The Go - FIESTA (2013)

The Go are a Detroit band, and I could have saved my odd combination of ranting and praising of the Motor City for this post just as easily as throwing it in with the write-up for Blaire Alise & The Bombshells. However, I am not a terrible patient man and I had it written then so I posted it then. Moreover, there is some history to cover with the Go, both for them as a band and me as a listener. I've been listening to the Go since I was a high schooler, as I recall searching for their self-titled album in 2003 when I was a mere sophomore and just getting introduced many of the garage rock bands I still love via the Port Huron public library. So well, my memory is anything but a steel trap, I believe I was listening to their debut album Whatcha Doin' that came out in 1999. This is back when I still found the musical doings of Jack White to be worthwhile to hunt down, and there was a period that he served as the drummer for the Go. I've since grown out of any infatuation with Jack White, but I have still got a great endearment toward the Go.

Now, I haven't listed my chronology with the early albums of the Go to brag, but to say that I know the early stuff much better than their later albums and to point out that these guys have been at it for a pretty good stretch of time. The two core members of the group are John Krautner and Bobby Harlow, who have each been in the band for the entirety of its existence and share song-writing duties. There's been a huge evolution in the sound of the Go over these years since a dimwitted young man from the Thumb of Michigan found out about them, this is to say from very roughly recorded garage rock to a finely tuned psychedelic pop band. With this most recent batch of songs the Go are sounding ever more like the Kinks and the Zombies. This is a very welcome happening, as who in their right mind doesn't enjoy that 60s style psychedelic pop music? And to have seasoned songwriters, who've gotten over their youthful necessity to be super loud and settled into a more delicate genre is a fine trajectory. Moreover, they're not just trying it on for a few songs, the whole twenty track album are songs of this sort. FIESTA has reaffirmed by fandom of the Go and given me new reasons to hear what they might put out in the future.

To be had here:
The Go - FIESTA

The Gumbo Ya-Ya's - Superstitious Kisses (2014)

This is good news everybody. More South African garage rock fronted by Heino Retief. In case you're not as an avid of a follower of Retief's work as I am, I can happily recap. There was a little thing called the Revelators that only post-defunctly (I know I made that word up) sent SRM an album to share that was undoubtedly one of the most rocking albums I've heard through the inbox. Then there's the Future Primitives that equalled the garage rock intensity and made ripples all the way over the world with a split with the amazing French group Dusty Mush. Not resting on any laurels in Capetown, it seems there is a new group with a freshly released full-length I get to add to the pedigree. I should add that this new outfit has the same drummer, one Warren Fisher, as the Future Primitives and if he keeps this up he'll have me following whatever does as well.

Superstitious Kisses by the Gumbo Ya-Ya's doesn't leave the lo-fi garage rock realm that the Future Primitives and the Revelators occupied as well, which I still consider good news, never enough good good garage rock. The most noticeable difference is the guitar playing, which makes sense as that is the only musician that is changed out from the last Future Primitives record, with this album featuring a dude called Giovanni Votano. This playing suits what feels like an even more rockabilly, swaggering variation of garage from this nucleus of South African rockers. It's less fuzzed, not totally unfuzzed mind you, but ranges from subtle to showy, displaying some remarkable skill. The vocals are more forward, but still awesomely rather unintelligible until you listen several times. And of course the drumming and bass beat along just so sweetly it is makes for the whole damned album rather endearing. I can listen to albums like Superstitious Kisses for hours on end and I already have.

To be had here:
The Gumbo Ya-Ya's - Superstitious Kisses

Strange Lords - Strange Lords (2014)

Strange Lords is a two-piece outfit operating mainly out of Gainsville, Florida. The bands is comprised of Waylon Thornton, who usually releases music under as Waylon Thornton and the Heavy Hands, and Andrew Seward, who was formerly the bassist for Against Me! (a band I best recall as achieving considerable fame among classmates). It has been a minute since I've heard releases that either of these musicians would have been involved in, but I don't think you'll really need to be familiar with their histories to get what's going on with this album. It is intensely lo-fi rock and roll that prizes fuzzy guitar and thunderous drums above all else. Sure there are surf flourishes, stoner rock and vaguely psychedelic cord progressions or keyboard playing in the mix to give the albums texture, but the main this is some fast, short, almost entirely instrumental tracks that's rather bare bones rock. While not all the tracks are surf-esque the ones that are caught my ear the most including "Carroneros" and "Amano-Iwato." Although the final track is worth waiting for as it is has a very neat western sort of thing going on. A good start, and it will be interesting to hear what they produce with another release, especially if they push themselves something even more strange. I suppose there's another monster themed contender for the Drunken Draculas to have to worry about.

To be had here:

Strange Lords - Strange Lords

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

Magnus Dewi - Earth Plates (2014)

I get grumpy about writing up music at times. At these times I'll become detached from this blog, or at best write some reviews that are less reviews than me musing about myself. Check out the Leggy and Menschliche Energie posts to see that for yourself. And I liked those albums, liked them very much, mind you. Just didn't get my fucking kicks, looking like I can write or whatever by just describing the music. Well, this time I don't think I have enough words to tell you what the music is about. Magnus Dewi is the moniker used by a Frenchman play a music style that is of a decidedly American origin. So here is my attempt to explain that statement and turn a few people onto a genre of music I hold especially dear and this new French practitioner of it.

Earth Plates is tagged "american primitive" on the bandcamp page, which immediately caught my eye as this is the name given the style of playing done by a personal favorite musician of mine and something of a cultural hero in my life, John Fahey. This man was many things, but perhaps most centrally to this story is that he was a musician that came into adulthood in the period of the 1960s where in folk and blues revivals were gaining tremendous popularity in the United States. Fahey possessed a vast knowledge of American music of all sorts as a record collector, musicologist and songwriter and he didn't want to pigeonhole his music as "folk" like many of his contemporaries. He incorporated much more than the American folk tradition, pulling from the blues, gospel, bluegrass in the era that provided us with our modern conception of psychedelia to make a raw, essential American music. This has been called American Primitivism and has a listen of adherents to the form, but I still find Fahey's the supreme example. It isn't simple by any means, most of the best songs are long numbers that have a droning element in how this use repetition and variation to a degree that parallels the best of avant-garde psychedelic music.

For this to have traveled to Europe and been taken up by a skilled French musician is perhaps one of the more amazing and delightful features of this over globalizing world the internet is pushing us toward. Magnus Dewi has a stripped down, pure sort of interoperation of the style on this album. So skillfully are the songs played if given the album without context I could have mistook for an established player in the American Primitive pantheon like James Blackshaw or Leo Kottke. Earth Plates is an absolute delight to hear and I have already been lost of hours in repeated listening of this magnificence effort.

In case any of you wondered how I found this, it was a submitted album just like the dozens of others that come in every month. Good on Magnus Dewi for finding me, as I don't know if he heard me go off about John Fahey for several minutes on one of the earlier episodes of the podcast and how I find so much in his personal story, connection to entho-musicology and the sublimeness of his playing to be inspired by. Anything that invokes that strong attachment is wonderful, but to have a musician that can live up to that remarkably high standard is the truly exceptional aspect of this experience for me. So don't hesitate any longer and give a listen to Earth Plates by Magnus Dewi, put out by the Vilaine Mouche label.

To be had here:
Magnus Dewi - Earth Plates

Basic Printer - Moon Gear (2012)

Here we have a submission from Jesse Gillenwalters of Binghamton, NY, who makes creative electronic pop songs under the moniker of Basic Printer. "Moon Gear" is one of an impressive 9 releases, and is a concept record where the music serves as soundtrack to a fictional game about the planet of Platonia. It's easy to imagine, at least if the game is a video game, as this is synth-heavy music lending immediately lush, warm and colorful tones to these 10 songs.

While "Moon Gear" is a very accessible listen, it's not a straight-up pop record by most stretches of the imagination. There are stringed instruments throughout steering this toward the realm of chamber pop but the warped synth tones, of which there are many, keep that tag at a long arm's length. The record overall also stretches into the progressive and weird, especially on "Flora Aetus" and my favorite track "Knockout Mouse". But Gillenwalters' voice maintains a pop timbre when not heavily effected, giving some songs a Max Tundra meets Har Mar Superstar sort of vibe.

This is the second record I've heard out of Binghamton, NY that I've really dug (the first being Underground River). I'll have to put Binghamton on the short list for a possible Scenes Of A City post (check out previous posts for Guayaquil, Ecuador and Vilnius, Lithuania).

Get it here:

Basic Printer - Moon Gear 

Blaire Alise & The Bombshells - FOR MY DARLIN' (2014)

So as anyone that has ever paid the fuck attention to this blog or the podcast knows, I live in Detroit and I am not entirely jazzed about it. At least I am far more skeptical of it than most other people I know in this city, and I don't subscribe to the idea that the city is on some sort of trajectory for a rebound. In fact, I think I've been proven correct in my pessimism on the metropolis's prospects with all this bullshit on the bankruptcy that seems utterly nonsensical to me, but I guess necessity isn't always reasonable. However, I am not gloating that I was right to be doubtful about Detroit, I mean the odds were on this if you were to place bet at these shitty casinos we've now got here. Moreover, I fucking live here, it would only benefit me to see the city revive more. I get to grin and bear the ugly aspects of this city whether I am hopeful or not.

I say all this as a preface to the fact that Detroit is truly a mixed bag. In some ways good things come from bad things and vice versa, certainly not in a healthy balance but like a horribly out of whack scale might measure allotments of delightful features into the cityscape. For example, the place is cheap overall: low rent, drinks are reasonable, food prices aren't too high unless you want something from the new high-end grocers or restaurants that are popping up (even then nothing compared to the coasts), and gasoline is cheaper than places like Chicago or New England in my experience. This means what is poverty according to the government can still be livable for young adults without offspring like myself; not comfortable or luxurious but not nearly homeless either. No plane tickets to France in budget, but a steak to cook at home and a pack of decent smokes are achievable. Of course you gotta lie about not living to your car insurer or your premiums will double or triple automatically and I never learned how paranoid I could be until I got mugged, or how angry I could be until after the second time. But then again, the police can't be fucking bothered to stop you from having a beer in a park most of the time, nobody is gonna stop you from having chickens despite it technically being illegal, and riding a bike through this city can be remarkably fun because of how there's only one rule: don't let anything get too close.

Yet in all these pros and cons I've saved what might be the only trump card I really think the Detroit has, it's fucking amazing music. Getting into the Detroit garage rock bands of the 90s and early aughts are what initially hooked me on going back everyday to the Port Huron public library to check out CDs by the dozen. The Hentchmen, the Dirtbombs, Outrageous Cherry, the Come Ons, and naturally those wonderful early albums by the White Stripes and the legendary Gories. Now, I wasn't in a position monetarily, transit or otherwise to really see any of these bands until I was... 24, I think. But there was a dreamy, young and more naive version of me that listened to these groups rabidly, and was astounded to find very few people listened to these bands, at least until the White Stripes blew the fuck up like an atom bomb. It was like, for a hot minute the world looked at Detroit and recognized that we were doing something cool again, like some kind of a renewed Motown imagined for just a flash of instant. Then the world noticed everything else going on basically everywhere and we slipped back to where we were at before: a few really popular acts and a pyramid of other acts of less notoriety beneath. 

Yet, this is not a sad ending to Detroit's illustrious musical past. What sort of shit would that be? This city, if nothing fucking else, knows how to make some damned righteous rock and roll (and hip hop, techno and so on). I'd put this above the automobiles and the fact that we used to make Stroh's. And perhaps it is a nostalgia-based favoritism, but I think one of the new prime examples of this is Blaire Alise & The Bombshells. Nostalgic insomuch that her singing reminds me so damned much of Detroit acts I remember so fondly like the Fondas, the Detroit Cobras and the Come Ons with a healthy dose of Motown girl group and 50s rockabilly feel thrown in. She's playing to her crowd, that much is for sure, and I am eating it right up. And just to make me feel a bit older than perhaps I should, she's just a kid, as far as I know she's not even able to buy herself a beer yet. Basically, at this point the fans of Detroit garage rock should be on board, and those of you unfamiliar with this shit have a lot of homework to get done...

To be had here:

Blaire Alise & The Bombshells - FOR MY DARLIN'

Menschliche Energie - Billy EP (2014)

While I normally throw a group of EPs together into a longer post, for whatever reason I want to say a bit more about Menschliche Energie. Perhaps it'll be clearer to both you and I by the time I finish this write-up. Now I'd never heard of Menschliche Energie before I discovered Billy EP after rolling around on bandcamp pages for a few hours. That's not terribly unusual for any of us at Spacerockmountain to do, but I've always felt a strange need to assume the role of a champion for the music I find in this method. Sure I talk up and will recommend the shit out of submitted material, even follow the band myself and make sure I am not missing out on new releases, but I always envision myself as a loud fanboy in this scenario. I am cool with all this, in fact I enjoy the fantasy, or slight reality, that I'm your buddy giving you a heads up on some cool tunes. It changes, however so subtly, when I pull out of the infinite depths of the internet a particular EP, whether or not these fellas are actively seeking promotion or not, and tell you, "This is some real tight shit."

It is that infiniteness that is the issue. It isn't just infinite to me, but to everyone using the internet, and I am just making more infinity every time I feel the need to write something up and publish it here. Truth is I want you guys to be like "yeah, that's cool" but most of the time I am just staring at a void full of endless more music to hear, books to read and movies to watch that can make one feel uncultured despite a lifetime of consuming memes and media.

Yet in a desperate hope that this does fall down some endless void, I'm telling you that I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Menschliche Energie's Billy EP. It is unsurprising at how well-crafted their songs are once I knocked around their bandcamp page. They've got releases from as far back as 2003. These guys are veterans at what they do. And what they do is snyth-heavy post-punk rock. It's absurdly able to blend a James Dean, leather jacket rocker style with the ultra-Mod and flamboyant 80s music that succeeded that notion. The songs are brief and don't jerk themselves off in anyway for having been a longstanding band from Nürtingen, Germany, but rather show a seasoned musicianship that knows excellently how to cut off the excess fat, leaving just enough to make it tasteful but not chewy.

To be had here (NYP):
Menschliche Energie - Billy EP

Space Rock Mountain Podcast 21 - Lost Audio, Spite, and Ghost Capital

Interview with Ghost Capital.



Conversation related to the following tunes.

Brownout Presents Brown Sabbath - Into the Void
Buttering Trio - Mean to Me
XTR Human - Dysfunction

Six Organs of Admittance - The Lost Electric Six Organs (2013)

I have been a huge fan of Six Organs of Admittance and Comets on Fire since my Santa Cruz days in the early 2000s. They were sage patriarchs of the psychedelic music scene in the city, and would go on to being internationally recognized powerhouses by the middle of said decade. Craig and I talked at length in the second episode of our podcast about the Comets on Fire house show we witnessed and the effect it had on our relationship with music.

Thankfully, someone is keeping the Comets on Fire flame alive, and it just so happens to be their frontman, Ethan Miller. Miller has been busy with Howlin' Rain, but managed to find time to start up a proper label (Silver Currents) to release rare live and studio recordings he has been involved with over the years. Rather than simply plopping down a few mp3s, Ethan is doing things right by releasing physical, handmade CDs and cassettes.

One of the standout releases thus far is The Lost Electric Six Organs record. I remember speaking with Ben Chasny briefly after a show in 2003, and he mentioned that he had recorded a whole set of tunes for his Six Organs project while working with his new band, Comets on Fire. Sadly, these recordings were never released/completed. Miller writes that "Chasny even designed a record cover for the LP release of this album but at some point it fell from his grace or just fell to the back of the burner and then off the stove completely, I'm not sure which."

Thankfully, these three tracks have been unearthed and given the proper release thanks to Miller. I have the cassette version myself, and you can see how these recordings offer a different perspective on psychedelia than Chasny was employing in his Six Organs project at the time. He would reunite with his Comets brethren to record Ascent, but this tape is the only recorded version of these songs, and an excellent window into two band's at the height of their creativity.

Get it here:
Six Organs of Admittance  - The Lost Electric Six Organs (2013)