t get the push during the favored nations / exploratory years of streaming services. Johnny Jewel apparently didn’t show on this record at all, leaving co-leader Adam Miller to this set, murky and tick-a-tack amidst the synth-as-effect peppering and the circus-leaving-town drumming of Ron Avila (ex-Final Conflict/Antioch Arrow) as he was wont to play with his main band, the Get Hustle. There are some band numbers in here, and other moments that play like Tuxedomoon Jr. (or earlier stabs by compatriots The Rapture, back in the Gravity era), but the main feeling given off by Plaster Hounds is this last plane out mentality, when punk scrappers left these foreboding Factrix soundalikes down at the thrift store for the No Fun Fest contingent to pick up, back when you still had to know about bands to know about bands, and the lines between genres weren’t so clean. The more I play this one, though, the more cobwebbed and alien it sounds, serious percussive chops (“Chalk Dust”) ceding ground to broken electronics and sounds from an even earlier generation. Plaster Hounds ends with a cover of Silver Apples’ “Program” and Miller’s hoarse delivery and the rickety robotic fuzz of this cover plays like a guidebook left for someone else to discover, the torch thrown at future generations rather than politely passed.

Until next time,

Doug Mosurock