Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0016

Happy Friday, readers. Almost 200 of you now. Pretty nice. Pass this along to more people; the door for free advice is gonna close. It won’t cost you much to unlock it though. If these opinions are worth it to you to load yourself up with 10 records a week to keep you occupied and stoked on where music went and is going, it’ll be worth it. I have faith in you.

This one’s all about connections to a past, real or imagined. The present is doing just fine (esp. if you’re going to see FACS tonight). We can go or be wherever we choose if we have the imagination.

I really dig all of these records (and tape) and I hope this is coming across when you read about them. Go out there and be part of something.

Submissions, as always: PO Box 25717, Chicago IL 60625 USA // [email protected]

Look at the archives, see what you missed.

Onward…

New Discos

THE SOUNDCARRIERS Through Other Reflections LP (Phosphonic)

Album number five from this Nottingham outfit, given to a luxurious, ornate ‘60s mod flash sound coming from exotica, Eastern influences, jazz/bop candification, library music, Peter Thomas soundtracks, Michael Caine’s eyeglasses, and the like. Brighter sounding than Broadcast, less reliant on the motoric stylings like Stereolab, they’ve carved out a nice niche for themselves (and they had their music featured in one of the best seldom-watched TV series of the last two decades, Lodge 49). As with the new Jessica Pratt (mentioned in the second one of these that went out), it’s transformative music, designed to make you feel like you’re a character in a different story, albeit one with far more detail via their maximal arrangement style, vocal charts, etc., a whole production instead of a solitary personality behind a flickering candle. A bit fuller and less dry than in their previous iteration (2022’s Wilds, which broke an eight-year drought), Through Other Reflections is also a shade slower and more melancholy, at least up front. It does pick up very nicely on the second side, so start there? We have the option of designing our own experiences, and a record with two sides is a fine way to give that a push. Best served ornately, with a side of a modern cohort like Dummy’s new one out next month.

J.R.C.G. Grim Iconic… (Sadistic Mantra) LP (Sub Pop)

Oddly, this new one from Dreamdecay’s Justin Gallego (following releases on Castle Face and Iron Lung, a proper launch after some interesting starts) has more than a little to do with the sound of that Soundcarriers release above, to the point where I distractedly thought I was still listening to the former at points. It’s a slightly different tack against the same world of deep instrumentation, drone sentiments, deeply-considered melodic strengths, but from another side of the coin: Latin rhythms, noise, basement sweat, “party’s over, Madchester” comedown vibes and such. Similar game though, an elaborately-constructed cage of different but equally felt emotions that pulls you through it on its own power. Bands that went through the post-punk / post-screamo / post-hardcore grinder back in the late ‘90s/early ‘00s were pretty keen on creating these sort of “yes, and” works and this one is of the same blood type as Mi Ami, The Rapture’s early stuff, and leagues of lost, CD-only, non-streaming counterparts that didn’t have the chance to take it this far. A really nice, beautiful surprise, as I thought I’d heard the limits of the Dreamdecay forge years ago. Gallego is probably stoked that Sakevi has passed on for naming his album G.I.S.M., unless he was enthused about being slain by his ghost. Personally I wouldn’t take that risk, and this doesn’t have much to do with Japanese hardcore, but WHAT DO I KNOW.

GUIDING LIGHT s/t CS/DL (Stucco)

Anyone else remember poring over the Bottlenekk mailorder distro updates back in like ’97-’99? I’m getting heavy déjà vu from this Guiding Light tape, the sound of a band throwing affect and defined techniques in the cyclotron and extruding one of these basement burners and dropping some silkscreened 7” in a bakery bag out to anyone fast enough to grab it. Yelping vocals, restless rhythm section, one of those guitarist who gets a line in their head and keeps playing it over and over, 97 cent gas, a van on its last legs, a cramped space, hair dye, Sta-Prest, a distro box full of these wonders traded with other bands for just a little more reach wherever you all are. It reminds me of trying to book The Party of Helicopters and getting Gold Circle or The Phelps Hex or The Man I Fell In Love With or Armstrong’s Secret Nine in their stead, whoever was willing to come out that night and surprise western PA. Five quick songs, one real good time. A download of this costs a single dollar. You’ve spent more on far less. Give this Texas tornado a spin. For me. For them. For YOU.

Archival Discos

CIRCUS LUPUS s/t LP (L.G.)

Speaking of déjà vu, I swore up and down that I wrote about this Circus Lupus reissue somewhere, but can’t seem to find it. I’d feature it every other post if it meant making you aware that one of the greatest Dischord bands ever has cleaned up and unearthed their 1990 demo, back when they were stationed in Madison, WI while Chris Thomson took a crack at a diploma. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t familiar with this session, apart from the tracks on the 7” that came out of it. I still wonder what it must have been like in the room when he recorded that Fury 7” with most of Swiz, and THAT VOICE came out, like Prometheus boosting fire in that fennel stalk and giving it to the people. Featuring original bassist Reg Shrader, who opted for a move to Chicago and a place in the lineup of Seam instead of DC, these songs – the single, a comp track, one unreleased tune and five songs that’d eventually end up on either Super Genius or Solid Brass – have an uncanny ability to surprise, both because a lot of us are used to the finished product, and that these came so much earlier. A band sounding like this in 1992 made sense to me. 1990 is another story, and not just because I wasn’t around to catch it – there really isn’t a lot from that time and place this righteously nasty and twisted up. It makes much more sense that they became a DC band as opposed to starting out in that scene because none of this sound was really happening there, not even out of the Powderburns/Whorl axis. How many minds were shattered within the first minute or two of their live sets? Who else was out there, plying exactly this trade in such a transitional year? If this is possible, what other bands didn’t properly document themselves and are therefore lost to time and fading memories? Doesn’t matter so much; can’t worry about what doesn’t exist. This does, and it’s been done right, in a great package with attention to detail in mastering and remixing it to the correct speed and dimensions it’d require to hit you directly between the eyes. Bracing, gripping, tense rock with lots of wildass Southern rock, lock-in tension and peace punk march elements, refined to sting hard and leave a mark. Look for the big yellow record wherever you choose to enlighten yourself in retail.

GOVERNMENT ISSUE You LP (Giant, 1987; re. Dr. Strange, 2024)

I have two favorite GI records: this one and Joy Ride, the only two I own. It took me a long time to source a replacement copy of You, as I don’t live near or shop at any stores that knowingly carry anything on Dr. Strange Records (though no fault if you do, and that’s probably the easiest way to own this forgotten rocker). It’s the beginning of the end for Government Issue, more or less their final solidified lineup, which would plug on for a few years after this, and a more or less clean break from their hardcore past – beyond John Stabb and longtimer guitarist Tom Lyle, without whom there’d probably be no GI, this lineup ditched any involvement from guys involved with the first wave of DC hardcore.

Trading up for young(er) guns J. Robbins and Peter Moffatt as the rhythm section (who’d later reunite in Burning Airlines after Robbins’ major label misadventures in Jawbox), GI simply followed the path laid out by other ex-hardcore refugees from Hüsker Dü onward, retaining the energy but deploying it more strategically against the template of loud rock, right at glam/metal’s doorstep, cognizant of and yearning for the riff incarnate, but wise enough to remain on the welcome mat and yet keep the door open just a crack to see what was going on inside. This was a pretty popular path in the second half of the ‘80s which you can find on records by Moving Targets, Honor Role, Squirrel Bait, Bullet Lavolta, Bitch Magnet, Naked Raygun and so many others who wanted to reclaim punk, rock, and melody with the lessons learned from our exhausted sojourn into direct aggression (which was already experiencing regrowth with the junior set – Rev bands, Connecticut straightedge, etc. – that wasn’t tall enough to ride the first time).

GI 5 and You were transitional works between these worlds, with You seeing the band emerge out the other side, their sound comprehended from the inside by Tom Lyle’s era-appropriate, guitar-forward production and the combined qualities of all the records these guys had consumed to in the ‘70s and early ‘80s having their say. John Stabb had tempered his voice down from screaming anger and a slight predilection for Ian MacKaye’s conversational shout into a baritone croon lifted from a lifetime of listening to The Damned and The Misfits, one which doesn’t take a lot of getting used to. He sounds like someone who should be singing for this band, and the band spins up the most realized version of what they could be seven years on, as if they’re really just doing this for themselves.

Side 1 through flipside opener “Where You Live” are so goddamn correct, a wade through Rev Summer feelings to come through as just a really great fucking rock band. Though I don’t actually recall experiencing this, they put me in the mind of standing outside on the first really brisk autumn evening of the season, wearing a really thick hoodie under nearby stadium lighting, figuring out what to do with the rest of my night, that cold air on my face and in my lungs relighting a flame extinguished earlier that year.

They’re unafraid to throw Kiss licks, galloping Bun E. Carlos-style drum fills, Lemmy-style backing vocals and even a sitar (or reasonable facsimile) into the mix on the rest, and what I like about it is that it doesn’t all work, but is still necessary for them to play as their true selves, to what made them. If they could’ve slotted out one of these last few tracks with “For Ever” off their finale Crash, then You would be perfect. But we’re all looking for too much in perfection these days, when what we should be hoping for is what is honest, and that’s exactly what You strives to be, four guys who’d decided to show us who they were and what got them there.

Thank you again,

Doug Mosurock