Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0034 (October 18, 2024)

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Somehow I found the time to see a show this week — even more impressively, I’m swinging for it twice, off to thee annual visit by the OSEES tonite at Thalia Hall. But I’d like to bring up a great gig played to the relatively unprepared a couple days ago by Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band, opening for MJ Lenderman at the same venue.

It’s been hard for me to see Ryan do his thing anywhere, neither with this band nor with State Champion, always a two-ships-passing moment, and I never did get down to a Cropped Out. This may have only been the second time in person — first was a Tropical Trash gig I was somehow in NYC during and available. I can also imagine the difficulty in transporting a large band like this around penny ante clubs, which is why this felt like the right moment, on a big stage in support of an artist bursting not only with popularity but with what appears to be a genuine regard for what Davis has done on his most recent album Dancing on the Edge (Sophomore Lounge, and out in the UK now on Tough Love). Recognized a few faces up there, like Christian DeRoeck from Little Gold and Meneguar on second guitar, Lou Turner from Styrofoam Winos on bass, and (correct me if wrong) Jim Marlowe on keys and percussion. A fairly young looking pedal steel player rounded them out, along with drums (duh) and some late-set contributions by Xandy Chelmis on fiddle and the backing vocals of Jenny Rose, a key component of some of Dancing on the Edge’s sweetest moments.

Davis, a multi-hyphenate across an astounding and personal basket of releases on his Sophomore Lounge label, is a true heir apparent to indie rock’s fraying storytellers, the late David Berman being the primary, though some would point to Darnielle and Craig Finn. Davis steps away from those two congested examples in patience with his country drawl, and all the pretense falls away and you’re left with these really insightful, poetic lyrics and themes that feel familiar, though with songwriterly themes that keep coming back around to getcha. There’s nothing stream of conscious about it, especially when someone can deftly keep that balance going across songs that hover in the 7-10 minute range. Band kicked up a nice cloud there across the five they were able to slot in. I didn’t stick around (back was killing me) but I saw Lenderman at P4K once and was unimpressed, thinking the whole time, “why isn’t it Ryan Davis up there?” … I guess that’s being solved. Really geeky/annoying crowd, lotta me-firsts and loud college boys yappin’ about nothing, but I hope some of them took a part of this away with them and have the patience to sit down and examine what they saw and how it’s done.

Whatever dates are left are sold out, but hopefully this is the beginning of more activity by this crew, in whatever shape it takes.

New record reviews down below. Undoable without your support, your music, your eyes and ears. Keep sending them in: PO Box 25717 Chicago IL 60625 // [email protected] are the primary vehicles. Getting to everything that’s been coming through. Some nice surprises on the way as well.

Here goes…

PATOIS COUNSELORS Limited Sphere LP (Ever/Never)

Big pivot here to a softer zone for this large-format North Carolina ensemble, all previous sharp edges protected, all instrumentation previously obscured by those edges and sharp turns wandering out in woozy, spectral focus. The live stopgap CD that precedes this (Enough: One Night at the Daisy Chain) gives some precedent as to how these might sound from a stage, but this is a markedly different, evolved affair, kind of record you can make three albums in, not because you’ve hooked ‘em, but because building this voice takes time to put aloft. Slovenly didn’t release Riposte right out of the gate, nor did the Thinking Fellers Strangers from the Universe, but we’re all better for them and because of the records that got them there. Those bands saw it coming, and Patois Counselors possess a similar vision across 14 relatively brief yet stirring outings, dissonance disciplined, reapportioned over longer, more patient passages that reach towards a more philosophically potent bend than I’d heard out of them (or from most bands). The art in their art rock, taking on a bit more flair for the dramatic this time, is welcome, treatises applied via Post-its to the nosecone of the unknown. Everything works with itself and with one another, but one high point is the underdog elegy “Bands I Barely Spoke To,” as poignant a tale about why this whole scene exists this far out from popular relevance in the first place, and why we need more of it. “Can’t fault an adult capable of dreaming like a child,” sings bandleader Bo White, never more right, few more certain of understanding that this is why we are here.

THE CARP Knock Your Block Off LP (Total Punk)

Another chunk of Cleveland same-guy core (Nathan Ward plus one or more of the same dudes behind Cruelster, Knowso, Perverts Again, Smooth Brain, maybe others) hit it again under a newer, tougher guise. Still retains that Devo-esque/Watery Love-style spoke/yelled vocals and jerky rhythms here and there, but the chain has definitely scrambled this egg, if not placed it in a sling and whipped it around bolo-style until it’s launched high speed projectile style into a storefront window. Tracks like “Fairview Park Skins” (passed away at the lyric “just another hard blinking Giant Eagle kid”), “Everyone I Know Is a Snitch” and their cover of A Global Threat’s “Cut Ups” bear this out. It’s a short one but you know when you get enough out of it, that doesn’t matter.

HUMDRUM Every Heaven LP (Slumberland)

Solid Chicago indie pop debut from one Loren Vanderbilt, formerly of Star Tropics. Jangles, snaps, breezes, coos. Good drum machine action, lovesick lyrics, mostly upbeat even in the down moments, great chorused guitar and well-considered hooks that borrow from the past and give to the present (“Come and Get Me” grabs a little too much from “Twisterella” but what do you want from this genre), and some strategically-placed old movie samples. If this is the Midwest response to the Reds, Pinks & Purples, it succeeds on those same grounds, plus it’s generally sweeter music, and with this sort of thing, that sweetness goes a long way.

TUBE ALLOYS “Evil Angels” b/w “Lizard Kingdom” 7” (La Vida Es Un Mus)

LA’s Tube Alloys feature an Australian ex-pat frontman and in general their debut album Magnetic Point sounded like a band that missed Total Control a lot and wouldn’t mind trying to fill their shoes in absentia. It didn’t really work, and not just on grounds, because so many broad details of what they were doing were baldly slavish to other, better records – facelessly modern, snotty, decently-played but hollow stabs at aggressive post-punk meant for a basement, small club or lean-to, all of which paled to the obvious influences they came from, an immature response to very artistically mature and certain statements. Total Control also borrowed a lot and were chameleonic in their sound, but it wasn’t all they were doing, and that’s one of the reasons it played out as well as it did for them. This single comes from that same session and is either half-cognizant of the lesson learned, or just showing us an earlier example that could’ve worked out better. “Evil Angels” is clearly that song, breaking the tedium of their known works for something a little punchier – don’t swing for Wire; you’ll never make it, but maybe Cold Chisel? Or the Hives? Even the lyrics feel more pointed. Is this their best song? It’s more riff-focused than their other material, and they sound more together charging at something that’s faceless and white-labeled in the ways in which they can be molded for a purpose. “Lizard Kingdom” sounds like a lesser attempt to fit into the album, starting with a cheeky l’il nod to “The Man Whose Head Expanded” and that’s so beat, such a “we know this song too” move. Pro tip: yelling that title over and over doesn’t sound the way you think it does. It sounds like they’re celebrating Jim Morrison, and honestly who would do a thing like that? Really hoping for more of the A-side going forward, if this band goes forward at all.

NAP EYES The Neon Gate LP (Paradise of Bachelors)

I’m still in the bag for Nap Eyes because of one song: “Every Time the Feeling,” from their 2018 album I’m Bad Now, this perfect and personal encapsulation of a Modern Lovers aesthetic welded to the formal, plaintive satisfaction of Galaxie 500’s best moments. Once a band comes up with a song that memorable, you keep them in the periphery, waiting for the next. At some point it becomes almost pandering to do so, as if there’s some sort of unearned expectation that you deserve to be taken aback by a song. By the same token, what good is a song if not for our enjoyment? To deny that is to forsake the feeling that songs unleashed upon the public have the capacity to give, and when the bar is set this high, it’s almost like a dare to do so.

 Where does that leave Nap Eyes’ frontman Nigel Chapman? Sitting out the pandemic, for the most part (their last one, Snapshot of a Beginner, was released at the start of it, made to be forgotten, kind of like music made in 2001), woodshedding in a curiously personal vein – a couple of tracks speak to this directly, like closer “Isolation” and the most boisterous offering here, “Ice Grass Underpass.” Two tracks provide a fulcrum to divide listeners – “Demons” and “Phantoms of Hatred and of the Heart’s Fullness and Of the Coming Emptiness,” both lyrical interpretations of poems by Pushkin and Yeats, respectively – which may come off to some as pretense or workarounds (this from a band who wrote a song called “Mark Zuckerberg,” some may draw such a simple conclusion). I prefer the reading of these tracks simply as readings, a kind of modern folk reel based on phantasmagorically moving tales of the kind to have profound effect on a person reading them, alone – one could hear Fairport doing this without issue, so why not the crooning Nap Eyes, in their own time? Chapman and band keep this record at a low boil, a real Sunday afternoon leaf-raker, chilled and methodical but ultimately at some sort of partially resigned peace. If nothing leaps out so far as their best song did, it creates a world in which to reside, unstirred and solitary, and the support to make it possible.