Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0050 (December 13, 2024)

Taking a quick break from the relentless pile of music I am sworn to cover here to bring you coverage of all-new records and things you haven’t hit yet. December doesn’t mean that music just stops so that we can all reflect on the 11 months prior. I’ll be back on my grind next week, and will have a year-end at the actual years’ end along with another DJ set, but right now it’s time to focus on putting my records away and getting it together for 2025, when we’re all gonna need something to listen to.

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Let’s go!

RETAIL SIMP$ “Thousand Stairs” b/w “My Own Attitude” 7” (Total Punk)

Two new ones released as part of Total Punk’s most recent singles subscription series – “Thousand Stairs” is one of the most straightahead Simps songs anywhere ever, sounds so determined and sure of itself it could belong to the Gizmos. It’s all edge, great singalongs in the chorus, belongs and is deserving of a different era, or the flipside of the timeline we’re on now, where the US commissioned a lifesize bronze statue of Ron House to give to Canada as a remembrance of when he singlehandedly saved national relations from the incident with P.O.D. Won’t you come live in this world. “My Own Attitude” keeps falling out of half time into double time, then 12-bar blues and back around to psych jam with heavy flute overdubs: a repeated phrase, a strong hook, and the willingness to lock arms with all these forms, fuck em up and still come off as kings of the cookie crumbs smashed into the carpet. My friend Mary sez “look around, do you see anyone killin’ it right now”? I just did, twice. What did we do to deserve these guys?

SPECTRE FOLK Quabbin Winter LP (Arbitrary Signs/Sophomore Lounge)

Within my earshot, Pete Nolan offhanded the most devastating burn towards some legacy noise performers in the midst of them feelin’ themselves at a No Fun Fest a number of years back that I still think about it. It’s not repeatable – not in the sense that it is offensive so much that it only worked in that particular moment – and it colors my appreciation of every Magik Markers record and most Spectre Folk offerings, not in a way that gets between me and the music, but in a way that makes me wonder how many words he’s had for this world in any circumstance. Apart from appreciating his (varied) output, this is literally all I know about him. This one’s a bit of a wanderer; the steady hand of Steve Shelley behind the kit is largely replaced by Pete’s own, and production/vibes have been gifted to Mike Donovan (Sic Alps, Peacers) who jams his kief-encrusted thumbprint directly in the center of the proceedings: the music here is at a leisurely pace, like opening the cabin for the first time in the season, introducing all the ambient nature world funk that seeped through into the nose and lungs. Acclimation activities include guest star James Canty on the most forthright offering here (“Radar”), followed on side B by a pretty righteous, stank Lazy Horse/CCCR type jammer called “White Venom Veil” that breaks down the state of things (lousy), a low-gear organ-organ drums jam btw Pete and Mike called “Matahari Beach” that could’ve gone on for the entire side, and a general sense of “folk vacation,” the beer’s gone, what a time we had and let’s let it roll that honestly doesn’t come natural to anyone who’d expect it. Mystery cover painting features some gamine in an AC/DC shirt and presumably outta smokes. This combination of down and relaxed about it might not be for all time, but it's certainly for this time, right now, and whatever junk we’ll be quabbin’ around this winter.

STYLIANOS OU AND THE CORTISOL COWS Fucked Forever LP (Ever/Never)

Sounds like the PA music that would play after the Spectre Folk of now leave the stage – same pace, a little more attenuated, the loosest definition of stalwart. This is from Greece where they (or maybe just these folks) see Will Oldham and Ben Wallers as guys on the same team, downers bearing downers on your side of the fence. Augmenting rock band lineup with cello and banjo, these cattle prod your basest instincts, mostly by not getting up in arms over ‘em (a really strong way to get the listener on the same level … it’s workin’ on me). While I can’t speak to the apparent, stylistically inverse works by bandleader Stelios Papagrigoriou hinted at in the press pack, he’s got this one pretty sewn up, a paean to OnlyFans trailers serving as interstitials for episodes of life on the low side, hoping for agreeable transgression, a baptism of the rarest kind (“Prophet Squirting”).

THE SEWERHEADS Despair is a Heaven LP (Tall Texan)

Spirited, intentionally dark downer from Pittsburgh, an alter ego for Gotobeds’ party boi Eli Kasan to play guitar in the shadows with a tough rhythm section (Evan Meindl and Matt Schor) and Shani Banerjee doin’ double on violin and vocals. Some real howlin’ wind stormin’ down on the title track and other moments here (lots of ‘em in fact), channeling These Immortal Souls on record and Come in the live setting. Mid-sized cities in/around the Belt have so much to answer for, and a chance to put some respect on all the othered, rockabillied tension in some corners of town, to legitimize those Sunday nights when you gotta come face to face with the irreconcilable differences and knuckle tats to the eye that follow coexistence without peace are distilled into this potent swig of a debut album, one that gets more concentrated as it nears its end (last three songs especially). Check ‘em out here and if they come to your town.

ROLLETS s/t LP (Iempsa, 1981; r. Buh, 2024)

Colleague posted about a song from this Peruvian disco-pop record, a one-and-out from Lima, saying he couldn’t stop listening to one track, and after I listened to it about five times in a row, I was content to agree. Rollets prove out that global exposure to Western pop music is as much about the imitation as it is the personal, and that it’s permissible, even novel, to borrow the feel of a worldwide smash for one’s own ends. It’s called getting a leg up, and all of us do it. Maybe a band didn’t have enough dap to write an entire song without cribbing the in-pocket bass from The Eagles’ “I Can’t Tell You Why” or the turbulent galumph of ELO’s “Showdown,” but it’s what they do in the intervals, propping up wholly original choruses or changes that support a clean mix from one record to the next to unveil what they came to prove, that make a record like this one shine. You’ve heard all those influences way too much anyway – it’s what happens with that pipe organ, chintzy synth, guitar solo and the astoundingly seductive voice of Malena Calisto on a track like “Lágrimas” that stays with you. Big nods to ABBA and Blondie on here too, and you’ll be happy to have heard ‘em here.

I said LET’S GO — Doug M