Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0077 (March 18, 2025)

Getting ready for an impending move, clearing out the holdings, trying not to lose my head/shirt/shoes in the coming year … partially familiar for some of you, I’m sure. Here’s five records that made me think a little more than usual. Would that they do the same for you — some really nice returns this go-round.

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KING BLOOD Eye I Aye Ivy LP (Petty Bunco)

Third album of sublime night music by Ry Wharton’s occasional project, and the closest in focus by far, a real summation of efforts in the canon of night music. The blowouts of the previous editions are recognized but not the only textures at play across this PSF-level trip into midnight blues, dirt-regal psych, Stooge-ly atmosphere and hesher mythology, like a Blue Öyster Cult t-shirt come to gnarly life, possessing its owner with guitarist gandeur and glowing eyes at mere contact with their skin. The intensity of this 12-song instrumental set isn’t as affected by pure amp burn as much anymore; these tracks spread out, and get a basement bass tone that warms and weirds the work. “Count to Nine” sounds like a defining statement out of King Blood’s work, a subdued dawn burner with this insistent guitar line over top, and that it follows up with a synth pad / amp waves chiller in “Masques” points to the heart of this project, now fully open and engaged like an LRD/Antony Milton mash, secret and brilliant.

DUMBELLS Up Late with Dumbells LP (Mind Meld/Total Punk)

Primo Sydney buzzsaw pop from members of Shrapnel and Tee Vee Repairman, angling between Undertones- style gotta go charge, tin-roof ‘60s psych-pop buzz, dreamy Teenage Fanclub-esque hooks and continental all timers from recent decades (the Thigh Master 7”s, Bed Wettin Bad Boys). Most of those Australian records you went mad for in the late ‘00s/early ‘10s are ably reflected here – the breadth of experience and instrumental prowess here is both natural and unaffected, so they can move between certain styles easier than some of those older bands could (if they even cared to). Hits so many sweet spots that it could handily replace a lot of records in your collection if you’re feeling the need to minimize, a sentiment I endorse as of late. Do some reps with these Dumbells a few times a week; the only thing that’ll get swole is your soul.

ED KUEPPER & JIM WHITE After the Flood LP (12XU)

Plenty of musicians have sallied forth with their version of a “lockdown album” in the past few years, but are any of them Ed Kuepper, the magnificent rake who founded The Saints and The Laughing Clowns, and who’s released one solo banger after another since the mid ‘80s? No. They are not. Couched between the double-whammy of Australian pandemic and the environmental wreckage (fires, floods) that walloped their homebase in the years following, Kuepper managed to get mobile with fellow countryman Jim White (you’re reading this, do I need to remind you?) to romp through his back catalog and reinterpret songs from all walks. There’s no sense of that “what are we gonna do” sense that so many artists forced indoors and back out, no need to performatively telegraph the upheaval when Kuepper’s own works and his time to think about them, perfectly accompanied by one of the Earth’s greatest drummers, surpass any little germ of unsettled vibes. Where do you take “Collapse Board” apart from the ruin it originally depicted? How about towards the sun, picking up the tempo and breaking for an electric rhapsody in the middle that lands it in a Greek island of the mind? Whither the Saints’ “The 16 Days,” guided out of the garage with a generous shuffle and the grace of almost 50 years atop that length of time? As mighty as all White’s collabs have been in recent times, this one comes closest to, and at times supercedes the best of the Dirty Three in terms of what he and Kuepper accomplish: a resounding campaign for continuance of life. Can’t wait for this Saints show in the fall, and truly hope that one day off means he and White are gonna connect somewhere small and leave us brimming with new hope.

More after the jump…