Bitches Brewin': a monthly forum mix-tape

Quite the mix this month, eh? After last time’s accidental Brit-indie bias.

So, the Chap. A band from London with a small following and some of the most bizarre ideas in pop music. They make the most incredible form of semi-improv free-flowing jazzy/funky pop music, playing around with all sorts of cerebral ideas. They swing and swirl and scrooch around like a ramshackle public schoolboy with the most freewheeling mind around.

Even more amazingly, they manage to have RP vocals. Which I haven’t heard in a good long while.

They like being a bit cult and they remind me of some of the more fringe aspects of British pop culture. Probably because they come close to defining them.

The swing and sway were enough to bring me into their fold and maybe you too? Maybe?

I couldn’t think of anything more worthwhile to say about The Chap except that I believe that is their last album and I hope you found something in it.

Other than that, I’m adoring Bitch Magnet, Kaizer’s Orchestra and whoever put in the Alice Coltrane/Pharoah Sanders album. I haven’t listened to all of them yet but those I’m loving so far.

Well, what do you know…

The Bitch is back!

Finally giving The Chap a spin. Great sounding album!

“Gallon Drunk? Cool as fuck.” - Nick Cave

New month, new album, and this one comes highly recommended. Gallon Drunk come out punching strong with a sleazy, swampy, hard-driven album full of gravel-toned songs. They’re like the Bad Seeds swallowing Bulleit and spitting out a swaggering blues.It’s braggadocio writ large, except this music’s got no time nor understanding of that term so it’s just another rye down and then the band picks up again with their same screaming, straining release.

If that doesn’t make sense then there’s always the play button. I hope you find something in them.

Not seein’ the Gallon Drunk in the playlist yet.

Which means it’s probably region-locked, which is a crying shame.

Consider that a very personal recommendation to actually get hold of the Gallon Drunk album and listen to it. I may re-post it later in the year.

So I’m invoking my extra-album rule and putting in nothing similar because I haven’t got anything similar. Instead you’re getting Future of the Left’s new album, which you may well have already heard.

So, if you haven’t, Future of the Left are a group of Welsh scuzzed-out noise rockers. They’ve got a natty line in distorted noise and strangely unhinged lyrics. There’s a rich vein of, and I’m stealing a line here, ADHD punk. Not in the bratty, snotty sense; Future of the Left have far too much breadth and width and nous to fall into that trap. They’re just playing with great little hooks and ideas to suck you into their philosophy. If you can find it hidden in their lyrics.

There’s another reason to love them, and that is that Pitchfork reviewed the album and the front man told them to get back in their box.

If that doesn’t work then I don’t know, I’ll find something else. Sorry guys, I really wanted to share the Gallon Drunk album. I mean, Nick Cave thinks they’re “cool as fuck”. Who are we to deny that?

Not region blocked. Just only added the one song for some reason.

That Gallon Drunk is showing region-locked for me. Too bad, they are very good.

But Future of the Left (and Mclusky before them) are an excellent replacement. Didn’t even know they had a new album.

Hmmm… Odd, I definitely added it the first time around. I’ve tried re-adding it.

If it works, great. If it doesn’t, you’ve got Future of the Left. It’s been highly acclaimed over here where Gallon Drunk, aside from their stint as Bad Seeds (some of them), aren’t so well known.

So I think my contribution this month will be the DUSTdevils 1990 album Struggling, Electric and Chemical.

DUSTdevils started in the mid-80s, after founder Michael Duane was kicked out of The Wedding Present for stealing Gedge’s girlfriend. They recorded a couple of albums worth of very good but fairly innocuous new wave/psych-lite stuff that was clearly influenced by bands like the Bunnymen and Teardrop Explodes. Then in the late 80’s he moved to New York and hooked up with a troupe of downtown scenesters (some Glenn Branca people I think, future Pavement/Sonic Youth member Mark Ibold, future famous journalist Sasha Frere-Jones) and switched gears entirely to art-damaged noise. DUSTdevils got signed to Matador (one of the first signings, I believe) and made this shambling behemoth of an album. It opens with an outstanding cover of The Fall’s “Hip Priest” and descends further into detuned noise from there. There’s a few misses and a few self-indulgent bits, but the hits outnumber them handily. Enjoy or not, as you will.

Here is my problem. Here is why I am a music thread lurker and not a contributor. I don’t know anyone’s name. Take any of my favorite bands and I might recognize the lead singers name.

So The Cake Sale is an Oxfam charity album of pop folks from about 5 years. Folks that may or may have not been in bands like The Thrills, Snow Patrol, the Cardigans.

Nothing edgy, just pop bliss. A nice relaxing sample of emotions without being mopey. Except maybe that last song, doesn’t end strong for me but the first eight out of nine tracks are solid.

I got with the mix-tape program late, but boy Motion Sickness of Time Travel. that got my attention! Good stuff.

EDIT: Ok. So I listened to my own submission. There is nothing wrong with that ninth track. I don’t what I was thinking.

Dude, you nailed it. I’d never heard of The Cake Sale, but yeah, the list of folks who are a part of this is pretty awesome: Nina Persson (Cardigans), Conor Deasy (The Thrills) Glen Hansard (The Frames and the movie “Once”), Nick Seymour of Crowded House…yeah, this’ll work.

Really, really digging Deasy’s song “Good Intentions Rust”. It’s better than anything off the last Thrills album.

And that ninth track is none other than Neil Hannon, an Irish singer/songwriter/jack of all trades who has a band called Divine Comedy (whom I sort of like) and a sort of jokey, cricket (the sport) themed band called The Duckworth Lewis Method that is utterly sublime and brilliant. (Fair warning: clicking that link and listening just once will have you singing “Meeting Mr. Miandad, meeting Mr. Miandad, when we get to Pakistan in a VW camper van” all week long.)

'fraid it’s not showing up for me, but as I’m fairly sure I’m the only Brit on the list don’t change it for me. I’m sure it’s great and I’ll see if I can dig it up somehow.

The name’s also close enough to a particular Kiwi band that said band is also going on the queue.

I think the Future of the Left is growing on me. Alas, I can’t access Gallon Drunk. :(

My contribution this month is the middle album of a Viennese metal band named Stahlhammer, Feind Hort Mit. I think it’s probably their most musically interesting album, while their fifth (Stahlmania, sadly not available on Spotify, at least in my region) is the most aggressively headbangy. They’re kind of an eclectic experience as at least one member of the group changed between each of the first five albums. Early on, they have a fairly heavy rap/hip-hop influence (I’m sorry, I don’t really know what distinguishes the two), going so far as to cover songs like “Boom Boom Shake the Room” and MC Hammer’s “Can’t Touch This” (a heavily Austrian-accented metal rendition of which is exactly as surreal an experience as you might expect: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_HM5doCc9A). By Stahlmania, very, very metal. Every album along the way has two covers still, though. I think Feind Hort Mit has the best in the Falco cover “Der Mann Mit Dem Koks”.

Just put up my contribution for the month; my other favorite singer-songwriter. Five for Fighting, which is the nom-de-plume for John Ondrasik. He’s perhaps best known for the early 2000’s radio hit “Superman (It’s Not Easy)” but I’d ask you not to judge him solely by that; even if you actually like it as I do. John lists as his inspirations artist from the 70s and 80s like Queen, Elton John, even Led Zeppelin. His songs are typically either ballads or piano-based rock and roll. His tendency toward singing in falsetto is an acquired taste to be sure but I really dig his songs and he can write a clever, funny, often touching lyric. “The Battle For Everything” to me is his best effort; it’s the follow up to “America Town” (which birthed “Superman”) and it felt like he took his time (3 years) and made something to stand apart from the predecessor rather than in lock-step. If you’re really curious I’d recommend his debut album “Message for Albert” which is really, really different from anything he’s produced since in another direction entirely. Bottom line, I, like John, am a child of the 60s and from Los Angeles. He ‘gets me’. He’s a talent I try to share with my friends along the way.

Time for me to add an actual bonafide new release…Richard Hawley’s “Standing At The Sky’s Edge”. I’ll have more thoughts on it in a bit, but for now I’ll just say that this is a tremendous record, absolutely in my top ten for the year, and for the first half of 2012 in the top 3.

Dinosaur Jr has a new album coming out this Fall so I thought I’d post one of my favorite albums from last year, J Mascis’s mostly acoustic “Several Shades of Why.” It’s an album that I suspect was over-looked so here’s another chance for people to discover it!

A thousand times yes! I love this record! It got me to check out some of his back catalogue and I love it. Some of his older stuff has this dusty, reverb-heavy feel going on that puts me in mind of a combination of Mark Lanegan and Frank Sinatra.  . Combine that with the occasional rockabilly influence and a pentient for balladry and you've got a winner. I haven't listened to the new one as much as I'd like, but it totally dials up the Lanegan side of the influence, throws in layer after layer of fuzzy guitar, ditches some of the fifties influences for psychadelia, and kicks all kinds of ass. 

I couldn't decide between Sloan and The Walkmen for my submition. I went with The Walkmen though. Heaven is their newest release. I know they've established some major indie cred for whatever that counts. Thing is, I always passed over them as too ordinary. Then, last week, I went to a show to see Trampled by Turtles at some friends' suggestion. Not a big Trampled fan, but I was pleasantly surprised when The Walkmen opened for them. These guys have raw power live. The music is sunny, up-beat for the most part, and the hooks are just tremendous. I'm such a musical generalist that I don't really know who I'd compare them to. It's stripped down without being raw. Soaring vocals with a little vibrato tacked on. I think excepting The Ramones or other pop-oriented punk bands that this is about as stripped back as you can get with pop. Anyway, as inadequate as that description is, just listen. You guys probably already know them. They're not exactly obscure for an enthusiast and they've been around for a pretty decent run, but it's a great album either way.

I know my soul is bandaged, and I know my mind is numb, I been waiting for an album, and this might be the one.
Loved it when I got it, great laid-back sound by one of the true guitar legends. As a side-note, it reminded me why I’ll always prefer the physical media.

So, I’ve given dustDEVILS a go and they’ve certainly got something. I’m going to need to swing past them again, I think. It didn’t help that I listened to their album after trying to do Tago Mago followed by The Lost Tapes. I think I burned myself out on the difficult stuff with those.

The Stahlhammer; I’ll say that metal’s definitively not my thing, and I’m tempted to go back and listen to it again. It reminds me of some of the German stuff my friends used to listen to in the early '00s, but a bit lighter. I liked it more than I usually like metal- I find it’s got to be really fun (Orange Goblin/Black Spiders) or really good (Mastodon’s last album) for me to get into it. I don’t know why.

I haven’t listened to Five for Fighting yet 'cause I somehow forgot to add it to my playlist, but I’m one song into the Richard Hawley and already thinking “Bloody hell”. Wow.

I’ve given the Walkmen one spin already (last month) and I wanted to go back to it. Which I’m about to- thanks.

I like metal in theory - I don’t mind a good driving guitar riff and nothing wrong with a good round of headbanging - but in practice whenever I, say, dip into metal recommendation threads here, I find that I don’t actually like whatever the genre fans are into. I think a big piece of it is that I like my music to have intelligible lyrics, ideally sung. Which doesn’t mean I have to understand the language the lyrics are written in - I barely know a word of German, for example - but they have to be distinct enough that I could in theory understand them. And I find that a lot of metal goes for this shouty unintelligible growl that turns me -right- off. Stahlhammer, obviously, doesn’t do this. I also appreciate things like using instruments that aren’t typically part of any sort of rock, like accordions, bagpipes, violins, etc.