Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0024

This latest edition focuses on the olds — bands that are done, bands that are back after a long absence, bands that have been pushing it for a while, bands that have seen some shit. None of this really makes us look at the future, which is really refreshing.

I’ll be in Pittsburgh next week for some funzies, maybe see some of you there. Maybe not! Also maybe see some of you in the Bohemian National Cemetery in Chicago tonight for Jessica Pratt, Rose City Band and Rosali. You know where my sentiments lie.

Keep the music and conversation coming: [email protected] / PO Box 25717 Chicago IL 60625 USA.

Keep passing this shit on to your friends and peoples.

THE JESUS LIZARD Rack LP (Ipecac)

I think we can all agree that no one needed a new Jesus Lizard record except the people who made it. It’s safe to say that there are definitely some who want this, and that’s fine too. They still got the juice, and by the middle of Rack, damn near anyone would be thirsty for anything truly representing the band we showed up for, even if it means the Miles Davis-lifted lead for “Then Comes Dudley” getting confabbed to a reasonable, non-IP threatening likeness in “Alexis Feels Sick”. The good news is, they stay in that zone from that point onward. There is a very, very specific thing that a Jesus Lizard record needs to do, and that’s to be a Jesus Lizard record. Not a Les Savy Fav record, not a McLusky record, certainly not a Birthday Party or Slug or Unsane record. They were just too good at dreaming themselves up through 1994, and still in the live setting through the Shot era (maybe so in 2009, where I heard but could not see them from the balcony of a beyond-packed Cabaret Metro, stuffed with people who took the song “Mouth Breather” a bit too seriously, and leading up to Yow cracking a rib during the set). They made their rep not only off that live show/general wild man energy, but on sounding unconditionally like the exact same band-as-unit doing what they do in the studio – they have to bowl a 300 every time. Nobody understood this better than the late Steve Albini, and while people sometimes knocked his ability to mix vocals, he knew that a David Yow performance required every sound Yow could make, every breath, every gulp, every gasp, as if it was its own instrument. That not a single engineer really got this afterwards is their greatest material loss (if not all those direct-to-streaming movies Yow keeps turning up in), and it’s one reason Rack suffers out of the gate. After “Lord Godiva” it’s business as usual, a better record than Shot or Blue by a lot, but that’s because by this point, they are towing the if-it-ain’t-broke agenda back to where it belongs. But it’s not a complete game, and no amount of loud man, noise rock punisher, people formerly in the employ of said band or its cottage industry, or AARP superfan IPO energy is going to change that.

ED SCHRADER’S MUSIC BEAT Orchestra Hits LP (Upset the Rhythm)

The beloved Cultimore duo of Ed Schrader and Devlin Rice have finally completed their chameleonic transformation evinced on 2018’s “Seagull” to its natural endpoint: they are now fully a New Romantic revival show, and completely invested in wherever that mindset will take them. Additional instrumentation, possibly credited to new collaborator Dylan Going, fleshes out the approach with synths, guitar and Will Hicks’ live drums to bolster Schrader’s velvety croom and Rice’s driving, foundational basslines. Narrowing the focus really helps showcase both the ballads and the uptempo numbers for what the band is now, rather than all the detours they took to get here, and if music like Japan, late Roxy/Bryan Ferry solo, or pre-hits Simple Minds is your lane, it’s time to merge.

ANIMAL PISS, IT’S EVERYWHERE Grace LP (Half a Million / Sophomore Lounge)

Second album of happy hour / whistle jams from this winningly unkempt Western Mass honky tonk horde. Countrified tunes about life – this time in honor of preserving it, extending it, living every inch of it even when shit gets hard, with the tacit acknowledgement that it’s not just gonna get weird, it already is – glide down on ribbons of pedal steel guitar, dependable rhythms, singalong choruses that tap the inner skull like a telegraph line (“we’re a dime a dozen, ya probably know three”), and that sort of winking familiarity that must accompany the better-knowns of music and culture. If you’re going to write a cautionary tale that summarizes a lot of what APIE is pushing this time, it might as well be the shaker rhythm “Dana Plato,” diff’rent strokes for all of us after that one. Here’s to a world where a solar-powered conveyance can keep these guys traveling wherever they’re needed, bringing understanding and sympathy to the informed and the forgotten alike.

SYBRIS Gold on Hold LP (Absolutely Kosher)

Chicago’s Sybris packed it in around 2013, when this album was shelved due to untenable situations at their label, which in turn caused the band to unravel. Both teams have revived in 2024, seemingly no worse for the wear, ready to tell a little more of the tale. Not having the familiarity of who Sybris was up til this point, this certainly sounds like music sheltered from the collective turmoil of the intervening decade and the baggage it strapped to us all; hearing songs about trying to stay young from 11 years ago, when the exact opposite has, by design, completely taken hold, is a bit ironic, but the greater feeling here is how much the notions of indie rock have moved forward while Gold on Hold was trapped in amber. This is a very traditional lookin’-at-life record with big anthems, a singer who’s dynamic enough that the band knows best to follow her lead, and a kinda secular priesthood approach to sharing the platitudes therein. It sounds unadorned in the sort of ‘90s way we used to expect a lack of varnish in our music. It’ll be curious to know if this sort of purity has a home in modern times, if their fans haven’t all moved to the suburbs, that sort of logistical, uphill-battlin’ take-stock moment that this music seems almost predestined to face.

GALAXIE 500 Uncollected Noise New York ’88-’90 2xLP/2xCD/2xCS/DL (Silver Current)

Spinning up nostalgia in packages that speak to this handiwork (‘60s throwback bands, TMOQ bootleg style jackets, live recordings of no small stature) has become the main path of West Coast musician Ethan Miller (Howlin’ Rain, Comets on Fire, Heron Oblivion) and his Silver Current imprint. The latest out of that combine is a souped-up ultimate edition of the Galaxie 500 odds & sods comp that accompanied their old Ryko box set as a bonus CD, two dozen tracks sequenced chronologically and with 1/3 wholly undiscovered tracks and takes. Maybe no other American indie band bridged the college rock era with such fatalistic, untapped potential than this group did; much like the Go-Betweens were most visible just before their rupture, Galaxie 500 stayed on in our collective conscious almost as a force of will from its fans. Not even a bankrupted label and unresolvable personnel differences could keep this music from being shared, and their unattended revival has been going since the moment they called it quits. A good part of the reasoning for that is that their three albums are such complete statements that hang together in a slow ache, an act of self-definition that brings their specific history to bear so cleanly you’d wonder if they’d plan their demise in a bid to memorialize themselves. This version of Uncollected builds in and around those albums so you can hear the hesitation in the left turns (fast songs? at least fast for them), the covers revealing their depth and purity of influence, the outtakes and alternate versions of career high singles like “Blue Thunder” with the sax and the intentionally aloof Super 8 colorburst spangles of the “Fourth of July” video. It’s a map around the discrete albums, and if it didn’t work, we’d be left wondering why, but as it stands it’s like tugging on the rope and finding the treasure at the end, from their start to the end. Kinda feels like something you can’t afford to miss, even if you’ve heard most of it already.

Best,

Doug M.