Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0028 (Sept. 27, 2024)

Hey everybody. This one’s all reruns from various points in my “career,” records I still think about all the time that maybe you enjoy, or are discovering for the first time here. Days like this remind me that I’m happy to have something like three or four thousand reviews I can pull from.

In a feat of time management, I managed to record Heathen Disco show #383 last night. It’s a mostly downtempo affair, feels appropriate for the change in season, and I am listening back to it now and feeling pretty happy with it. Maybe you will too. New songs in there if you know which. Just listen.

• African Head Charge – Primitive

• The Delfonics – Ready or Not Here I Come (Can’t Hide From Love)

• Cocteau Twins – Fifty-Fifty Clown

• The Nazgul – The Dead Marshes (Cherrystones Alive and Well Mix)

• Tackhead – Reality

• Mi Ami – Slow

• Robert Rental – Double Heart

• Ostraaly – That’s Driving

• Pale Saints – Shell

• Terry Stamp – Loving Tongue Blues

• Tirzah – Tectonic

• Naked Roommate – I Can’t Be Found

• The Wake – Host

• The Beginning of the End – In the Deep

• Massive Sounds – Free South Africa (version)

• Sylvie Marks – Baby Take Me a Little Bit Higher

• Miss Lie – Vertigo

• Andrea Parker – Some Other Level

• Burger/Ink – Avalon

• Orion – Sexy Alien

• Love Child – All Is Loneliness (Peel session)

• Feeling Figures – Reality Strikes

• The Green Child – Year of the Books

• Greg Phillingaines – Do It All For Love

• Stefan Christensen – In Time

BASTRO Sing the Troubled Beast / Diablo Guapo CD (Drag City)

originally ran in Dusted, 2/20/2005

Notes: This was the first thing I wrote for Dusted. As far as I can remember, this disc was pulled from release due to rights issues, likely with the originating label Homestead. In hindsight I still think these records are kind of silly, but there was a point in time when I definitely did not, and in the tension between those moments I find the joy in this music.

It's not much of a surprise that the Bastro records are the last vestige of David Grubbs's back catalog to get a proper reissue. His was an angry-sounding, art-thrash trio that sits historically out of place between the bright, open chorded "Hüsker Pübe" college rock of his teenage combo, Squirrel Bait, and the deft, hyper-mature avant-folk styles he laid down in Gastr del Sol, and there's little to compare to either in Bastro's recorded output. Beginning in 1987, Bastro was nothing more than a dorm room experiment for Grubbs's time spent at American University, and not a very exciting one at that; his first release, a solo outing called Rode Hard and Put Up Wet, sounded like leavings from Big Black's Headache sessions. Its dismissal from this new reissue of the bulk of Bastro's output is no great loss.

In the next two years, Grubbs returned home to Louisville, Kentucky and grew Bastro into a full-time concern, adding a rhythm section of fellow Squirrel Baiter Clark Johnson and Oberlin percussion protégé John McEntire. And if his previous record aped Big Black, 1989's full-length Diablo Guapo fell in line with Steve Albini's macho endeavors with Rapeman, inasmuch as he was sowing his oats, and hired a wildcat bassist and deft drummer to bolster his torrents of guitar slashery.

Comparisons taper at that point, however. Diablo Guapo is fairly unlike any other records of its time, yet the shared influences with other bands of their day are tough to miss. Imagine Slint's unstable noise-metal hybrid Tweez grafted onto the relentless sci-fi bombast of early Voivod, and you're pretty much there. But if that sounds good to you, be forewarned that Grubbs tries, in vain, just about everything possible to stymie the ferocity such a combination might generate.

He starts by reciting some of the most embarrassing lyrics ever committed to an indie rock album, the kind that even twits the size of Conor Oberst or the folks in Arcade Fire would have the good sense to balk at. Witness the teen drama:

Yes, that is The David Grubbs, now-associate of Rick Moody, and gentle strummer of an acoustic guitar. Mixing metaphors is one thing; but only a man who'd paint METALLICA onto the side of his parents' hand-me-down Volvo station wagon would have the cojones to leverage Lord of the Flies against Patrick Swayze's lost-chromosome weekend pic "Road House," let alone scream it, neck veins bulging like it meant something. Grubbs slips up again in the track order by bringing piano, the least rocking instrument known to man, into the mix with "Wurlitzer," a pointless, undercooked ditty about a dog gone bad, and a flatulent brass section into the end of the otherwise punishing "Guapo."

But where Diablo Guapo does hit, it hits brutally hard – and often. The band seems to be having a contest to see who can play the fastest, and the results, taken on their own, could easily take any comers of the era, from Bitch Magnet to Prong, in terms of their blistering attack, sheer excess and musical vitriol. Yes, that's Whitehouse's William Bennett stopping by to grind a power drill into a guitar at the end of "Flesh-Colored House." Of course that's them spitting out dizzying mathrock power trio action on "Engaging the Reverend" and ripping the strings out at the furious climax of "Shoot Me a Deer." Primal scream therapy notwithstanding, this is a terrific display of chops and testosterone, once you scrape away all the bullshit.

And there's even more to like in 1991's well-balanced followup, Sing the Troubled Beast. The year or so in between albums provided the trio with a more natural interplay and welcome breathing room within the songs. The production is more refined and plays up the strengths of all involved, and Grubbs has surer footing with lyrics almost as absurd as on the first go-round – this time you don't cringe as hard about screeds of hammerhurlers, dead Derby horses and "snakes with rabies and invisible green." Aside from a brief synth experiment ("The Sifter") and a strikingly retooled version of another album track ("Recidivist"), Beast not only cuts down on the non sequiturs, but blends the ones it does carry more successfully into the fibers of a chaotically heavy tapestry. There are legitimate dynamic shifts and stylistic flourishes at play here that influenced early Don Caballero worshipers and Drive Like Jehu clones for the years to follow, and are classy enough that they're still worth revisiting. It makes sense that this is the album that plays first in the reissue's running order.

And just as it all started to jell, Bastro was gone – Grubbs took the band on tour in 1991 with Bundy Brown in place of Johnson. A collaborative single with Codeine was issued on Sub Pop, and shortly thereafter, the band disintegrated – McEntire joined Brown in Seam, then Tortoise, and Grubbs going solo in Gastr del Sol, eventually teaming up with Jim O'Rourke for the bulk of the band's run. Consequently, these albums have remained out of print for over a decade.

Drag City's reissue sadly omits a raging cover of Phil Ochs' "Pretty Smart on My Part" from Diablo Guapo, and scraps the Mark Robinson collaboration on the flipside of the "Shoot Me a Deer" 7", but brings a welcome remastering onboard, bringing out sounds buried in dense patches that sounded midrange and dull before.

ANDRE ETHIER On Blue Fog CD (Blue Fog)

originally ran in Dusted, 10/2/2007

Notes: Where is that Deadly Snakes reunion? Ethier made a trio of brilliant singer-songwriter albums; this one is merely great, but its followup Born of Blue Fog is even better, and the last 7” he released is a worldbeater. These records were rumored to be reissued as a box set at one point but the project fell apart; a couple of songs from these ended up on a 12” EP on French label Les Disques Steak. I saw him with a backing band opening for The Oblivians at one of those Scion garage rock patron shows, so there was that – tremendous set. His more recent output for Telephone Explosion goes in some different paths but still reveals facets of the troubadour beneath. Hope you’re doing alright, Andre. As for me, wow champ, real thick use of the oxford comma.

"Little baby, nothing is written in stone," croons Mr. Ethier, and he oughta know, as the band he co-led, the Deadly Snakes, ground to a halt last year, despite burgeoning success in his homeland of Toronto and inroads into the States. Having pushed far beyond the restraints of the garage rock revival scene they were born into, their swan song Porcella might have overextended his group a bit, pitting a well-trod yet successful attempt at singer-songwriter levity against a scene too nearsighted to appreciate many of its underlying values. Its songs were studies of pain resting in a brandy snifter, the band valiantly finding a highbrow solution to a generally lowbrow equation. On Blue Fog, Andre Ethier's third solo album (but the first to cross my path), his songs revel in that pain, channeling it into the disgust from which he liberates years of the selfless toil that comes from underappreciation.

I've seen things from his side. The Snakes came down and played a basement rock club I was booking in Manhattan about four years ago, at the tail end of a particularly trying tour. Expectations were set pretty high, but heavy rains kept out all but a stalwart two dozen paying customers, and a malfunctioning organ clinched it: this was to be a practice, not a real show. I saw in Ethier's eyes that familiar look that men take on when Crom had thrown one too many obstacles in their paths. On Blue Fog thrusts a similar burden on the listener, a scattered yet confident set of quietudes that address the troubles of life, all the while cognizant of the times of grace.

It helps that Ethier sounds unconcerned; this is the sort of late night set that reaches for Blood on the Tracks but is fine with settling several notches lower (Saint Dominic’s Preview, perhaps). Songs drift in and out of fragile balladry (“Honeymoon”) before pushing off into a sea of chop, remarkably at ease in a stir of droning guitars, accordion, vibes and dobro. His voice adjusts, a confident folk baritone that rises to Mayo Thompson-esque levels of shaky yet expressive falsetto (“Hard Landing”).

His arrangements account for a full band, but also solo performances on guitar and, oddly, ukulele. Wresting the small strings from the hands of burlesque performers and the incurably twee, this is the instrument that Ethier seems to connect with best, and the album’s best offerings all feature it, as if its petite size allows for chording outside of the ken of guitarists, and allows him the room to perform as a frontman with a greater level of comfort. He really only belts ‘em out when he’s playing it.

The vulnerability Ethier exhibits is welcome here and contributes to the flow of the album overall. This is especially true of the victorious, stormy closer “Pride of Egypt,” and even more so of the album’s centerpiece, “On Lies.” Here, Ethier fires off what could be parting shots at former bandmates (“We broke down and broke their hearts / And we were the last to know / We were the last to see him speak / On about an ounce of blow up in his face again”) over spacious atrium blues that recall the easygoing stabs a band like the Faces, in their prime, were so adept at: crackling, human, a revelatory mess. There’s a handful of duds inside, but also three of the year’s finest songs, which, hopefully, won’t slip by like so much of his previous accomplishments.

OOGA BOOGAS “The Octopus Is Back” b/w “Diggin’ a Hole” 7” (Aarght)

originally ran in Still Single via Dusted, October 2008

Notes: Whoo! Happy Gonerfest weekend, everybody. It’s designed specifically at a time of year where I can never attend, but dang it looks like fun. I bought this and the first UV Race 7” off of the Redeye store via Gemm — this was when the groundswell of Australian bands started to grow. Still own and love this record, and it looks like their entire discography is available digitally for $5 AUD (like 19 cents American, a really good deal). I missed these guys when they played NYC. Cannot remember the name of the venue but it wasn’t one I really liked. I remember seeing No Fucker there once.

Outta hand. New-ish Australian garage band that just toured the States with a debut full-length in tow. “Eddy Current” (Mikey?) does double-duty with the Ooga Boogas on guitar. Somehow, these songs come across as even more urgent, slashing and primal than Eddy Current Suppression Ring – “The Octopus is Back” is just under two minutes of fury, vertiginous riffs shooting upward at steep angles, and a throttling rhythm that never lets up. The band steps into budget rock showcase shoes on “Diggin’ a Hole,” a successful update on how the Mummies or Supercharger might’ve sounded if they were as heavy as they were catchy. I’ve been playing this one non-stop and recommend you dig up any of the remaining copies. Mine has a cartoon sleeve (there’s something like 14 variants, each numbered in small batches). Everything about this record rules.

DICK DIVER New Start Again LP / Calendar Days LP (2016 reissues on Trouble in Mind, originally released via Chapter Music in 2011 and 2013, respectively)

originally ran in abridged form in one of the last Other Music update newsletters, 5/13/2016 — these reviews have never been published anywhere in their entirety

Notes: I came to this band late, and regret that, but their Melbourne, Florida album (referenced below, reviewed for Dusted in the Tumblr incarnation in 2015) is one of the best of the past 25 years by anyone, anywhere full stop, and these are the remarkable walk-ups to that effort. Heard tell of a reunion but so far nothing. Not sure if these reissues are still in print but they’re probably easier pulls stateside than the originals. Need that Arks Up EP. Had no prediction of the brief bubble in which Please Like Me enyojed a larger recognition, though it did give us Hannah Gadsby. These reviews have never run anywhere in their entirety.

Dick Diver's Melbourne, Florida was the best record released in 2015. It was also the Australian band's debut American release, so it's great news to report that their domestic label has seen clear to reissue their first two albums to growing appreciation. Perhaps we as a nation weren't prepared for the refinement of this four-piece while we were all caught up in more atavistic releases from the continent, like Royal Headache's debut, or the final pangs of Eddy Current Supression Ring, or Total Control (of which Dick Diver's bassist Al Montfort is a member). Maybe we wanted the chaos, rather than the settled down, reasonable slices of life that Dick Diver was delivering. Anyway, here's your chance to get right.

When I covered Melbourne, Florida for a different publication, I mentioned how so many of their songs mentioned specific years in the past in some manner of post-traumatic pop response. Certainly a lot of us, particularly those living in NYC, have our own experiences of barely scraping through the '90s or the '00s for one or more reasons. From this vantage, their debut album, 2011's New Start Again, seems like they were just beginning to process what happened, and were settling down after a rough decade, immediately finding their voice amid the squalor of young adult life. Too relaxed to merit comparisons to the Australian guitar-pop canon (The Go-Betweens, The Church, etc.), guitarists Al McKay and Ru Edwards lay out missives to a new kind of youthful contemporary rock, one where the guitars occasionally burn ("Flying Teatowel Blues") but mostly take their lessons from Fleetwood Mac in the Buckingham era. Their playing is nuanced in a way that suggests a musical partnership that spans decades, and when they step up to take the occasional solo, the burn is so immediate you almost flinch. The songs they sing -- and let's not forget the vocals and drumming contributions of Steph Hughes, earlier of the pop band Boomgates alongside Eddy Current singer Brendan Huntley -- may not speak to specific experiences we know (likely none of us are moving to Canberra, for instance, unless our surname is "Sharkey III") but the tone and realistic depth of these songs is incomparable to our experience and to any US or European contemporaries.

Likewise: there's this Australian TV show some of us have seen called "Please Like Me." It's good stuff, though no Australians I speak with seem to watch it or care. It's meant to be some sort of on-the-button portrayal of young people in that country, kinda like to there what "Girls" is to here. I watch this show, hoping to hear a song by some Australian band I recognize in it; like "Girls," it's always some precious tune closing the show, never anything that me or people I know would listen to. Dick Diver, then, seems like the music that actual people in the country enjoy. Given the alleged success of 2013's Calendar Days, it's a surprise that things didn't happen for the group more quickly worldwide. From the basis of this one, I wouldn't hesitate to call them one of the most masterful pop bands anywhere, with such a complete grasp of the nuances of the best singer-songwriters to pick up guitars since the '70s, and an ability to leverage commonly-felt needs and desires with offhand grace (lyrics like "I get out of bed/I get my toast to the perfect shade of gold" from "Alice," and how much ground the rest of their words cover from there is but one of the dozen or so genius moments on this one that gently thwacks you between the eyes). 

This would be the time for you to buy all three Dick Diver records. In not too long from now, you won't have this store to tell you what's new, what's available, what makes all of this music work. It's going to be time for you to follow the musical paths you create for yourself. You might as well start that path with a band that sounds like they could be your friends, like you could just slot right in between the four of them and get along like you've known them all your whole life. No band is able to summon such an easy and immediate familiarity, both in topic and approach, the way that Dick Diver does so effortlessly across their body of work. They should be the gold standard of what we should accept from any band picking up guitars.

GUN OUTFIT Possession Sound LP (PPM)

originally ran on Dusted, 8/9/2010

Notes: 8/9/10, what a day. Gun Outfit is maybe still sluggin’ away down in Los Angeles, but for a while around and after this album, it did not seem like they were going to make it. It would have been a shame, and this is still a very underappreciated band at their peak. Saw them once in their Olympia years in Seattle, and then again with Ornament in NYC. This is still my favorite album of theirs. I really love the openness of their bass-free lineup from this era — even though these songs are fully formed, they still behave like sketches, so light and unburdened, really going after the higher strings at times, and it’s odd that more bands never saw the value in that. I don’t know what “Nerf Surf” is anymore and am glad I forgot.

Gun Outfit is off the charts with its direct reference, both literally and figuratively. There just hasn’t been enough room for pot-addled desert crawler guitar pop, the sound of modest ambition and the genuine feel of discovery that they bring about in quite a while. I was initially attracted to Possession Sound by its cover. Looks like a small boat dock at high tide, and the playfulness of the image (waves, sun, but no beach) was something I’d rather be looking at out my window. Gun Outfit’s music was, thankfully, able to meet that expectation, without caving into the laziness of so many bands trying to mine “Nerf surf” pop these days.

Here’s a band that dines out on its personality, and rightfully so. Two guitarists and a drummer need all the help they can get in that sense, as there’s no good way to ground their leads with counter melodies and rhythmic reinforcement, unless one of the guitarists develops a good rhythmic lead. But the way Dylan Sharp and Carrie Keith trade off on clean, doleful melodies, and how her wispy, countrified voice provides a contrast, if not an anchor, to his drowsy Deputy Dawg drawl and naptime delivery. Their latest batch of songs sounds as if rooted in mood than antecedent, though their efforts align closely with some of New Zealand’s legacy rubbing off on them — The 3Ds in particular, more in the vocals and songwriting than the overall approach. There’s the acknowledgement of The Feelies’ energetically alienated strum-rage here, channeled through the quiet reservation of later Verlaines.

And that’s a really good thing — a foundational corrective to so much baseless, cheery music that never lives up to the hope it offers. Drummer Reuben Storey’s vibe merch drumming gives the guitarists enough space and room to let things get a little rubbery and free-flowing, and you’ll be surprised how much you’ll be reminded of great things largely in our past — Barbara Manning flourishing through the languid “Phaedra,” The Meat Puppets hitting their stride on “Fantasy World,” Dinosaur Jr. just waking up in the A.M.

The time for a band like Olympia, Wash.’s Gun Outfit is, it would seem, anywhere but now. Touring the USA on self-booked expeditions through what’s left of punk house basements and raw loft spaces in 2010 is a different proposition than what existed five or 10 years ago. Apparently there are a growing number of kids who figure that, since they don’t pay for recorded music, that there’s no reason to support a touring band with a $5 cover charge either. Actions such as these are going to ensure that bands who want to operate as Gun Outfit does (on the van tour circuit, with contacts farmed from their connections to punk and hardcore) would be compromised, or defeated altogether. Yet Possession Sound gives the impression that its members don’t care about that so much. They’re standing on that dock, looking out at the sea, hoping to catch a glimpse of something from beyond.

OK cool, see ya next week — Doug Mosurock