Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0022

HEY — I don’t shill for Bandcamp but it’s the place where most of the music I write about is available, and a place where you can listen to and buy it, and it’s easy. Bandcamp Friday is today so you can find almost every one of the over 100 records covered here since I kicked it off, and proceeds are not affected by the site’s fees. One place you can direct that action towards is https://thedissidents.bandcamp.com/ and any of the three comps they’ve released to benefit Mutual Aid in Gaza. It actually matters, and these are really solid comps by a who’s who of international peace punk, crust, hardcore, postpunk outfits who all understand the importance of saving the lives of the innocents tangled up in this dispute. People are contracting polio from the neglect and damage to their infrastructure. You can do something to save someone.

September is filling up and I’d still like to hear from the best bands and labels out there. Drop a line at [email protected], send music there or to PO Box 25717, Chicago IL 60625. Direct contact brings direct results.

New Discos 

WEAK SIGNAL Fine LP (12XU)

Four albums in and Weak Signal continue to challenge Triple 6 as “most known unknown” in the realm they occupy. Fine brightens up ever so slightly the low-slung dirt they churned up on War & War, and while that effect worked with success on that album, it’s heartening to hear one of America’s best rock trios uncomfortable on their laurels, and willing to broaden a sound no one asked them to change just a little bit more. Mike Bones has been scratching a certain itch of trouble through songwriting since his solo records on The Social Registry, and is a bonafide shredder, but those sentiments, strengthened by the steady rhythms of bassist Sasha Vine and drummer Tran Huynh, now have a certain patina about them that make them ring truer with that time burnt:

· any situation where you’re seeing the same acquaintances in a larger, more shallow social setting over the years will inevitably become a rut, to which you can determine your own comfort level

· there is a certain romance in allowing trouble to find you

· playing the music you love for people and playing it for yourself should be considered as an equal expression

· your problems will make you pine for someone else’s

· your problems can make for really memorable songs and lyrics

· your problems applied in this fashion can make people connect with their own

Maybe all but the first point is some roundabout expression of what we know as the blues, but Weak Signal’s world traps it inside a big city after work, a brutally hot (or bracingly cold) day where the sun bleaches that light concrete even lighter, a world where your space to operate has a roomy yet finite limit, where you need more than you can afford. Every song on it aspires to something that we know and don’t have, and dares to put that into perspective within the realms of shared experience. If you don’t need it now, trust me that you will need these words and the fried sound to which they’re set, if you’re ever going to take stock of a worthwhile or interesting life. “Your life is just a song,” they sing. “It’s here and then it’s gone. What type of trip are you on?”

J.R. BOHANNON & DAVE SHUFORD Reclined in the Haze LP (Barchan Dune)

Guitarists John Bohannon (Ancient Ocean) and Dave Shuford (NNCK, D. Charles Speer & The Helix) come together for a sterling duo of threnodies, raga-esque explorations that bridge Americana to India, and minimal blues pastoral. The elegance of their playing comes with this air of icy, pensive anxiety that puts this session on tenterhooks, and it makes what they’re doing together incredibly powerful. They’re both strong enough players that they can go off book while the other holds down the sentiments to continue to walk the edge while contemplating what it’s like to fall off of it. It’s been a while since I’ve listened to enough guitar music to rate where these guys are coming from, but it’s some of the only guitar music I’ve found to be this gripping, waves of fear not mistaken for anthems. Highly, deeply recommended. 

YOUNG SCUM Lighter Blue LP (Jigsaw/Pretty Olivia)

Second album from this Richmond indie pop concern, back after six years on hold for what’s likely some of the same reasons everyone else had over that time. They’re deft players, know how to use noise, and crack off about four Altoid-strong songs to start this before the known elements push back in: a little Lemonheads here, some Pains of Being Pure at Heart there, Peter Buck worship up above, Superchunk towards the floor, and Ocean Blue all through it (which is kinda where I disembark). It’s fine for what it is, but you either need more of it or none at all.

ELKHORN Other Worlds LP (Cardinal Fuzz)

Guitar explorer duo Elkhorn add a drummer to the mix (Ian McColm, of Nagual and Center) and light up the chalice for a power trio descent into Earth (and earth). You might wanna credit the time Jesse Shepherd spent blasting it in Blues Ambush, or you just consider this a necessary and natural extension of the many places this project has gone. Primo kush heavy fuzz churn “in the style of demons” – some hard yards walked in the throes of slow, monolithic rock which call to mind a more outdoorsy Sleep, some of the Tonie Joy extendo jams from The Great Unraveling and The Convocation Of, or that Sea of Tombs rumbler on Gravity from way back when, but also settles down into stern electric folk instrumental runs (“Magellanic Clouds”) that thrill as the cool side of that pillow ought. Firmly top of mid pack burners, says what it means (nothing but the notes and beats), and that’s enough.

Archival Discos

THEE HYDROGEN TERRORS Terror, Diplomacy and Public Relations LP (1996, Load/Super 8)

I bought this album from a cardboard box at a More Than Music fest in Columbus, Ohio (Assück on the lawn year, not broad rangy, show-stopping discussion of predators in the scene year, or safe space year). Later that summer I’d meet Ben McOsker on another excursion to Columbus and all I could think about was “this is the guy who put out Thee Hydrogen Terrors.”

This all came from this moment where things didn’t really matter. The feast had ended, bands could simply be once again, and whatever stab these guys all took at the ring was yanked away after their first LP. People were taking it upon themselves to draw boundaries and make their sociopolitical stances more militant, but not here. This one’s better, really one of the best – a bridge between the black box of electronic danger in the clutches of Six Finger Satellite and the polyester bruise of Arab on Radar; formally, a party band. Somehow Les Savy Fav would take that crown while these guys got on with their lives, which is a shame, because the party is definitely on, over in under a half hour, and now all your furniture is on the front lawn. Rude, rumpled suave rock, cocktails spilt all over. Tales of which movie to watch (“All Hail the Panamanian Subversive”), what you can do in Mexico, what life is like once you got a plate in your head (“Plate in My Head”). The beat was steady, caveman style hop, the guitar banging out the necessary chords, the singer bellowing with a sax around his neck. The party after the party. The party that didn’t stop.

These are the guys that made me aware of what was going on up at Fort Thunder, and brought me out whenever any contemporaries came to town (as the Terrors threw in the towel soon after the release of this album). Vans were cheap, gas was cheap, jobs were whatever. You could do this for a while and not suffer. No one would ever come to your part of town unless they knew about it. Your life did matter, and they did get wrecked and ended with little care, but that was kind of all we had to protect. This party proliferated. The band had an associate read off their thank yous on a track that ends the record; simply following that will show you their friends, conspirators, other bands of which to take note. Maybe calling one of them would help you get a show up there, and so on and so forth.

They had a song called “Radio to Saturn Vs. Hackamore Brick” that put me on to both bands (would later find the songwriters of the latter, responsible for a fantastic Velvets-esque rock record from 1971, interviewed them for Ugly Things, and witnessed them mount a small comeback decades later). And the funny thing is, these obviously weren’t the first people I met because of this album. When you had to rely on talk and relationships and the sharing of information between people (the most sophisticated method of which was email, if you had it), you might have learned less, but you held onto more. You’re gonna have fun. Somebody’s mailing you a VHS tape with a bunch of sick shit on it, all presented completely out of context.

Nostalgia is pretty gross, but there’s a lot to be said for embodiment of your tastes. You’d hit it AND sport it. Your presence wasn’t as yet all over, just tales for others to tell. You could be the entire room if you wanted. That’s what this record is to me: an announcement of the next five years, how everything connected, and essentially one part of a sprawling map that Load Records put out in the world to follow, the sounds from that party down the street that doesn’t end.

Later,

Doug Mosurock