Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0007

Hey folks. Back to work over here, digging through the pile and having a really wonderful time in discovery which I hope is coming across. Sound off in my inbox.

This week will see an endurance test in attending Pitchfork Fest (once again in the VIP and eternal shout-outs to you-know-who for making that possible) and a quick boomerang back to Wisconsin for Rosali and David Nance Group. Some live coverage of any surprises may come through.

The piles of mail are starting to come through, and I love to get those records, so keep sending, please and thanks. Can’t do it without you. Also thanks for helping this outlet continue to grow. Next up: design, page formatting, maybe some longer-form stuff. Right now I’m still in build-out phase, but I appreciate all the support.

I feel foolish telling bands to route their week off of work on tour through the middle of the country as opposed to hitting Chicago — especially when I can’t make it to all the gigs I’d like to — but starting to wonder once more where the focus is in this town to book more things of interest to readers of this newsletter. We certainly have enough venues. We need to think smaller, maybe. Feed us those scraps.

Send it in: PO Box 25717 Chicago IL 60625

Email [email protected]

Shout out to Reese Higgins. Sorry to trouble you man, it’s all good; if I had a nickel for remembering everyone I’d ever met at a Twin Stumps show … well, I’d have a nickel, and a bad time with live music.

This week’s haul below:

DAR A Slightly Larger Head LP (Sophomore Lounge)

Guilty sitting here for months on this one, a solo record from former Giving Up drummer Aaron Osbourne. Abetted by the Sophomore Lounge/Appalachian inner sanctum of Ryan Davis (solo, State Champion, label impresario), Jim Marlowe (Equipment Pointed Ankh, Tropical Trash) and former bandmate Jenny Rose, this is more Growing Up than Giving Up, a full-band effort applied to a singer-songwriter record in the bar corner sitter/ruckus maker mold (think Centro-Matic or Archers of Loaf), given to an anthemic plod, beefy riffs, rhythms as feeling, tape echo phantoms, car/truck doors that squeak when opened, and reconnection with people you haven’t seen in a while to find their development as people and personalities flourished in ways you want more of in your lives. Osbourne sings of tales belonging to snap decisions and held/protected feelings, of loss and reconstruction, set to easily-telegraphed melodies and rhythmic pound; from the breadth of projects borne of the crew behind this, getting to sit in on something like this, with all of these folks channeling something so immediate in backgrounds of epic storytelling/songcraft and avant/noise leanings is a strong reminder that grace is wherever you find it. People think the fight for this country is gone; I see it as people realizing where their energies in a relatively short lifetime should go, doing what they can with what they have and what they learned, and Osbourne is laying all of that bare, hands full of honesty and wonder. The answers aren’t direct all the time but that’s a ruse as well; the truth is in a deeper, more personal layer, where connections and belief and care for one another on an individual level are all formed, and ultimately we wouldn’t have much without all that.

THE SHEAVES A Salve for Institution LP (Dot Dash/SDZ)

Second album by this Arizona outfit that packs a good bit of artifice atop their approach, a push-pull between understanding The Shadow Ring or “New Puritan” by The Fall and being repelled by those notions, that a new band doesn’t have much of a place in such exaggerated affectation. Then you keep listening, connect towards what you know, and get caught on the particulars of these short, unexpected strum/drone songs, and the snag of melody in tracks like “Leisure Facts (Domestic Exp)” helps along the droning triple-tracked “To Leave Sanctuary,” only to cross streams in something like “Sanctum Cross” which piles on both energy and atonal discord. The Sheaves are really fascinating because they bring a lot of specific qualities to this music, and they seem to celebrate the spaces where these qualities support one another as much as they work against themselves in others. This record is fish; not fishy, but akin to something like branzino, in the sense that its brain food is interspersed with regular notice by bones which you’d do well not to consume. It’s a sound borne of conflict, and offers you the choice to negotiate for sustenance or give us in frustration as it gets cold. Those who stay will find themselves more immune to discomfort, possibly become stronger thinkers, but above all will get to enjoy those happenstance moments where all this simply works. 

THE DRIN Elude the Torch LP (Feel It)

Fourth (or maybe fifth) yearly installment in the ever-developing Cincinnati sextet, fronted by The Serfs’ Dylan McCartney. Over that time they’ve built out of a specific damp basement / cold water flat post-punk sound into something a little more intangible. Their “breakthrough” (I guess, does a nod from a Pitchfork martyr mean you’re crossing over?) Today My Friend You Drunk the Venom was their most expansive and their closest to a Helios Creed solo album but Elude the Torch moves the posts even further, and while this whole nebula of Queen City bands all do one to three things very well per band, The Drin sounds as if they are in a continual, ceaseless pattern of musical/cultural discovery, consumption and subsequent reinvention that a lot of acts couldn’t weather. This is their best one to date; the base mood is still present but extended with wyrd folk and occasional Sun City Girls-esque sprawl in far east and Greek zones, and achieving a stillness by the end that really most records from this scene (or on Feel It) don’t accomplish. It’s a journey, and if you’re lashed to genre I have bad news for you, but the rest of us may find a greater truth within.

ALAN VEGA Insurrection 2xLP (In the Red)

I’d read about Suicide before I’d ever had an opportunity to hear them, so that must’ve been back in the ‘90s, and given that timeframe I expected everything I’d learned about them to sound something like this record – essentially what Suicide was like, but through my own narrow frame of reference. Insurrection is an unreleased session from Vega’s collabs with his partner Liz Lamere from around 1997, and it delivers just that, Suicide’s thrills but with more of a modern industrial/noise rock bent. At double-album length the two have ample time to explore this direction from any angle that makes sense, be it OG Suicide terror (“Murder One”) or Batcave/Pyramid Club-ready rivet stomp (“Mercy,” “Chains,” “Crash”). It’s spacious but pressurized, that whole notion of the space you find versus the space that’s yours laid out in one of the last gasps of NYC terror from the era. Great record, and if you’ve been off the Vega train for a while this is a good place to jump back in.

PORTA D’ORO Cosi Dentro Come Fuori LP (Maple Death/Legno)

Idiosyncratic yet compelling mash of lo-fi dub/postpunk/minimalist expression from Milan’s Giacomo Stefanini, completely unable to sit still yet finding its own gravity from one track to the next. Described in materials as “therapy,” it makes a great case for finding a way out – way out – and seeing if you can come back at all, and even if it makes sense to do so. Stefanini has a wide range of experience from loose garage psych (Mirroring) to hardcore (Kobra) to dungeon synth (Spectraum), and brings much of it to bear in this set, leaning on dub/reverb effects to endless narcoleptic strumming, synth plinks, rhythm boxes and spoken-sung Italian lyrics. It doesn’t have the throughline of more specific album-length efforts with this kind of range but manages to surprise, and keep surprising, at every murky turn. Sit with it and see how far it can take you.

Later days,

Doug Mosurock