Mono. Mercury Lounge, NYC. 16/09/04
Words | 14/10/2004 at 19:50:26
My last gig of the summer. Or, at least, my last gig in New York City. Saw Mono play at the Mercury Lounge a couple of days before I left to fly back to London. They played an extended set cos one of the dudes from Fly Pan Am got sick or hurt himself...I can't quite remember...in any case, Fly Pan Am cancelled and Mono got to play for longer. They were quite, quite awesome. I reviewed the show for <a href="http://www.planbmag.com/live/archives/00000038.php">Plan B.</a>
The Moutaineer Inn, Asheville NC.
Photos | 25/09/2004 at 14:08:30
The best, crappiest motel I've stayed at in a long time. Seriously, neon signs and fake wood panelling. It doesn't get any better than this.
Sunburned Hand of the Man - The Trickle Down Theory of Lord Knows What. Eclipse.
Words | 25/09/2004 at 13:49:41
The Trickle Down Theory of Lord Knows What emanates a gloopy, primordial sort of stink. Its the stuff of a Nyquil-induced nightmare a deranged, muddy, muffled vortex of noise sucking you down to an elemental terror. Sunburned Hand of the Man employ the same basic sounds on each of the five songs found here, bending and manipulating each in such a way as to produce a different face or aspect of the same darkness.
Spell It Out, the opener, is a murky, grimy affair. The vocals come through like a muffled train announcement blasting from an ancient, filthy speaker. You get the sense, as you do when sitting and waiting for that unmissable train, that this is vital information being conveyed. But no matter how hard you struggle and strain to decipher and distil the noise into words, the meaning never fully emerges - an impotent panic sets in. As with that all-important platform alteration, the sense of the message being conveyed here is lost and all the listener is left with is the exhausted frustration and vague sense of panic that somehow this noise pertains to himself and yet he cant for the life of him figure out whats being said. Beneath this revolves a spiralling, droning vocal noise that holds strong throughout as the initial tapping beat becomes more insistent, moving into a martial shuffle before more complex rhythms drive it somewhere else entirely.
Show of Hands is a reverb-laden, dense, cacophonous track with sounds stretched and distorted, bouncing up and down and flexing in and out like faces in fun house mirrors. A strange, off-kilter timbre builds as a steady chant and other vocal noises become meshed and looped together into a sort of sludge. The sound is incredibly dense and compact but made somehow pastoral by the delicate flurries of metallic melody. Elsewhere electronic stomach-rumbles erupt to the acoustic surface and snatches of a strummed guitar can be discerned somewhere way down in the mud of this mix. The song builds on itself until it has an unbearable weightiness and then its elements are stripped back to reveal its innards one note extended over a rough clatter of drums and the same sliver of guitar.
Rivershine is the apex of all that runs before it on Trickle Down. More stomach-churning, frictioned noises ride atop a head-nodding beat. A repetitive, warped-metal groove is built and sustained as a jarring noise rather like an electric generator vibrates, cutting in and out. Shrieks and moans punctuate long stretches of stomping rhythm. Ghostly wind-chime bells toll at the last. Sunburned Hand of the Man are Colonel Kurtzs house band. And although they employ the same basic palette of sounds across all of the tracks on this album, they shift their destination inch by inch on each one, driving the noise and rhythm along different paths through the wilderness. On each successive listen, the individual songs on Trickle Down Theory of Lord Knows What seem to pull apart from the collective gloop to stand alone as monstrous sculptures in their own right.
Beat Happening - Jamboree, Black Candy, Dreamy, You Turn Me On. K.
Words | 15/09/2004 at 16:46:32
They were always the musical equivalent of a gawky, awkward teenager - a band growing into their body, still distinctive, nothing ironed out. Armed with scant musical competence, gangly two-chord punk songs and the voice of a certain Calvin Johnson, Beat Happening defined a DIY politics that eventually ran the 90s.
Beat Happening werent just a retarded K band. A willful lack of chops and twee style gained them as many detractors as admirers and with three decidedly un-cute adults singing about first crushes, holding hands and picnics in the summertime, its easy to see how their naivety could seem contrived. However, to see only that side ignores their wider focus Calvin, Heather and Brett sing about sex, betrayal, death and loneliness with honesty rarely found elsewhere.
Part of Beat Happenings charm was their adherence to the lowest of lo-fi production values as well as their rock-bottom-bare-bones songwriting. Jamboree, their second album, sounds like it was recorded with a tin can, some string and someone holding the line. Un-produced by Mark Lanegan and Gary Lee Connor of Screaming Trees alongside Steve Fisk, the album is raw and loose. Bewitched, the opener, locks together Calvins obsession with a Pandora-like woman and a mean-streets guitar line. Indian Summer plays gentler. With sparkling guitar reminiscent of a Big Star intro and steady, restrained drums, Calvin conjures up images of an idyllic summertime anyplace where we will never change.
1989s Black Candy sees something of a dip in form for the band as they concentrate on their darker side, emerging with an album full of cartoon horror songs reminiscent of The Cramps. The title track is probably the most successful of these, but the lack of variety makes the album a little one note. The best moments on Black Candy are probably the lightest ones opener Other Side, a rare duet featuring both Calvin and Heather, sings sweet escapism - well live on bread crust and lemon rind. The album also features one of Beat Happenings finest and most frequently covered songs, the jangling, love-lorn Cast A Shadow.
For many bands, a poor third album signals a final, slippery downshift. Dreamy, released in 1991, however, is the sound of a group cementing its sound, scrunching the best of the old into something brighter and new. Elements from Black Candy are transposed successfully here, with tracks like Me, Untamed and Revolution Come and Gone representing Beat Happenings darkness without relying on cartoon imagery and repetitive stylistic flourishes. Revolution Come and Gone sees Calvin in a spiteful and hurtful mood, echoing Johnny Cash when he confesses he
got a girl in Reno/Just to make her cry. Dreamy also sees them defining the lo-fi paradigm Hot Chocolate Boy is a punk rock spazz-out, Fortune Cookie Prize, a glorious Heather love song and Cry For A Shadow, a tear-jerker in which Calvins voice drips with pathos. This is the K sound.
Beat Happenings final album, You Turn Me On, with its full, vibrant production demonstrates just how much the band actually developed in sound and ability over the course of a decade. With infinitely more complex song structures and instrumentation and tracks three or four times the length of those on Jamboree, the sound is actually accomplished. And the strength and beauty of the songwriting found on the album truly moving. Tracks like Tiger Trap and Teenage Caveman are joyful, searching and wonderfully melodic. Imagine Velvet Underground covering New Order. Or something like that. You Turn Me On finds the permanently teenaged band finally all grown up.
Beat Happening became the DIY ethic realized, where everything was their own, made by hand, carefully packaged, loved. The politics alone make these albums significant. However, that is not to say that the music doesnt matter it really does. Beat Happening are one of those very special bands that make you want to dance around your bedroom, arms flailing wildly, like the geek that you really are. Go listen, you big dork.
Hope of the States - Lost Riots. Sony.
Words | 02/09/2004 at 20:52:37
I reviewed Hope of the States' debut for Pitchfork this week. Not really my cup of tea to be honest. I mean, the arrangements and playing and all that is pretty impressive...but it's a bit up its own arse really. You can read the review <a href="http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/h/hope-of-the-states/lost-riots.shtml">here</a>.
