Signs of Life

Dear Spacerock Mountaineers,

It's been almost 3 years since we've last spoke.

I've never stopped thinking about the music I'd like to play for you. 

Let's talk soon. 

All my best,

Amazing Larry

Palm - Ostrich Vacation (2015)

Hello Spacerock mountaineers,

Inspired by Antarktikos' recent post, I've decided to "get the lead out" and also thrust my fingers at the keyboard in a violent manner, hoping it'll make sense in the end.

Palm is a 4 piece, modern rock band who formed out of the Hudson Valley of upstate New York. They've since relocated to Philadelphia, lucky for me as I've moved from the young adult playground that is Portland, Oregon to the senior citizen waiting room that is Allentown, Pennsylvania. Palm seems to tour a lot so I hope to get a babysitter for whatever day that may be in the near future (check their bandcamp page for upcoming dates - European dates as well).

Ostrich Vacation is Palm's earliest release available on Bandcamp, and it's their only "pay what you want" offering... which I love because I'm both cheap and poor. It was originally released on cassette, still available here, as a part of a 6 part, 6 band series collectively called "Organechs".

This release finds the band in their primordial stage, where they were honing their skills more as instrumentalists than vocalists. The crux of Palm's early era is dissonant guitars wired into a series of dizzying yet tappable drum rhythms. If we're talking about genres and how this sound fits into some sort of lineage, you can hear elements of post-punk and post-rock, but Palm has taken those leftovers and elevated them into a unique dish, and as their later releases would display they truly walk a line
between accessible and inaccessible like, perhaps, no other band I've ever heard.

Fascinating and always offering something new with repeated listens, Ostrich Vacation is like an impressionist painting of a band on their way to becoming skilled pointillists.


Palm - Ostrich Vacation

Tentative Revival and General Recommendations

The key is to stop shaving and trimming.

It's been a bit shy of two years since I've sat down to listen to an album with the intention of writing about it here. Save for Larry's laudable efforts the page has blog has gone largely dark. Not sure how I feel about that yet, but this was such a large party of my daily routine for many years and I got to hear some many wonderful songs I still play frequently by doing this. Then again a lot changed since then. Grew my longest beard yet. Moved to the Hudson Valley in New York, being around hills is a nice alteration. selling wine and spirits at a little shop. Quite frankly a pretty dope gig. Married a woman, she is also pretty dope. We got a cat. Jury is still out on him.

Cat also acknowledges that smiling is frivolous.

Needless to say, I got a bit distracted and pre-occupied with other endeavors. To rephrase that, I stopped spending an unreasonable amount of time listening to obscure album and EPs and writing about it for no money. Rather I began getting paid to learn about the multifaceted and enlightening world of wine. As you can imagine I have an ever-growing pile of books on the subject and hundreds of bookmarked articles about all manner of grapes and producers and historical developments. However, I miss the background music of my life being an eclectic collection of artists from all over the world shepherding me through the day.

This is not to say I haven't been listening to music. In fact as a rule I have to for 5 to 9 hours straight a my job these days. And there are a few albums I wanna recommend that I've known about for a long time but feel I never got around to mentioning before. You'll have to do the minimal legwork to hunt these down in some cases, I am assuming you've got the wherewithal to find these in better quality and accessibility if desired.

Erkin Koray - Elektronik Türküler

Released in 1975, this is stunning example of the Anatolian rock genre. The richness of existing Turkish music and the advent of modern rock fused wonderfully, especially surf and psych/prog influences. The  resonating vocals are mesmerizing and instrumentation is uncannily cinematic, like the songs ought have been in dozens of films you've already seen. At very least listen to the track "Yalnızlar Rıhtımı" because it's relentlessly endearing.

Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers - Rock 'N' Roll with the Modern Lovers

I mean, I don't think I need to really explain why this album is great. Sadly I hadn't recognized it's full brilliance until we started playing it daily at the wine shop. Perhaps one of the most charming set of songs ever cobbled together. Sweetly childish and simple, but nearly nobody else could do with as much memorable elegance. Admittedly Richman has many other great song out there, but this has "Ice Cream Man" and "Roller Coaster by the Sea" on it. Unequivocally dope as fuck.

The Barbaras - 2006-2008

A no-brainer right? The band before Jay Reatard, Magic Kids and Wavves. I knew the three track long EP that had been widely circulating online for years but really those songs were blown out of the water by the revelations of the likes of "Topsy Turvy Magic" and "Annual Botanical." What nonsense this took so long to surface, but I'm ever so glad it did. Some of the very best garage-pop songs any could ever hope for. It both sounds and makes me feel fuzzy.

Loud Sun - Sea Grave (2017)

Loud Sun's Andrew Jansen and I have something in common: we both recently moved away from the west coast.

Making a new home for ourselves defines chapters in our lives. Death and birth. There are the big things we leave behind, like friends, which me mourn the loss of most immediately. And as time progresses, a deeper nostalgia for lost things awakens: yawning and stretching into fringe details, we begin missing the way the air felt in the morning, the sounds of a Baptist church choir practicing on Wednesday nights, the smells of nearby restaurants.

This melancholia can quickly become morose, especially if one allows the dust to settle.

Sea Grave is the second release from Jansen's Loud Sun project, and it feels like a love letter to the west coast in a lot of ways. Jansen is a keen student of mellow, sun-bleached, shimmering pop with wisps of psychedelia, though his bio suggests he may actually be a student of the natural sciences. Perhaps that's why he seems so adept at combining the feel of a place with his music.

From beginning to end, Sea Grave is a beautiful record, and you can purchase a cassette tape through his Bandcamp page. For myself, having moved from a more ideal scenario to a less ideal scenario, the music here feels penetrating and concise... an ode to a memory. The impeccable song "Teen Pyramids" has become my anthem of the autumn.



Link to Loud Sun Bandcamp page for Sea Grave, 10 songs:

Loud Sun - Sea Grave

Scrivener - A Signal (2017)

Olympia, Washington, where the smell of salt water competes with the aroma of roasting coffee (which smells a lot like burning toast), is also where some of music's most well known artists gestated and spewed forth definitive records of early American indie rock. It was ground zero for the Riot Grrrl movement, and both Beck and Modest Mouse recorded there. Kurt Cobain lived just east of downtown, where he wrote much of Nevermind - a record that sent a whole nation of angsty teenagers hurdling towards thrift stores, searching feverishly for smoke-stained plaid shirts. More recently, Olympia has spurred forth one of the greatest black metal bands in recent times, Wolves In The Throne Room, and has lead the country in amazing queer, d-beat, hardcore punk bands like G.L.O.S.S. and Slouch.

It's just happens to be a great town for bands. I remember walking downtown from my little black house near the San Francisco Street Bakery, and on almost every block you could hear bands practicing in garages, living rooms, and basements. The community is tight knit and insular which, while making the social scene a difficult nut to crack, makes for a strong and supportive environment for artists.

It's from this environment that my new favorite band has emerged. This is Scrivener's first recording I believe, and it's so good that I had to dust off this long-neglected blog to steer any lingering readers toward their bandcamp page. Their style is like glam-hardcore punk... and by "glam" I refer to the almost theatric vocal delivery. Usually with any genre of music, a vocalist will stick to one vocal delivery - singing, speak-singing (think post-motorcycle accident Dylan), screaming... etc. but Scrivener's vocalist moves fluidly through all, using a range of expression missing from the vast majority of punk singers, or rock vocalists in general. Take the screaming of any metal or hardcore band and add bit of animated, matter-of-fact conversation - it's such a fresh delivery that it keeps this record on constant rotation. Scrivener is simultaneously playful and brutal.

8 songs, pay what you want for digital or buy their self-released cassette tape through their bandcamp page.

Scrivener - A Signal

Favorite track:

Mica Levi & Oliver Coates - Remain Calm (2016)

Unsubscribing from junk e-mails has imparted an unnerving quiet.

I believed this would be a step towards freedom, mornings now unburdened by the periodic vibration of incoming mail. But now... now I suspect I've metamorphosed from creature to zombie of habit. Last night, awoken by a familiar glow, I became terrified to find my thumb controlled by movements of a memory. Unlock phone; check email application; turn phone off; open and unlock; check email; turn off... over and over and over. My undead thumb bends only at the hip like a forgotten grandparent who shuffles to the mailbox every afternoon only to find the same vacant shadow. My thumb, now a feedback loop, like an alcoholic that searches the recycling again and again for one drop, a neglected swig of whiskey, only to confirm the emptiness it already knows exists.



A series of empty dawns have emerged. Gone are the days of those quivering little jolts insisting I pause my life to check and delete, check and delete. Newlsetters, updates, notifications, advertisements... all those small reminders of my past. Clothing stores relentlessly reminding me of each approaching season and a hoodie I bought for some autumn, lost several years ago. Gone. Zillow emails that satisfied the curiosities of an armchair voyeur, taking me into homes I'd never afford, around towns I'd never live. Gone. Charities and political organizations I helped once, before I understood my economic situation as anything but dire.

Gone. I've shoo-ed them all away. The tactile buzzes, the audible chirps. No more little red numbers to offer hope of a hello from a long lost friend. No potential for restless declarations from smoldering hearts of past lovers. Those little red numbers could've meant literally anything - a wedding invitation, the birth of a new family member, a class action settlement worth hundreds. But in the end, the numbers always meant the same thing: "this much junk".

I have won the war. And now? Now, I am unburdened. Now my time is uninhibited. Ready to live each day uninterrupted. A new dawn of awesome unpopular potential. Still -  the thumb checks. Just to fill an emptiness. Everything's always empty. Just maybe, tomorrow something. Always maybe tomorrow.

Mica Levi & Oliver Coates - Remain Calm

Amyl and the Sniffers - Big Attraction (2017)

Every morning I wake up disappointed that our president isn't gone yet. Being on the west coast of the US, I feel the east coast has a good 4 hours to greet the sun, roll up it's sleeves, and take out the trash already. I'm sorry, that's an insult to trash. At least trash was, at one point, something we wanted.. something that was useful ... something we chose to own. This president is more like a stepped in pile of shit from someone else's dog, after years of picking up your own dog's shit.

Thank god for this release from Melbourne punk band, Amyl and the Sniffers. It's not too serious, but sexy and dangerous... just what rock music should be. I want nothing more to be in a sweaty club in Melbourne with a bunch of drunk punk Aussies watching this band tear the stage a new asshole.

These songs have some serious chops, played by musicians who have done their homework and gotten the sound down pat. It probably helps having Calum Newton in their lineup, a fucking awesome guitarist from Spacerockmountain favorites Lunatics On Pogosticks. But Calum keeps his guitar chops bottled up here, delivering chunky punk riffage, and offering his keen production skills to showcase the real star of the band: the sneering, bratty bite of Amy Taylor, a truly wonderful performer to lead this bunch of dirty, drunk and mulleted rockers from dewn undah.


Name your price. Not a clunker in the lot.

Sample song:

Bandcamp:
Amyl and the Sniffers - Big Attraction

GIANTOLOGY - TOUR TAPE (2017)

Last Saturday I went to a show, probably the first in 3 years. Aside from being mostly broke, there comes a point after seeing tons of shows where one becomes jaded. This is when you say crap like "I've seen better bands come and go, greater venues shut down or burn down" or other old-days-were-better-than-new sad horse jargon. I am guilty. Drunken leather clad crowds become coiffed and sober, bands get boring and derivative - becoming jaded is all apart of growing into a healthy, boring, derivative adult.


This show wasn't any different. But as I walk into Portland's premier sandwich shop rock venue, a surprise opening band gives promise for the evening. A duo is on stage wearing white hazmat onesies, and bizarre glasses that have open eyes painted over the lenses. A guitarist and a bassist play to a drum machine, and the music that comes out is like mid-tempo, lo-fi, Ramones meets New York Dolls glam-punk.

This is Giantology, a Chicago band that "IS NNOTT A KULT", according to their Facebook page. Their sound is simple, no frills, unpretentious, and catchy. Their look is creepy. It's a few small twists that turns something familiar into something memorable. I'm all for a gimmick, as long as it's well done. Oh, and their music is accordingly giant-themed. I encourage you to check them out, soon leaving the west coast for a southern US then up the east coast and back to midwest tour. Dates on their Facebook page.

Currently listening to:


Bandcamp link:

GIANTOLOGY - TOUR TAPE

Planet Namek - S/T (2017)

I have a general ignorance of states throughout the midwest and south. But I feel confident in making the blanket statement that they're probably like every state I have lived in: the bigger the city, the more diverse the culture and liberal the people. Outside of cities, you have to look and think like everyone else lest you be a terrorist, a fag, or a .....cuck?

Oklahoma, aside from being a place where garbage lawmakers are trying to shit on the rights of women, seems like it has alright cities, musically speaking. Oklahoma cities have birthed experimental pop bands like The Flaming Lips (from Oklahoma City) and The Starlight Mints (from Norman), the state's cities seem no stranger to more unconventional strains of music. I mean, Hanson was also from Tulsa, but we won't count that against them. 

Planet Namek, a Dragon Ball Z reference, are a Tulsa band also of the unconventional bracket, but of the deathcore, grindcore, whatever the hell variety of music this is. Not normally of fan of these genres, but this band is incredibly tight, heavy, and weird. And I love weird music. Although I can't find evidence of one on their Facebook page, they have a keyboard player, which is just fucking bonkers for bands of the screaming and growling variety (two singers here: one screams, the other growls). And was that autotune peaking around the corner? Planet Namek - you so crazy. Seriously a head scratcher, but all the songs on this, their first full length, are entertaining and never dull. Angry, disorienting, and awe-striking - much like how I feel every morning now that everything good is going to shit. But, with song titles such as "ARMPITTSBURG"  and "LUIGI BOARD", Planet Named remind us to not take things too seriously. 

Pay whatever you want to download over at their bandcamp page, 9 songs. 

Sample song:

Bandcamp link:

Planet Namek - S/T

Slackers - не буду этого помнить (2016)

I am gonna make a stab at posting again. Had the worst insomnia as of late, for over a month really. Making my mind feel like swiss cheese and all I have been able to keep up on is work, and not without feeling like a forgetful dope even then. Almost seems like a different era that I sat down so often to hear knew music. Something I'd like to do again.

So here is a treat, a Russian garage rock band. Assuming from the tags on the bandcamp page these are some young dudes in Moscow making lo-fi songs, perhaps partially out of necessity but also I'd wager they are fans of many awesome garage rockers we all enjoy. In fact this is made explicit when they cover Mr. Airplane Man's "Don't Know Why," something they share with the Brazilian band Hierofante Púrpura (it is very neat to hear the two versions back-to-back, and the Slackers translated it to Russian to boot). The songs are not too heavy, being a bit more garage pop or even college rock sort of fuzzy, weird tunes. Yet most fundamentally they are really great to hear, well composed and the Russian lyrics are smoother and more pleasant that I can say for most any other albums I've posted in that language or collect for myself. Perhaps I imagined this, but the second half of songs seemed more psychedelic as well.

не буду этого помнить, meaning "won't remember it" has been released by Dopefish Family. This is not the first album by the Slackers and is only of dozens the label as put out. I urge you to look more into them each.

To be had here:
Slackers - не буду этого помнить