Monthly Archives: October 2016

My first interaction with Teenage Fanclub was back in 1993 when the band released their fourth album, simply titled Thirteen. The critics told me that I had missed the band’s finest moment (1991’s Bandwagonesque is widely celebrated as the gold standard for the ’90s power pop revival) citing a significant departure from their jangly pop sound. Thirteen was the album that saw the band dive head first into a darker, moodier, and more atmospheric sound. Maybe it was the fact that the band took a risk by self-producing it or maybe they were just pushing their own boundaries—who knows, but I dug it.

I sort of lost track after the follow-up to Thirteen and rediscovered them again for their tenth album, Here. Call it good marketing or maybe the fact that several of my friends on Facebook are massive fans and share a thing or two. Either way, I gave the new record a listen and it’s quite brilliant. During my travels to the States last week I happened to catch them in Boston at the Sinclair.

Holy hell these guys are good live. The club was absolutely jammed to the gills so it was a bit of a challenge to really capture the atmosphere—somewhere between aging hipsters with cool beards (who were probably there long before the Mumford and Sons’ revolution) and every college radio DJ from the many stations in and around Boston. The band clearly has some insanely devoted fans.

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“When I was living in Ithaca, NY a record circulated through me via Matt Goodwin via Elliot Martin (of John Brown’s Body). It was called Packin House and it was a compilation of Little Roy and Friends. I was unaware of Little Roy but definitely ready to go deep into the reggae world and this record took me there.”

“The record was passed to me in a Gregory Isaacs Private Beach Party sleeve, and it would stay that way passed amongst friends. The first track “Hurt Not the Earth” is just the definition of hard-hitting, slow and low reggae with an urgent message. We LOVED that track.

We would slow it down too and made a CD of that slow track, slowed down, to what became kind of a foundational tempo for Giant Panda in the early years. We were fortunate enough to cover this track with Elliot Martin in Oakland recently and it was a big moment for the band.

If this track wasn’t the first cut on the A side of this record, I don’t know how I ever would have heard it, or if it would have hit me as hard. There was something about the nature of procuring this vinyl that made it much more mystical seeming. Passed from friends to friends, in a hidden jacket, obscure singer, pure truth in the sound and message.

Glad to remember this one.”
—James Searl, Bass/Vocals

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Dear Reader: I would never lie to you. I hate Blood, Sweat & Tears. I have always hated Blood, Sweat & Tears. I will always hate Blood, Sweat & Tears. With their big horn sound they always sounded like a Las Vegas lounge act to me, and the truth is they were a Vegas lounge act, back at the turn of the 1970s when such an act bordered on heresy and constituted a crass betrayal of every single tenet of the counterculture. It didn’t help that agreed to go on a State Department-sponsored tour of Eastern Europe, a move that destroyed whatever credibility they had with your average government-hating hippie.

No, I do not like them. And perhaps I should recuse myself from writing about them for that reason. But I refuse. I will have my unreconstructed say, because I believe that the critic’s sole task is not just to praise the music he loves, but also to sound the alarm whenever some truly suck-ass jive comes his way. For this reason I will damn BS&T with faint praise and praise them for providing me with the occasional callow chortle. And I’m not alone. Speaking of the band’s foghorn of a vocalist, the Village Voice’s Robert Christgau wrote, “Just figured out how David Clayton-Thomas learned vocal projection: by belching. That’s why when he gets really excited he sounds as if he’s about to throw up. But it’s only part of the reason he gets me so excited I feel like I’m about to throw up.” I agree totally with Christgau about the throwing up part.

Originally formed by the famed Al Kooper and others as a “brass-rock” band, BS&T released their debut, 1968’s Child Is Father to the Man, after which Kooper quit, and was replaced on lead vocals by Clayton-Thomas. That same year “the Sweat” (no one has ever called them this but me) released their eponymous sophomore LP, and hit pop gold. You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing “Spinning Wheel,” “And When I Die,” “God Bless the Child,” or “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy.” The LP was not just a jazz-rock monstrosity; it also included three heaping helpings of prog rock, including the interminable “Blues, Pt. 2” (an incredibly awful fusion of brass-rock, prog rock, jazz, and blues that comes complete with a drum solo, a brief detour into Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love,” and, to its credit, one very decent sax solo) and two brief takes on the work of Erik Satie.

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Press Play is our Monday recap of the new and FREE tracks received last week to inform the next trip to your local indie record store.

Gregory Uhlmann – It’s Not Your Fault
Owls of the Swamp – Meteorite
Lilah Larson – tbh
Coffee Project – Anxiety and the Coconut Bar
Almond & Olive – Standing at the Precipice
Michael Jablonka – Mantra
J Hacha De Zola – Bad Decisions (Ariana Grande Cover)

TVD SINGLE OF THE WEEK:
Nicole Atkins – A Little Crazy

Spelling Reform – Expiration Date
Blankus Larry – Tight Pants Or Less
Mangoseed – Jah Jah
Milk N Cooks – Funk It (feat. Lyon Hart)
Blank Face – 30 Hours (Freestyle)
VIRGO – hologamma (Sigh Kicks Remix)
Pepe Deluxé – Go Girl Go

The Beau Brummels are mostly remembered for the exemplary folk-rock of “Laugh Laugh” and “Just a Little,” both Top Twenty hits in 1965. But they also crafted one of the earliest and best examples of country-rock, the masterful 1968 LP Bradley’s Barn.

I find it hard to not be somewhat conflicted about The Beau Brummels. Not in terms of quality, for they were one of the USA’s finest (and earliest) acts to emerge in the wake of the British Invasion, but simply in defining their historical legacy. For starters, they were signed to disc-jockey Tom Donahue’s small Autumn label during their early period of widespread popularity, a circumstance that limited the distribution of their two biggest hits (“Laugh Laugh” stalling at #15 and “Just a Little” at #8 respectively). And yet they were considered legitimate teen idols of the time, appearing not only in two motion pictures but also on TV’s The Flintstones (as the uh, Beau Brummelstones). It’s enough to make a mind contemplate what might have transpired had the band been in the hands of a more capable label, for their first two LPs Introducing The Beau Brummels and Volume 2 stand amongst the best records issued by American acts in the immediate post-Beatles aftermath.

But when the group made the switch to Warner Brothers, they were initially mishandled. Beau Brummels ’66 was an ill-advised (if not at all bad) covers-only LP conceived because the label didn’t initially control the band’s publishing. Their first “real” record for Warners, ‘67’s outstanding slice of baroque-psyche Triangle, remains one of the better psychedelic excursions of the period, an effort that unfortunately got buried in the year of Sgt. Pepper’s. Bradley’s Barn followed in ’68, and after it floundered commercially (Triangle only managed to briefly squeak onto the Billboard Album Chart at #197) singer Sal Valentino and guitarist Ron Elliott (the band having been reduced to a duo after bassist’s Ron Meagher’s induction into the Army Reserve during the recording of Triangle), called it a day.

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PHOTO: CHRIS COTE | Almanac Mountain explores universal minutia on new Cryptoseismology LP.

Fans of experimental bedroom pop will find plenty to love in Chris Cote’s new album and intellectuals who label themselves “secular humanists” will revel in his cryptic studies of the natural world.

Everything seems to take on a double meaning in the songs of Almanac Mountain. “Contingency Procedures” seems to be about the 2003 Shuttle Columbia disaster but Cote explains that a surface evaluation of his material will only cut skin deep and that the song is “really about the death of the hopes and ambitions of the 1980s.”

Luckily the heady nature of his music is tempered by an almost saccharine sense of pop which he uses to great effect on such stunning tracks as “Harborside,” a noirish flavored ballad with a string arrangement that appears to be plucked straight out of an old Hollywood movie and stretched onto an indie rock canvas.

It’s no surprise Cryptoseismology was tracked over the most brutal winter in recent New England history as its warm tones and otherworldly digressions feel like some kind of creative escapism. Lucky for us, the mind of Chris Cote is a strange and wonderful thing to behold.

Ah, The Crystals—their best songs are every bit as wonderful as their career was checkered by the evil machinations of studio Wunderkind Phil Spector, who made them the first act to record a single on his nascent Phillie Records label. Spector first saddled them with a song so offensive—Carole King and Gerry Goffin’s anthem to masochistic female approval of the physical abuse of women, “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss”)—that it almost sidetracked their career at its get-go.

He then proceeded to utilize a group of replacement singers (Darlene Love and the Blossoms) to record such immortal “Crystals” tunes as “He’s a Rebel” and “He’s Sure the Boy I Love.” Finally, he added insult to injury by shifting his attention to a new girl group, the Ronettes, and went so far as to include four songs actually recorded by the Ronettes on the Crystals’ 1963 “best of” LP, The Crystals Sing the Greatest Hits, Volume 1.

Yet despite these dictatorial and confusing antics by Spector, the Crystals remain one of the most beloved girl groups of the years just prior to the British Invasion. Why? Because songs like “Then He Kissed Me” and “Da Doo Ron Ron” are both brilliant and timeless; why just the other day I did a crazy dance in the supermarket, attracting the attention of numerous shoppers, when “Then He Kissed Me” came on over the store’s loudspeakers.

But returning to the theme of exactly who recorded what songs attributed to the Crystals, anyone interested soon finds oneself tangled in a byzantine world of confusion. Take 2001’s Da Doo Ron Ron, a compilation of the band’s greatest hits. At first its ten songs seem to comprise an admirable distillation of only the Crystals’ finest work; you won’t find the “The Frankenstein Twist” or any of the Ronettes’ novelty songs credited to the Crystals (e.g., “Hot Pastrami,” “The Wah Watusi”) on it.

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The story of the Ghetto Brothers is an inspiring one, though it’s also an account possessing the deep reality checks of disappointment and strife. It’s a tale of struggle, of growth, of the positive tendencies of human behavior, and naturally some fine music. The reissue of Power Fuerza by the Truth & Soul label makes the essence of a legendary group easily available for anyone desirous of hearing it, and in the process it transcends their legend to become one of the best of all possible things; a record that can be spun and enjoyed many times.

The rediscovery and easy availability of long sought-after musical documents reliably comes with varying degrees of pomp and circumstance. It’s a ceremony partly directed to serious collectors, those individuals that have dedicated countless hours and energy in the pursuit of unearthing that rare and enticing artifact of delectably persuasive cultural marginalia, but it’s additionally aimed at listeners possessing a sincere interest in the contents of those recordings if little of the often rabid intensity (and substantial moolah) that’s required to actually procure original copies of these frustratingly elusive objects.

Occasionally these records are so rare they are essentially considered “lost,” indeed so obscure that even the most hardcore of collectors can’t get their hands on a copy, and in these instances the accompanying promotional verbosity can rise to the level of full-blown lather. The reason why almost always boils down to extreme (and at times overblown) passions on the part of those doing the reissuing, or less attractively the understanding from the participants that the music is, well, ultimately not all that great, the ensuing hyperbole aimed at increasing record sales, with honesty getting cast aside amongst the hoopla.

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