Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0029 (October 1, 2024)

In the next couple of weeks I gotta put this behind a paywall. One or two reviews a week will still be available gratis, plus whatever I write up front (or don’t completely save for subscribers). Good news is, I want you all to stick around and read this, so I’m gonna make it easy: access to Heathen Disco Music Reviews after that point will only cost ya $3 USD a month. That’s it!

Artists covered, labels whose wares are featured, non-bullshit PR agents and the like will have access to whatever I write about ‘em, one way or another, because at the end of the day this is all about helping music get into the hands of the people. It’s just taking a lot of my time to do this, and I’m not partnering up to get this done. I don’t ask for much other than your attention, so this sort of evens things out.

I hope you have $3 to spend to learn about give or take 40 records every month. I know all about the break in readership when the paywall hits, but those folks are asking for more than I’ve proposed here. We’ll make it work.

Submissions to [email protected] / PO Box 25717 Chicago IL 60625 USA

Pass this to those who should see it, like a joint.

STYROFOAM WINOS Real Time LP (Sophomore Lounge)

Second one from this lovely trio out of Nashville dispenses with the every-which-wayness of their excellent debut, with a pronounced pivot to country/roots soul searchin’. They do this well, so there shouldn’t be too much handwringing here, unless you don’t like this sorta thing. Lyrics are sharp in their folksiness (“Dial Tone” in particular, capturing a particularly American style of sustained weariness, calling back to a grocery store on Halloween and falling asleep with “The Exorcist” on) and the nods to both Yo La Tengo and Neil Young are good boundaries to keep. If this is their lane from here on out, it’s certainly an inviting one. Feels a bit junior to label head Ryan Davis’s expansive pronouncements, but the versatility of their songcraft and technical abilities wear in just right.

WORKERS COMP. self-titled LP (Ever/Never)

On the other side of this country coin, Workers Comp., a trio from all over with ties to Detroit, Nebraska and the Beltway corridor, Deadbeat Beat and Jack White (and that great Staffers tape on Unread), shake their boogie loose with clockpunching efficiency – shake it so hard that they largely background it by side 2, where they four-tracked their way into my good graces, reminding me of everything from a hayseed Sebadoh to the much-missed Portland group The Woolen Men. A bunch of times I’ve sat down with this one and didn’t know what to do with it, but I think the country beater side caught me tonight, and the rest took me by pleasant surprise. Really nice work.

THE SUBMISSIVES Live at Value Sound Studios LP (Celluloid Lunch)

Having listened to three records by Deb Edison’s analytically invaluable project The Submissives, I’m more inclined to hear them as The Subversives. Their monotony rubs clear through to obsession, toppy subs who demand the same amount of attention they’re paying to their unnamed paramours, only to brush it off once received. The dynamic at play is more OnlyFans than Bandcamp. While this plays on its face as re-recordings from her Do You Really Love Me? tape and interim tracks that drifted away before her 2022 comeback Wanna Be Your Thing, the full band brought out here opens up these songs more effectively as the deceptive traps they are. Everyone’s wearing the red dress, singing in pitch-separated unison, innocence fully cast away, waiting for you to give in or chew your own leg off to get away. It’s a withering amount of attention, impossible to predict and fully in control. It’s also not something anyone really ever pulled off this well as a musical project, and the Shaggs-meets-Seven Sistersness of it all gives it that private press feel that’ll attract the wrong kind of attention. I wonder who has time for this kind of all-consuming relationship, then I realize that’s something left for the world outside of here, described in worrying detail and fictionalized to supremely unnerving effect. Really one of the great projects of the last 10 years or so, and they’ve never sounded better.

TERRY GROSS Huge Improvement LP (Thrill Jockey)

I used to get kinda uptight about the band Trans Am, because I used to get uptight about enjoyment. That moment’s long passed (as has Trans Am, who were pretty damn far ahead of the curve through all of their career, be it on electronic instruments, dude rock revivalism or the shamanistic heaviness of their unsung jewel Sex Change), but their guitarist Phil Manley brings the joy of accomplishment from that rigorous rock suite into Terry Gross, whose second album is … a huge improvement. Jammin’ out like they’re at some festival in the blazing sun, here’s four songs to their debut’s three, all over seven minutes long, all following whatever floats the collective boat, be it screaming fuzz, Hawkwind-esque light beams across a dusty expanse, or studious sludge. They remind me of Redd Kross gone fully metallic and they sound like they’re having a fuckin’ Champs style blast.

MCLUSKY The Difference Between You and Me Is That I’m Not on Fire (20^th Anniversary Edition) LP (Too Pure)

This 20-year shit is getting me down, mostly because it feels like last month when I saw McLusky at the Mercury Lounge (or before that, Luxx), indulging themselves on cheap Squires, cheaper gak and shitty rental amps, maybe knowing their card was punched while we had to go on living outside the 30-40 minutes of cheek what the British music press had promised us. This was the end of it for them, and if it opened the channel just a wee bit wider in their songwriting and viciousness (always been big on "You Should Be Ashamed, Seamus” and “Falco Vs. the Young Canoeist”), it also afforded a slightly sweeter sound (“She Will Only Bring You Happiness”) and that much more of a sting when they slammed shut the door not long after this last album came to be. The music holds up, the sort of thing you can get uptight about; the lyrics, maybe not as much, but it doesn’t matter: someone had to take the lessons learned in between Shellac records and expel it like a big, juicy zit, so why not be these Welsh guys? Bob Weston’s remaster of Steve Albini’s recording applies his characteristic cool touch in a way that galvanizes the results even further. None of the bands I knew who went to the UK had much good to say about Mclusky, and that intrigued me all the more; when we’re in a hurry to grow out of something, we’ll distance ourselves before it’s outlived its purpose, and in 2024, with shit getting worse daily, there is an extraordinary amount of life still left in these songs from where we left them last. Somewhere down the line I’ll bet all three of the members of this band individually considered all the bad decisions, walks of shame, late night crashes and ground enamel produced globally by people inspired by this melee, and they smiled knowingly.

PEACE OUT FAM – Doug Mosurock