The highly improvisational Spasm Smash put Trumans Water on the indie rock map, nestled cozily between Superchunk and Polvo. The 20-track disc opens with the chaotic and energetic "The Aroma of Gina Arnold." The song's fierceness is heightened by Glen Galloway's wavering vocals (including the line, "They said all youth was dead, how could they know/Your plastic culture sucks, and it's gonna blow!"). The frantic San Diego band shines on the choppy "Good Blood After Bad" and the indie metal of "Death to Dead Things." The songs subscribe to the notion that songs have a natural energy to them, and when that energy is spent the song should come to a grinding and immediate halt. The liberating frenzy of unabashedly crazy songs like "Athletes Who Is Suck" and "Lo Priest" suggests the band treated their music as grand therapy sessions, complete with distorted guitars and feedback. The mumbling behind the kinetic frenzy on "Fingers 6 Steps Ahead of Our Minds" creates a new energy on the disc, while the band erects a new wall of noise on "La Jolla My Armpit." The scorching guitars and howling vocals on "Mindstab, Forklift" only add to the wonderful loss of control the band mastered early on in their career. The disc ends with the playful groove of "The Sad Skinhead." The audible flurry on Spasm Smash inspired John Peel to play the entire disc on his BBC program and invite the band to record a much-sought-after Peel Sessions recording. Spasm Smash was released in 1993 on Homestead Records.
Trumans Water - Spasm Smash (1993)
The Monks - Black Monk Time (1966)
The story of the Monks is one of those rock & roll tales that seems too good to be true -- five Americans soldiers stationed in Germany form a rock band to blow off steam, and after starting out playing solid but ordinary R&B-influenced beat music, their songs evolve into something that bear practically no relation to anything happening in pop in 1966. If anything, the Monks were far wilder than their story would suggest; they may have looked bizarre in their matching black outfits, rope ties, and tonsures, but it was their music that was truly radical, with the sharp fuzz and feedback of Gary Burger's guitar faced off against the bludgeoning clang of Dave Day's amplified banjo (taking the place of rhythm guitar), as Roger Johnston pounded out minimalist patterns on the drums, Eddie Shaw's electric bass gave forth with a monstrous throb, and Larry Clark's keyboard bounced off the surfaces of the aural melee. This would have been heady stuff even without Burger's wild-eyed vocals, in which he howls "I hate you with a passion, baby," "Why do you kill all those kids over there in Vietnam?" and "Believing you're wise, being so dumb" over the band's dissonant fury. The closest thing the Monks had to a musical counterpart in 1966 were the Velvet Underground, but existing on separate continents they never heard one another at the time, and while Lou Reed and John Cale were schooled in free jazz and contemporary classical that influenced their work, the Monks were creating a new species of rock & roll pretty much out of their heads. Given all this, it's all the more remarkable that they landed a record deal with a major German label, and while Black Monk Time, their first and only studio album, doesn't boast a fancy production, the simple, clean recording of the group's crazed sounds captures their mad genius to striking effect, and the mingled rage and lunatic joy that rises from these songs is still striking decades after they were recorded. Within a year of the release of Black Monk Time, the band would break up (reportedly over disagreements about a possible tour of Vietnam), and the two singles that followed the LP were more pop-oriented efforts that suggested the Monks couldn't keep up this level of intensity forever. But in late 1965, the Monks were rock & roll's most savage visionaries, and Black Monk Time preserves their cleansing rage in simple but grand style.
The Beakers - Four Steps Toward a Cultural Revolution (2004)
If the Beakers had been in New York, they would have been hobnobbing with Liquid Liquid and the Contortions; put them across the water in the U.K. and Martin Hannett would have been producing their Factory single while A Certain Ratio tried to steal their drummer. Though cut from the same nervous, funky post-punk cloth as those contemporaries, the Beakers were from Seattle, which in 1980 wasn't the buzzing music haven that grunge would make it ten years later. Isolation may have stopped them from reaching most folks, but with a superb rhythm section in drummer George Romansic and bass player Francesca Sundsten and off-kilter sax from Jim Anderson backing up Mark H. Smith's arty enigmatic lyrics and jerky guitar, they can at least now be heard as spiritual forefathers to the Rapture, Erase Errata, and other mid-2000s danceable rockers mining those same sonic fields. Various appearances on collections, including one of the early Sub Pop tapes, unreleased recordings, and a handful of live dates are collected on Four Steps Toward a Cultural Revolution, putting the Beakers back in the starry firmament where they should have been all along.
The C&B - S/T 7"
The C&B is short for Cat & Bells Club, a brief precursor that would soon be transformed into the inestimable poetics of The Shadow Ring. Studious fans of the band's releases may recognize this name from the whimsical word search found on the back cover of their 1995 7', 'Some Of Us'. Ah, finally; mystery solved & now all the ducks are on the pond.
While early Shadow Ring managed to fuse equal parts Tyrannosaurus Rex mystical recitations w/Throbbing Gristle aural idolatry, The C&B seem divinely born out of the sputtering taps of brown ale that flowed freely down the gullets of various 1st generation DIY shufflers, most notably, 49 Americans or Door And The Window. And while this is just dumb luck, there's no denying a genius, unintentional as it may be.
Nothing People - Problems 7" (2006)
The debut 7" from Orland, California’s Nothing People. Although they've gone on to do greater things (in particular 2009's Late Night) this release is not without it's great moments. Twinkie Defense” which pairs dirty Iggy-style vocals with a twin guitar attack that flanges unnervingly throughout like a warped Space Ritual. The next two tracks slow things down a bit and both sound a bit like Richard Hell if were on acid rather than the junk, “I Can’t Find A Monkey” closes the show, bringing back the bash and thrash three-chord destruction.
Various Artists - Sub Pop 200 (1988)
With the exception of the Melvins, at the point Sub Pop 200 was released the label had virtually every important Seattle band on its roster. Here 20 bands get to strut their stuff in the premainstream alternative rock world. And many of the bands that helped alternative rock reach its popularity are represented here, including Soundgarden, Nirvana, Screaming Trees, and Green River (which would mutate into Pearl Jam). Strangely enough, most of these bands do not have the standout tracks on the album. The Fastbacks try to steal the show with their charged cover of Green River's "Swallow My Pride," but the Walkabouts might have the best song here with their folk-rocker "Got No Chains." Mudhoney covers the Bette Midler torch song "The Rose," while the Chemistry Set have an impressive entry with "Underground." The Thrown Ups also show up with the best song in their catalog, "You Lost It." The album as a whole is really good; there are few standouts, but everything is solid. Many will buy the album for the Nirvana track "Spank Thru," which is decent, but hopefully those listeners will stick around for the good obscure grunge tracks included.
Various Artists - Half Cocked (1995)
Suki Hawley's low-budget debut follows the fictional band Truckstop on a makeshift tour from Louisville to Chattanooga to Memphis. Couched in the lo-fi language of the young and the restlessly noisy, the disc does much the same, bringing together tracks by Louisville's late, great Rodan, Chattanooga's Big Heifer and Boondoggle, and Memphis's mighty Grifters. It adds tracks by gritty New York popsters Sleepyhead and Versus, Chapel Hill's angular Polvo, Olympia's grungy Unwound, Boston's enchanting Helium, DC's punkish Slant 6, and a half-dozen other Amerindie rockers.
Tropa Macaca - Sensacao Do Principio (2009)
Sensacao Do Principio is the third release proper from Tropa Macaca and their first with an American label. Their previous efforts on Ruby Red and Qbico were magnificent (though hard to find) efforts of blotted, aural sci-fi codifications somewhere between Anar Band and Blues Control. The two-track full-length continues their foray into post-psychedelic instrumental morphine, where Moolah's LP and Pink Floyd's "Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict" function as templates for the greater good. In other words, you gotta hear if for yourself.
Buy it here
Jason Loewenstein - At Sixes & Sevens (2002)
Wisecrackin' Jason Loewenstein may be considered the lesser of the two Sebadoh singer/songwriters (his stuff is less-directly melodic and catchy than the more celebrated/prolific Lou Barlow), but he's certainly penned his share of primo stuff ("Careful," "Prince-S," "It's All You"). His band's been laying low since the oddly disregarded The Sebadoh three years ago, and while Barlow has kept busy with Folk Implosion, he's been stockpiling songs. Loewenstein competently plays all the instruments, yet it sounds like a sharp band playing together (it sounds like Sebadoh!). His self-production is excellent as well. And though one misses the interplay of his intensity/crunch with Barlow's heightened pop sense, At Sixes and Sevens is a strong LP that should open eyes. It opens with a few tracks that are reminiscent of Iggy Pop and James Williamson's Kill City, which sounded like Iggy showing the newly tiring Stones how they used to do it. "Codes" and "Casserole" are peppery, classic riff-rock songs filtered through punk's manic verve. And when that starts getting samey, Loewenstein switches gears, veering to his more complex side for the album's most distinctive tracks. The wailing, swooping guitar lead breaks of "Circles" set up the inherent worry that drives this fantastic song. Likewise, the searing, simple, raining lead that appears through "I'm a Shit" makes for magnificent, broody rock & roll. These two are as good as anything he's given Sebadoh, as is the LP's finest moment, buried at the end: the thundering, punky basher "Transform," which runs on a hot tune and Loewenstein's nastiest bass playing. OK, someone should have made him delete the two dumb metal cuts, the tellingly titled instrumental "H/M" and "NYC III." But these are blips. The taut, hushed "Funerals" immediately puts the train back on track.
Keith Hudson - Pick a Dub (1974)
In his excellent book England's Dreaming, Jon Savage refers to Pick a Dub as "the greatest dub album ever, twelve cuts, all fantastic." It's easy to concur with Savage's assesment, with the lone caveat that there are some Lee Perry and King Tubby sides that might be as good. That caveat notwithstanding, Pick a Dub is sensational, arguably the crowning achievement of Hudson's career. In fact, coming as early as it did in the development of dub -- it was originally released in 1974 -- Pick a Dub is seminal work, a landmark in progressive remixing on a par with early King Tubby, Augustus Pablo, and Rupie Edwards. What makes this record so scintillating is the intensity of the bass and drums, as well as Hudson's relatively naked production. There are not a lot of goofy sound effects and studio screwing around, just buckets of blood and sweat all rolled into a seductive slab of percussive heaviness that will rattle every filling in your head.
