Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0030 (October 4, 2024)

Welcome back, readers. This week’s batch of records is pretty special, and since it’s a Bandcamp Friday (if indeed you’re checking your email today), you’ll be doing a good thing by placing an order today, free of fees for the artist and all that nonsense.

It’s been a tough week, once again full of chaos and loss, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t pay tribute to the late Randy Costanza, who was there at the very beginning of my teenage journey into better music, offering me words of support and companionship when I really needed that sort of validation. Randy did the artwork (drawings and woodcuts) for many of the posters I had designed during my tenure booking bands in my college days, and his move to NYC precipitated my own. His was a flame that flickered, and I have as many head-shaking, confounding memories of his actions throughout the years. You know how 10 great memories can be blotted out by one bad one? That’s how it was (more like hundreds of great memories to dozens of bad, one or two of which actually threatened my life), especially towards the end, and as we all know it’s not good to be the last guy at the party. The best quality about him, and the one I’m choosing to hold onto, was how he brought so many people together, and how generally adored he was at the outset because of it. What those people did from that point on was basically on them (and most found that his presence came with some unfortunate strings), but I probably wouldn’t be in the positions I am now without his indirect support. I hope he has found peace, and wish his surviving family strength and love.

Paywall begins soon and I hope you’ll strongly consider forking over the $3 a month so that this project can thrive.

On with it…

JEFFREY NOVAK Blood Celebration LP (Official Memorabilia)

Over the past ten years I’ve gotten a skooch more familiar with Jeffrey Novak and his more recent forays in music – Savoy Motel, Cookie Jar, the final Cheap Time performance in some shitty upstairs makeshift venue in Chicago – and I’m impressed with the levels in which he takes any one element of his ideas and blows them up into an all-consuming bonfire. With magpie eyes and ears, he’s one of those artists who can completely articulate a very specific mood/sentiment through his work, and corral others to shape their work to his vision. Occasionally this method comes at the expense of a greater acceptance of said output. Which is why it’s as big a joy as it is a relief to sink into Blood Celebration, his new solo album and the first in a very long time, and find such a harmonious result.

The ten songs feel like a burden lifted from just about anyone playing in this Southern rock/folk/country blues space (where it usually helps if you’re actually from the South), and lives and dies on some of the obsessions I know this guy harbors, but this time it sounds like a work that can sit at the same table as those obsessions without undue comparisons to those works. His voice sounds great, the instrumentation is crisp and full without playing like he used every instrument in the studio just to do it, and the compositions speak to appropriate width of field.

I try to keep these reviews short but what I’m getting here is that someone wanted a follow-up to Royal Trux’s Pound for Pound that wasn’t White Stuff, and it became a side quest not only for someone to make a record worthy of that lofty ideal, but to somehow get the ghost of Fred Neil to agree. It’s particularly impressive how light and sure-footed the whole thing sounds, and how well-staged it is – as good as the first side is, the second side might be even better. All of the lessons Novak has ever learned about music, all the opportunities come and gone, it’s all come to bear in as strong and pure of intention that a solo rock in record 2024 will know.

THE HARD QUARTET self-titled 2xLP (Matador)

You’ll get exactly what you’re expecting here: rangy, real, at times massive guitar expression from guys who you can trust with such responsibilities, and an equally outsized rhythm section with the biggest drum rolls in the biz. You’ll get at least more than that, songcraft that you’d expect from the participants, and if you liked Chavez or The Jicks or Superwolf, you’ll like this, a sound made burly by design, and a sort of back porch component of comfort that shields it against that burliness, both angles that benefit from the rare wisdom of careers in rock and professional rock appreciation. This combined with the short song lengths on a lot of this builds into something akin to the sort of anticipation felt when Wowee Zowee came out, when you didn’t know what was coming from one song to the next once you cracked it open. Maybe that only applies to 1995-era listeners, but it was an experience that plays as déjà vu on this outing. It just kinda runs out of steam around the midpoint of “Action for Military Boys,” which sounds like it was written for a rock musical. The last four songs are good on their own, but after the clatter that proceeds it, side 4 could be mistaken for exhaustion, and maybe some resequencing to balance against the top-heaviness of the first three sides could’ve sufficed (or maybe just holding it as a single album and keeping the rest for a tour EP or something). For now we can just sit with the fact that the promise of this supergroup actually delivers, and that if you don’t have a copy of The Double’s Dawn of the Double, the marathon skiffle sesh by Emmett Kelly and Jim White, you oughta rectify that situation however you can.

DISINTEGRATION Shiver in a Weak Light LP (Feel It)

Haley Himiko’s previous group Pleasure Leftists were a band whose immediate gifts escaped me until I saw them live, after which escape would never have been considered. They left us with The Gate, their most realized effort, and firm proof that continuing on the same path of dramatic wavo/death rock both after those sounds had a popular resurgence with false theatrical bullshit like The Faint and after previous efforts kinda failed at the time to fully secure the bag in terms of what they were laying down. I go back to those pre-The Gate records, as a fully indoctrinated convert would, and I’m honestly surprised I didn’t really get them at the time, but they don’t sound anything like I remembered – now they’re like a musical telling of the last, tense moments of any monster-of-the-week episode of “The X Files” as interpreted by the singer of another lost legend Cleveland band, The Vivians, and the ass beating they delivered on stage has not been rightfully bested or even replicated in the years since.

Disintegration is Himiko’s new band, featuring Noah Anthony (Profligate) and Christopher Brown (Cloud Nothings, whose members’ general spread to all sorts of different and interesting musical projects has been more interesting than anything they did as a unit). This is their first album following a promising EP from last year. The group doesn’t leave her massive vocal presence but uses the studio as an instrument, where Pleasure Leftists mostly just seemed to go in and record their songs. The reliance on electronics and (at least on record) drum programming both illuminate and flatten the formula around Himiko, who responds with lyrics delivered as forcefully and tempestuous as ever (she’s this scene’s Pat Benatar, and doesn’t need the sweatband to prove it). It’s a flashier sound for sure but at the root of it all it’s the same thing we got from before, and if this record is just another primer for a steamroller live performance, so be it.

ROBERT SOTELO AND MARY CURRIE Dream Songs 7” EP (Upset the Rhythm)

Singer Mary Currie (of the cosmic essential Flaming Tunes project with the late Gareth Williams of This Heat) makes a rare appearance with Glasgow multi-instrumentalist Robert Solo (aka Andrew Doig of important current groups Nightshift and Dancer). These four songs shoulder the expectations of history, tempered into platitudes in line with Doig’s shift from guitar to synths on his most recent solo album Celebrant. The rubbery rhythms and general artfulness of the arrangements recall Anthony Moore in a rehearsal room with enough gear to make trouble, which is maybe all we can ask from such a collaboration. Currie sounds fulfilled and understanding of this assignment. You already know if this is your thing; I’m just here to raise awareness.

“DEADLY” HEADLEY BENNETT 35 Years from Alpha LP (On-U Sound)

A lesser-known title in the avalanche of Adrian Sherwood On-U ‘92 productions from the era, this new reissue headlines the stylings of Jamaican saxophonist Headley Bennett, whose contributions to reggae and ska bands cannot be understated – if it was done there and had horns, he was at least nearby. If this is one of the more settled On-U offerings of the area, it’s certainly one of the more direct, with Bennett’s soaring alto sax providing the missing melodic counterpart to the rough, leftfield stereo-panned bangs and dubs the facility is known for. Bim Sherman comes through on vocals for a couple of tracks, as does Bennett’s compatriot Rico Rodriguez on trombone (the title refers to the Jamaican school they both attended, and the era from whence they began their practice as instrumentalists). Not as likely to upset the pets in your home as an African Head Charge or Dub Syndicate release from this timeframe, but made with largely the same constituency, with a lyricism solely due to Bennett’s playing that many other On-U catalog offerings would just as soon skirt. A great record for the home and a lowkey fave; good party music for the start of the night. There’s a CD version with two additional dubs that don’t add or detract much from the original eight tracks from the album.

Pour out the entire liquor cabinet – Doug Mosurock