Helloooooooooooooooooo. This going to be another short, sloppy one. Please, by all means, craft your own punchline. Anyway, I filed the Black Market year-end list on Monday, so be on the lookout for that. Consequently, due to crunch, I didn't have much time to listen to new music. And, speaking of getting buried by writing, I'm working on the Plague Rages year-end list this week, so these newsletters will continue to look paltry and read poorly until I'm out of the EOY trenches. Sorry!
Music
Stress Positions - Harsh Reality (Three One G)
From: Chicago, IL
Genre: hardcore
Hell yeah. Born from the ashes of C.H.E.W., Stress Positions plays similarly speedy and raging hardcore. The basic formula on Harsh Reality, the quartet's full-length debut, is something like Cro-Mags plus Charles Bronson, taking the air-raid guitars and vicious screams of the former and applying them to the fast tempos and equally quick shifts of the latter. The best song is "Hand to Mouth," an incensed ripper with a touch of thrash in the riffs a la Detente. Fans should be ashamed if that one doesn't set a stage dive record at a future This is Hardcore. The second best song is the My War-esque "Ode to Aphrodite," demonstrating that Stress Positions could be equally good as a tension-stoking crawler. The five-minute track accounts for, like, 28 percent of Harsh Reality's total running time, but it absolutely flies by because Stephanie Brooks' vocal performance is so transfixing, putting a modern spin on Henry Rollins' brand of unwavering intensity.
Muireann Bradley - I Kept These Old Blues (Tompkins Square)
From: Ballybofey, Ireland
Genre: blues / folk
Muireann Bradley, an Irish teen, plays faithful versions of country blues classics. "My father would play this music constantly at home and wherever we went in the car and talk about it endlessly whether anyone was listening or not, telling stories about the lives of these musicians as if they were legend, mythology, or the evening news," Bradley wrote in the Bandcamp liner notes. Her pops also played these songs on guitar, and soon enough, she picked up the guitar, too. But it wasn't until the COVID lockdowns and an enforced break from her combat sports pursuits that Bradley locked in on the instrument. To focus her practice sessions, she created a list of songs to learn, topped by Blind Blake's "Police Dog Blues." A video of a 13-year-old Bradley shredding the song and singing sweetly made its way to YouTube, which got her noticed by Tompkins Square. A few years later, I Kept These Old Blues, a stripped-down collection featuring just Bradley's voice and guitar, is the result of that connection. My favorite track is the summery, easy-going take on Rory Block and Stefan Grossman's "Vestapol," which flexes Bradley's guitar skills. But she's also a keen interpreter of Mississippi John Hurt, doing a dynamite version of "Richland Woman Blues." That one makes excellent use of her gentle vocals, playing up the incongruity of singing some risqué lines. I'm curious how Bradley would handle something more gloomy, such as Mississippi Fred McDowell.1 But I Kept These Old Blues is just a great hang as is, whether you have any prior experience with this material or not.
Other music stuff:
Kirsty MacColl - "Free World"
1989's Kite was Kirsty MacColl's big chance to showcase her smarts as a songwriter. "With Kite, I felt I had to prove that I wasn't this bimbo girl-next-door I'd been portrayed as," the singer said in a 1991 Melody Maker interview. "That had been hanging around my neck like a fucking albatross for so long, and I wanted to make the point that, yes, I can write a fucking song, pal! I didn't feel that I had to prove myself this time." "Free World," the album's first single that was also a solo MacColl composition, was the proof of concept. Produced by then-husband Steve Lillywhite, the track is a fiery rocker that takes Thatcher capitalism to task with MacColl's typical working-class poeticism. Surprisingly, given its chiming guitars, it's one of the few tracks on the album that doesn't have a session-working Johnny Marr.2 Those U2-but-nervy riffs are all Pete Glenister. But, yeah, MacColl is the star, exuding an absolute magnetism on that world-class chorus harmony. It's just an all-out banger that always makes me think it's proto-Lush. The 2:33 running time never feels like it's enough, but I guess that's why there's a repeat button.
Find me on Bandcamp until Ampwall goes live.
Wishlist Roulette
In this section, I'll randomly choose an album from my voluminous Bandcamp wishlist. After listening to it, I'll either buy or remove it.
Collettivo Immaginario - Transforma (Domanda Music)
From: Los Angeles, CA
Genre: jazz / fusion
This LA-based Italian trio plays a version of lite jazz fusion that works well on Instagram but not so much on record. Right, Transforma has a surface smoothness that makes for good background music but can be stultifying if studied. It's…too pleasant. However, even when everyone is shredding, such as these three do on sections of the pretty good title track, that professional sleekness makes the musicianship sound inconsequential. Apparently, there are nods to Lonnie Liston Smith, Herbie Hancock, Piero Piccioni, and Piero Umiliani throughout, along with rhythms influenced by "Brazil and West Africa," but I don't hear any of it, mainly because I can't get deep into these compositions. I tune everything out. Obviously, Collettivo Immaginario has the skills. But this stuff needs something else to maintain your undivided attention. Grit, spiciness, anything. It's like going on dates with an overly considerate person who never makes a move. Throwing this one back.
Reading
My reading list was light this week because I've been feverishly working on everything else. I will note that Christopher Buehlman's Between Two Fires is worthy of the hype so far. It's sort of like if The Last of Us was set during the Black Plague and had the unbelievably nihilistic worldview of a FromSoft game. I hope to pen a quick review of that one soon. I'm also making my way through Stephen King's 11/22/63.
…
"MACHINE MUSIC PRESENTS: THE BEST METAL OF 2023," by Ron Ben Tovim, Machine Music
Always one of my favorite lists of the year, and this year's installment is no different. Beautifully written, too.
"A Year Doused in Gasoline," by Rennie Resmini, Starkweather
The opening graf memorializing Geordie Walker, Shane McGowan, and Mark Samuels is a concise an encapsulation of how this year has felt.
"TOP 75 ALBUMS OF 2023: Part I (#75-#61)," by José Carlos Santos, The Devil's Mouth
That feeling when you realize you should've split your list into parts, too.
"Drumming Upstream Season 2: Wrapped," by Ian Cory, Lamniformes Cuneiform
I am a sucker for a good stats breakdown. Interesting discussion on the impending Spotify changes, as well.
"The Best Metal Albums of 2023," by Brad Sanders, Bandcamp Daily
A good blurb will make you reassess your stance on an album. Brad Sanders writes a good blurb.
Movies
All About the Benjamins (2002)
Wow, I didn't know someone leaked GTA VI 21 years ago. Bad in a comforting way. Mike Epps lands a dynamite Lou Rawls joke that made me laugh, flexing an unnecessary level of skill in a movie that doesn't deserve it. Akin to holing out to win the club championship at the worst golf course in town. 1.5/5
Hearts in Atlantis (2001)
Hannibal Lecter stifles his desire to feast on flesh by becoming a degenerate gambler with a sixth sense. Absolute treacle. Time that could've been better spent on a different Steve King adaptation, like Maximum Overdrive 2. 2/5
Running Scared (2006)
Easily the worst movie I've watched this year. Imagine the stupidest people on the planet penning a Tarantino knockoff and their biggest takeaway is they should also have characters that say the n-word. Paul Walker is mesmerizingly awful, to boot. He's given nothing to work with and does even less with it. So, the good: This movie is strangely obsessed with hockey. There's an ice rink massacre where a character is tortured by slapshots. Vera Farmiga cry-shouting about an upcoming minor league game during a burgeoning tragedy is high camp. I almost want to recommend it for that. Roger Ebert gave this three stars! 1/5
The Avengers (1998)
Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman flirt cheesily for 90 minutes. Apparently, this flick was such a disaster in screenings that it was cut to bits in editing. The resulting theatrical version has a disjointed, dreamlike quality that's like watching a bunch of loosely connected trailers for other movies. Aside from Sean Connery being the living embodiment of 'grandpa, no,' I didn't hate it. 2/5
Check out my Letterboxd if you're bored.
Show Report
HEALING GEMS / ORA COGAN / PINK TRASH CAN / LAENA - 12/6/2023
Apologies if these write-ups are more truncated/brainless than usual. I'm burnt to a crisp mentally. If someone did an MRI of my melon, it would look like the remains of a sloth caught in a forest fire.
This was one of those varied bills I wish we got more of, a real "who's available?" smorgasbord. Pink Trash Can opened, playing what I can only describe as someone mashing up Windy & Carl, post punk, and folk rock and erasing most of it. Interesting in theory, but a weirdly sedate choice to kick off the night. Its set was also a harbinger of the rough mix most acts received on the night: what needed to be loud was quiet, and vice versa. For the record, its 2021 full-length, "What Are They Saying Is The PTC?", is far more successful than what I witnessed, mainly because you can turn it up.
Laena Myers, previously of FEELS and The Like and currently playing violin in Numb.er, hasn't released much under her own name yet — just "Give 'em Hell," the debut single from a forthcoming album — but I'm now following her Bandcamp if that tells you anything. Her set was primarily ballads emphasizing negative space in a way that might come from her classical/experimental background. The twist was that the songs weren't cold, cooking with a Mazzy Star-ish, hot-summer-night warmth. The violin was a nice texture, too.
Ora Cogan's great new album, Formless, finds the moody middle ground between post-punk and alt country. That middle ground turns out to be a ghostly tweener dimension where both styles' jangly timbres smear together into the aural equivalent of a hot breath on glass. Naturally, it would be hard to reproduce that kind of sound live, and Cogan and company didn't try, wringing these songs out and ending up with something rawer and rootsier. It wasn't quite a night at the honky tonk, but it wasn't that far away from it either, showcasing just how good the bones of these songs truly are when removed from their diaphanous window dressing.
I had to bail before catching Healing Gems, which is a shame since they supplied the stage's most eye-catching feature: two over-sized, kitschy light-up palm trees. And that's what you get with the sextet's music, a lounge-y take on tropicalia and bossa nova. Healing Gems has a new album in the future. I'll check back in when it drops.
BOTCH / MUTOID MAN / DUMMY - 12/7/2023
I'm sure Los Angeles's Dummy is sick of the Stereolab comparisons. I'll try not to be as lazy, but the quintet's amalgamation of '60s psych, motorik beats, and shoegaze makes that challenging. Anyway, it gets points for holding its own as a left-field opener for a metalcore bill. Not all the music landed for me, but the more driving material was OK. And I wouldn't mind catching Dummy again at a venue that allows them to have more of a stage presence.
Watching Stephen Brodsky in full rockstar mode is ridiculous in a fun way. That's pretty much where I land on Mutoid Man: the classic don't like 'em on record, but don't mind 'em live soft putdown.3 Experiencing Brodsky, drummer Ben Koller, and bassist Jeff Matz shred in front of you is hard to hate, even if I find the heavy metalisms forced. But a pumped-up crowd can make you forgive a lot of stuff. To that end, a pit broke out during one of the faster songs, and when someone bumped into me, I realized it was my bud Andrew, whom I wasn't expecting to see there. Uh, hey, dude! Look at that: Mutoid Man bringing friends together.
As soon as Botch launched into "To Our Friends in the Great White North," the crowd went off, turning into a mass of writhing bodies. I was again absolutely soaked in beer from unaware (and perhaps unwilling) pit participants. And in that second before my back hurt and I decamped to drier environs, it might as well have been 2002 again. The legendary quartet seemed in good spirits, too. Singer Dave Verellen asked the crowd to heckle him between songs and immediately got hit with a "play the hits!"4 David Knudson strummed his guitar like an MMA fighter trying to pound through a guard. And I'm usually pretty whatever about light shows, but the atmosphere created by Botch's setup added something to the performance. Ruled.
The setlist was an interesting mix. The only An Anthology Of Dead Ends track that wasn't played was "Micaragua," while a good chunk of We Are the Romans didn't make the cut. For my money, the best songs were from American Nervoso, particularly "Thank God For Worker Bees," which was one of the best concert experiences I've had this year. When Botch closed its encore with "Hives," it tightened the bow on a show I've been waiting over 20 years to see. I'll concur, Chuck Mangione: It sure did feel so good.
LORD MARZ / CORPUS / MISTER FISTER / ANCIENT ENEMY - 12/8/2023
Local metal shows are my comfort zone; in this case, four bands in the Riverside County area playing a free birthday show.
If you've been reading this newsletter since its inception, you know the score with Ancient Enemy. You can check out a podcast running down its debut EP here.
Mister Fister is a thrashy quartet that I'm guessing is fairly new since it lacks a web presence. This comparison makes it sound weirder than it was, but it was like early Mr. Bungle filtered through Acid Bath.
For good reason, Corpus is one of the bigger draws in the scene, playing an energetic version of black 'n' roll that also reminds me a bit of early Sarcófago. Also, one of the players in the Encyclopaedia Metallum band pic is wearing a Deadguy shirt, so, you know.
This was the second time I've caught Lord Marz. I like this band. Trad Belt heavy metal with black metal undercurrents and a sci-fi concept. A frog mask placed on a mic stand named "Gorg" (I think?) occupies center stage. My kind of stuff. Yvan Vera has an excellent voice, especially when ascending into a falsetto. Fun.
WILLIAM BASINSKI / EARTHEATER / KING WOMAN - 12/9/2023
I successfully missed what I think was a King Woman DJ set by performing an act of spontaneous journalism: asking security about the weirdest thing they've confiscated during bag checks. Are you ready for this? Vibrators. Plural. Their rationale was unexpected, too. They're not prudes; it's just that you could potentially brain a performer with a well-aimed battery operated dildo. I'm imagining someone rearing back as if they're throwing a javelin and launching a vibrator set to "heavy load" at the stage.
Eartheater. Uh. Pass.
William Basinski came out and talked for five minutes about Madonna while waiting for his laptop to boot up. It was like Joan Rivers setting up a punchline that never came. Unexpected. I dug it. Instead of a more po-faced, very serious ambient set, it was a solid icebreaker. After seemingly finding the first loop of the night via shuffle, Basinski then spent the next 45 minutes bouncing between his laptop, tape loops, and shortwave radio, knitting together a fascinating flow of tones that had a distinct and dramatic rise and fall. While I was up in the nosebleeds and couldn't hear much besides the music, my friends who sat closer to the stage said that, during one of the quieter movements, the venue's kitchen started washing dishes, so there was an additional texture of clattering glasses and high-powered sink jets. Hey, just a little John Cage for you. Basinski's encore consisted of playing Alva Noto's recent cover of Bowie's "Subterraneans," which features Martin Gore on vocals and Basinksi on saxophone. Basinski thought he might as well make good use of the superior sound system while he had the opportunity. I can't fault the logic. The last treat, or "pudding" as Basinksi put it, was a 15-minute version of "Melancholia II." After that weeper, Basinski returned to serenade us with a Christmas carol. Great vibes, and thankfully vibrator free.
Other Stuff
I've got a good story but I ran out of time so I'm going to punt until next week. Until then, enjoy my current editing companion, A.M.C.'s recent 360° set.
Upcoming Stuff
See above for all the reasons I'm desperately trying to catch up. Here are a few preorders I haven't blabbed about yet:
Embryonic Devourment, the brutal death metal band that once had Trichomoniasis/Potion's Hunter Petersen on guitar, has "reworked" some old material.
USA Nails, one of the best rock bands going, has a new one out in March. The two songs available to stream sound like Mclusky landed on Dischord.
I haven't had much of a chance to give it a full listen with my undivided attention, but Second Spectre's A Cast of Memories has piqued my interest. Noisy industrial.
And the great Kali Malone has a new set of songs "for pipe organ, choir, and brass quintet." If anything will warm me up this winter, it will be that.
Shows:
JEFFREY MARTIN / ANNA TIVEL - 12/14/2023 (tix)
Shout out to tours that hit multiple locations in the area. I thought I missed my chance last week. Nope!
On the fence: CATTLE DECAPITATION / IMMOLATION / SANGUISUGABOGG / CASTRATOR - 12/15/2023 (tix)
I'd love to see Immo again, but…this is not the bill for me. Also, I can't stand the venue. Across town, Thou and Graf Orlock are also playing this night. I, however, will probably be skipping both for Disco Night. I am who I am.
Follow me on IG for upcoming release natterings and show dispatches.
Hocking My Wares
Nothing new. Presumably, the aforementioned Black Market year-end list will be out this week. I'm shooting for next week to wrap up Plague Rages' coverage. I also need to finish a Runout Grooves podcast that has been sitting on the back-burner for months. Is anyone a podcast editor? Message me?
Check out Wolf's other garbage: https://linktr.ee/wrambatz
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She recently posted a great version of "When the Levee Breaks" that I wish made this set, so I'm guessing it would be in that vein.
Marr plays on seven tracks and has writing credits on two on the original album tracklist, the Nick Lowe-quality "The End of a Perfect Day" and "You & Me Baby."
I'm weird about Brodsky's discography. I don't think I like much of it outside his stints in Cave In and Converge. Quicksand doesn't count. Kid Kilowatt, maybe? You'd think I'd be more into his work. I don't get it either.
Shout out to the person in my area who lobbed a "fuck Minus the Bear!"