Lady Flint - Hard Time (2015)

The return of the garage rock duo from Marseille. Some might recall my having posted them in a Grab Bag last year and us discussing them in a podcast thereafter.  Then Lady Flint took it upon themselves to sample some of the audio from that podcast, so you can hear Elvis and I discuss the geographic origins of the band on the first song of this album. Made for a very surreal morning at work when I first heard it.

If you liked the EP from last year you'll nearly certainly like what you hear on Hard Time. Still a stripped down garage outfit of just guitar and drums with a ton of loudness and moderate distortion leveling it all out. Their playing is undeniable catchy and exciting, the sort of thing you're love to hear walking into a seedy dive bar, hankering for a night out. The singing is raw and loud, more forward than more garage rock I hear. Moreover it has a grunginess to it, by which I mean he elongates words and his throat sound dry and slightly raspy like Kurt Cobain so often did. I am not a huge Nirvana fan, but I can get behind what Lady Flint is doing here and I haven't a better example. Like Elvis did, I can see why people would confuse them for an American band, but trust me, it is all part of the wonderful transatlantic cultural exchange.

Between Lady Flint, Pain Dimension, the Madcaps, Dusty Mush (which I just realized I haven't post on their full-length up for god knows what reason) the psychedelic and garage rock on France is blowing me out of the water on a routine basis. Gonna have to get my shit together and find my way to France sooner or later.

To be had here;
Lady Flint - Hard Time

Space Rock Mountain Podcast 22 - On the Lash with Prince

With music discussion related to:

Amerigo Gazaway - Stakes is High
Pain Dimension - Brainwash
Ralph Soul Jackson - Matchbox
Bedroom - Drift Away
Prince - The Beautiful Ones

EP Grab Bag vol. 66

The latest selections of EPs that I've heard. An assortment of submitted material and my explorations of labels that I've found interesting from prior submissions and poking around in the catalogs of. I feel like between Elvis and I that we burn right through the EPs we get sent, so I particular encourage you to send your band's EP in or tell your music making pals about it. They don't even have to be especially new, but it helps if they sound fucking sweet. Naturally, these are not in any order other than just what I clicked on first.

To be had here:

The Madcaps - The Madcaps (2014)

To begin with a French lo-fi garage punk band, which is nearly without question something I'd be down to fuck around with. This EP was put out by the French label, Howlin' Banana that you might recall from the last Grab Bag with Qúetzal Snåkes. So anyway, this Rennes-based group has a far more retro sound that will invoke the 60s pop and rock. The songs are even sung in English, which lends to the feeling of mimicking the British Invasion. However I think it is in an irreverent, tongue-in-cheek attitude based on the lyrics. Yet all that said, I cannot deny for a fucking second that they songs are absolutely fucking amazing.

The Cruelest Animal - After The Waves Devour Us All (2014)

A submitted EP from a Los Angeles band that makes some heavy-duty tunes. Combining aspects of electronica and metal with things I am too oblivious to recognize these guys have made some music that is intense, full and as rhythmic as it is dissonant at times. It kinda sounded like club music for robots and hulks, and that is to say the only sort of club music there ever need be. I mean this shit got me pumped up in unexpected ways and each time left me thinking it could've been longer and I would have just kept liking it.

Pain Dimension - Brainwash (2014)

Bopping right back to France with this Parisian band. These guys have been associated with Cheap Miami, a label that is endearing itself to me every week lately. This EP is made up of fuzzy, loose psychedelia bringing constant bass, flailing guitar and distorted singing. Bluesy, incomprehensible, bass-heavy and energized enough to shoot a rocket into the air. This fits right into the sweet, sweet void that my soul has and makes me forget troubles. My motherfucking bread and butter, dogs. For real, I think if my heart beat to these rhythms I'd be a superman.

Calliope - ORBIS (2014)

Now I drop the closest to my home we'll get today with fellow Midwesterners from Milwaukee. When I put this release on for the first time I was like "yeah, could dig this..." and by the second track I was already thinking "shit, this is really damn fine." The vaguely country-punk vocals really charmed me utterly. Then the instrumentation's softly psychedelic vibe with a bluesy and purposefully retro sound sold me completely on Calliope. I must imagine to see them live is a real treat, and I don't mean that to take a thing away from the wondrous recording they've got here.

Wild Raccoon - Mount Break (2015)

There's also a lot going on in France, not always for the better, but I am not gonna use my irreverent music blog to dwell on all-too-serious of matters. Rather I would like to focus on something the French have been constantly proving the world with and we'd be sorely lacking without. I am talking about arts and culture. The French are classy, we all wish would be as sophisticated as they appear in our public imaginations. This is even true when a Frenchman makes a fuzzy, sung in English, one-man band in the northern city of Lillie and names it Wild Raccoon.

Mount Break is a mesmerizing collection of lo-fi songs. Wild Raccoon's done an astounding job at showing a masterful talent at composing warm, fuzzy tunes that draw on garage rock, psychedelic, and surf is continuously recalibrated proportions. There's a remarkable juxtaposition at play in his songs. He cleared labored to make these cacophonous, loud and distorted sounds as compelling as possible. Making beauty out of an absolute mess is not unique to garage rockers, but I adore how they do it and I particularly like how Wild Raccoon managed to do so. Definitely the equal of perennial favorites Dusty Mush, Lady Flint, King Cayman or those dudes down in Capetown. Yet more particularly he reminds me of Ty Segall or his fellow Frenchman, Pain Dimension, though perhaps a bit less distorted and more psychedelic.

I'm not gonna pull attention to individual songs, as this is without a doubt the sort of album best heard from beginning to end, more than likely twice or thrice in a row. If you're interested in obtaining on a cassette the awesome folks over at Paris's Howlin' Banana Records have you covered. 

To be had here:
Wild Raccoon - Mount Break