Missive 80
15-08-2005
Singled Out

Missive 80

Dedicated with love to Kelly and Mark

Okay two more quick fire album specials – see previous missives for really pissed off explanations – after this there should be two or three quick fire Singled Out’s proper to contend with – have fun – any complaints, compliments or general whinging to mark@losingtoday.com

Mark
X


Albums featured –

Isobella, Mikki James, 55’s, the Plague, Idaho Falls and the Evil Queens.

Isobella
Surrogate emotions of the Silverscreen
New Granada

Lose yourself in the twinkling folds of Florida based duo Isobella’s (Brad Anderson and Laura Poinsette) third full length and chances are you’ll never want to return to the hustle and bustle of every day life ever again for it offers sanctuary and solitude from a maddening and uncaring world – for the aural snow globe that is ‘Surrogate emotions of the silver screen’ is not so much an album as such but, beset by a hushed grace and a unerring tranquil like inner glow, more like a church recital.

Richly lavish in honey combed stellar pop these nine cuts silkily soothe, caress and lay you to rest spellbound beneath a colourful haze of lulling lunar scapes, the melodies interlock and intertwine lovingly in to each other like sleeping lovers (check out the delicious ‘p to m’) to be teasingly extracted and shaped into celestial gems that at times take what seems like an age to bear fruition to unfurl and indulge yet given space patience is rewarded ten fold.

Compared in passing to the Cocteau Twins it’s easy to see why, Isobella maintain a stately presence providing a delicious procession of tender chord cascades that are charged with hope, ambition and promise while Laura’s softly sensual vocals glide over the top barely clipping the surface. The peek-a-boo like chocolate box of delights ‘Whale in lake Ontario’ is by far the albums most sedate and focused cut, naively charming it might be yet it has that sumptuously eerie aspect of Fraser and Co exchanging sugary kisses with a seriously chilled out Bang Bang Machine. But then for me what Isobella present is a cross way divide between the more pop fixated moments of both Durutti Column and Yellow 6, unlike fellow space cadets treading the dream pop’s milky way Isobella’s melodies don’t so much shimmer but swoon majestically creating slowly unfurling effervescent sonic figurines scratched subtly by the infusion of dissipating swells of feedback as found on the longing ‘Brown on White’.

Yet like the aforementioned Yellow 6 the duo’s ace up the sleeve is their ability to craft celebratory sonic salutations that belie a desolate ache that draws you close to its intimacy – such as the elegantly threaded ‘Majestic’ or the soul sapping ‘Wrapped in Plastic’ and just when your back is turned they slip in the epic slow burning and windswept grandeur of ‘Miles and Time’ with it’s vaguely middle eastern textures to keep you, one suspects, on your back foot and guessing. Quite a beautiful thing all said and done.


Mikki James
Guess What…
Xemu

What can I say – short, sharp and straight to the point.

At 26 minutes in duration the fourth long player from ex Thin Lizard Dawn bassist Mikki James doesn’t stick around to check whether it’s out stayed it’s welcome but then there was never going to be any fear that it would. These 10 cuts scream to be hyped, a charging collection of no nonsense stripped down back to basics attitude that’s milling around on a street corner waiting for a passing bandwagon to lead and call it’s own.

‘Guess what…’ doesn’t seek to change music neither does it promise to carve a new generic form for some hapless music journalist to hang a name upon – fuck it’s not even new – just pure unadulterated direct strutting three chord pop borne out of a pickled collective conscience recapturing their youth and having a ball whether you dig it or not. In a nutshell this is someone’s idea of a dream mix tape of all your favourite ear gear where you’ll find the distant echoes of Steppenwolf, Petty, T Rex, Thunders, Pistols, Ramones, Rocket from the Crypt and more besides mooching about its sulphate grooves.

‘Guess what…’ bleeds sharpened hooks and tunes so catchy and straight forward sounding that you’ll be banging your head against the nearest wall wondering why you never thought of them yourself, a freakin floorshow of frantic three chord jaw droppers – just check out the petulant title track with it’s ‘guess what...fuck you’ chorus destined in time to be the ritual head play along with the obligatory finger every time someone really pisses you off. Elsewhere the cool as fuck Eddy Cochran ‘Something Else’ via the Pistols swagger of ‘Can’t get loose’ is so groovy and hot you’ll need replacement hips made of asbestos to stand the pace while the scuzzy ‘In the Zoo’ is a frayed They Might be Giants dragged kicking and screaming through a thorny hedge backwards. But then you could do worse than take a peak at the heart stopping panic attack inducing pyrotechnic power pop of ‘Aishah’ which is all you wished Frank Black’s solo career would have been all condensed into a swift but sure spiked 100 seconds. I could go on but I think you get the picture – you need this.


The 55’s
Cobra
SL

The 55’s are blues evangelists who come to convert. They come from Edinburgh, that’s Edinburgh via Kentucky, Detroit, Mississippi Delta and Manchester. They come carrying a battered suitcase that contains the bruised and broken manuscript for the blues except there are pages missing.

They cruise this nation crooning to a hybrid mix of decaying death rattling blues riffs that have been bastardised and pummelled into spasmodic, chaotic bar room brawling Dinosaur Jnr aftershocks (‘Can’t Sleep’) eyeballing what appears to be the remnants of a riotously ramshackle road crash of splintered C-86 classics and erstwhile crudely jagged and jarring frantic chord work outs a la early career Nightingales, Stump and Half Man Half Biscuit (the latter without the barbed humour).

You will either love them with an undying passion or hate them with an unwavering vengeance.

The 55’s are four gentlemen – mother, elvis valentine, el nino and 5 string al – one suspects not the names they were given at birth. They are the distant cousins of the much missed Gallon Drunk (check out the opening strides of the unkempt cool that oozes from ‘Humdinger’ just before it tailspins into a wicked and furious fuck up of early Fall in a stand off with Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon) though while lacking in rawness of Johnston and Co’s brutalised and distorted rockabilly the 55’s present a cleaner sound (though crudely so) that shifts awkwardly refusing to hang its hat upon any given generic reference so that your confronted by stuff like the wired and kooky sounding ‘Spanish Song’ a truly discordant campfire wrecker blessed with frantic signature switches that unexpectedly halts mid way through and has a change of heart to re-emerge as an eerily smoking Western siesta of post gunfight cigarettes breaks and Latino vibes. Compare that to the manic slaughter house frenz of the brief and blistering electric shock inducing ‘Command and Conker’ and you sense that there’s no formulated master plan at work here but rather more these are just crookedly natural dislocated ditties oozing uncontrollably from the seams of discordant collective.

Elsewhere ‘Height of Nashville’ splits the DNA of the Bad Seeds ‘The Mercy Seat’ and transplants into an undernourished chassis of what sounds like a train going ten to the dozen over a cliff top while stranger still ‘Vegas Death Grip’ is REM’s ‘It’s the end of the world as we know it’ fed spiked cocktails and then dragged for dear life by its hair roots just for the hell of it. Best of the set though is the rampant ‘Craighouse Hill’ belying a more than obvious homage of sorts to the Modern Lovers – nuff said.


The Plague
X Tapes
Bin Liner / Detour

You do get to wondering where the hell they get this stuff from. Bin Liner is eclectic imprint run by those dudes over at Detour home of your wig flipping and boogying Mod and beat pop sounds. Bin Liner is the punk off shoot in the grander scheme of things trawling up some of the great lost two and three-chord snotty nosed attitude-laced gems of the late 70’s. The label opened its account in 1998 with the long sold out and absolute awesome ‘I hate dead popsters’ by the Hammers. Courting controversy in terms of taste it paled into insignificance for the labels second outing – the truly worrying and horrid ‘I’m into Necrophilia’ by the Amazing Space Frogs. Since then there’s been a plethora of ‘Bored Teenagers’ compilations featuring some of the rarest cuts from those spiky halcyon days of 1977 – 79 – to be added further shortly by the release of ‘Volume 4’ – on top of that there’s a long lost Pork Dukes re-release from ’77 that we’ll have to track down plus this rather raw but pretty damn smart anthology of sorts from Catford punksters the Plague.

So elusive and pretty much little known are this lot that even Vernon Joynson’s excellent ‘Up Yours’ guide doesn’t mention them and believe you me that is some feat. According to the attending press release this lot where still at school when the plot was hatched in the Winter of ’76 to form a band – one cult single under their collective belt – ‘In love’ – and a second single for many years thought withdrawn (‘Out with me all night’) was the short and brief legacy they left. This album features the entire recorded output of the band and includes their first ever recordings made in one of the band member’s parent’s front room. Nearly thirty years on the band have recently resumed the conflict and have returned to the studio with - in their words ‘renewed enthusiasm’ so this collection serves a timely reminder of what was.

Okay 14 tracks is the deal here – quality allowing, the original singles (the barn storming ‘In Love’ has a riff that pre-dates the Pistols ‘Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle’ and has a saccharine middle break that could easily be Jilted John trashing the Bay City Rollers back catalogue for fun) and their attending b-sides are all included for the first time on CD. The set opens with a curiously faithful albeit heavy hanging and slightly de-tuned re-reading of the old Lennon / McCartney classic ‘Come Together’ before levelling the decks with the frantic adrenalin charged nasally delivered (a la Steve Marriott / Small Faces) pogo-tastic three chord shoe shuffling ‘Lay me in the moonlight’. ‘Nuffin Doing’ is so ropey and energetic that you can see why this lot where long time favourites on the live circuit appearing with the likes of Charlie Harper’s UK Subs and the legendary Slaughter and the Dogs – in its three minutes duration its brash, wired (at times not unlike the stuff found doing its thing on Chron Gen’s debut long player ‘Chronic Generation’) and just the right side of the vomit brigade chalk line that would later be breached and reduced to comic caricature by the likes of the Toy Dolls and Tenpole Tudor (but then this isn’t without its own elements of inane dippyness just check ‘Er’) while at six minutes in length ‘End of the World’ must have seemed just like that to a spiky audience who would have been cacking themselves that anything over three minutes in duration was worryingly veering into Yes territories. ‘I don’t wanna be like Jimmy’ is pretty much everything you need to know about the second coming of punk / oi all neatly condensed into 150 seconds of putrid high rolling wiry sulphate sonics. ‘Dog Days’ reveals an incredible sense of maturity in terms of song writing and delivery that’s not a million miles in terms of style and spirit from the gear that Generation X were moving towards on ‘Valley of the Dolls’ – the prophetically titled ‘Stop’ wraps up the set - a stripped down hand clapping tangy sugar coated fluffy pop kind of thing with Sue Slack doing her best Debbie Harry impersonations – during which you can almost envisage the band packing up their gear and hanging up the ‘closed’ signs to quietly slip out of the rear exit.


The Idaho Falls
Concrete Prairie
Tone 2

‘Yes, indeedily doodily’ as the long suffering neighbour of Homer Simpson, Ned Flanders would no doubt cry if he ever got to be within ear-diddly distance of this gem.

‘Concrete Prairie’ is the second full length from LA based country bumpkins the Idaho Falls and well I’d have to say one listen and I was floored - take my word for it this is an album that’s so unreal it’ll make you cry.

Personally I’d have to admit that the old country music side of things kind of passed me by – sure I know all the Gram / Springfield / Nesmith stuff and probably more besides but what I feel truly comfortable with can in all honesty be written on a postage stamp. That said when you hear something as exquisite and breezily bright and beautiful as this then you get to thinking that maybe – just maybe you’ve done this style of music a massive disservice.

Okay a very brief potted history of the Idaho Falls would read – formed in 2001 by Ray Richards (Acetone, Hope Sandoval and The Warm) and like minded Heather Goldberg (who sounds like at varying times like a cross pollination of a young Dolly Parton and Laura Cantrell who herself sounds like a young Emmylou Harris – listen out for the exhaustive ‘Luck in Love’ to see I’m not wrong a cantering corker that steam rolls all the way from Nashville directly to the doorstep of 706 Union, Memphis) recruit ex and current members of Cake, Black Eyed Peas and Frausdots – record debut album ‘The Campfire’ and the 4 song ‘House’ EP and become the hottest property on the LA underground scene.

‘Concrete Prairie’ is a gorgeous porch lit pic ‘n’ mix of wonderfully drifting sweetly cured timeless vibes from the old country that have been left to mature under sultry southern skies, the heavy presence of the pedal steel guitar gives it an authentic flavour that beams brightly even in the dark. Twanging riffs, homely honky tonking, lolloping rhythms (the drunken ‘Jasmine’), country ballads (the beautifully encoded rustic charms of the lilting ‘My favourite one’ with its scantly Neil Young references) and campfire curiosities (like the dozing instrumental ‘Ponderosa High’) is what you get, ‘Concrete Prairie’ explores the lighter more chirpier and innocent aspects of country music’s back waters none of that miserablist alt. Country stuff here, this is your pure cotton picking hand holding lovelorn boy / girl pop we’re talking here though delicately threaded with the subtle weave of Hawaiian like textures – just check out the breathlessly jaunty title track which from the shimmer of grass skirts suddenly blossoms to appear as a tangy slice of arresting 60’s scented West Coast chiming candy pop that if you didn’t know better you’d swear was Clock Strikes 13. Then there’s the smoking hillbilly tex-mexing smorgasbord delicatessen that is the moon shining ‘Desert Rag’. Me personally though it those darn harmonicas that filter through the gem like ‘Dead Horse’ that gets my vote never could resist the blighters. All said and done ‘Concrete Prairie’ is in a root ‘n’ tootin class of its own.


The Evil Queens
First it boils, then it spills
Addison

Malignant, raw and spiteful – just how pure wholesome rock ‘n’ roll should be.

The third full length from Columbus, Ohio based quartet the Evil Queens sees them ensconced on NY’s Addison records, a lot of blood, sweat and love has gone into this recording – their previous albums taking less than a week in total to nail while this baby has been nearly a year in incubation left to fester and mature – and boy it shows.

Often compared to Queens of the Stone Age which is fair comment given this album takes its cue from Homme and Co’s blistering ‘Rated R’ oozing as it does that same locked down tight as a gnats arse pummelling paranoia. Yet for all that for me personally the Evil Queens personify that spiritual hunger and simmering raucous loose canon like edge that possessed Nirvana in that interim between the brash raw as fuck youthful petulance of ‘Bleach’ and the refined and honed blueprint that crawled all over ‘Nevermind’. Add into that very special chemistry elements of the stripped down three chord throttle of early Monkeywrench with the subtle essence of Detroit’s much underrated Big Chief’s ‘Face’ to muddy the mix and you have yourself an uncompromising hi-fi humping hot pot of no nonsense in your face head jarring rawk.

‘First it boils, then it spits’ is a fast and furious cocksure street fighting wreckin crew assembled out of 10 crunching sub three minute workouts that usher in with an unconscionable sense of menace at their core, it’s a bludgeoning experience that spits, scowls and shunts its way from start to finish never letting up on its intensity until the parting desert swept summit between the Bad Seeds and Black Heart Procession rears it’s head on ‘Requiem for Antonio Pants’ but by that point your to sapped to put up any worthwhile struggle.

From the minute the tension brewing claustrophobic ‘Valentine’ kicks in your already under siege, this seizure inducing baby paces impatiently like a cornered and wounded predator sizing up its escape route while ‘American Cancer’ is a ferocious pedal to the metal affair that has all the enduring subtly of a hammer to the head. Then there’s the fucked up charred blues of ‘And Hell’ to contend with – think of a particularly impish and heavy-handed Mudhoney torching the discordant ramshackle mindset of the Birthday Party’s ‘Junkyard’. Best of the set though the hell bound demonic scorched earth dragster mayhem of ‘the Theme from Donovan’ comes tearing out like a rabid mutation of wired to the eyeballs Beastie Boys and Ministry and suggests that not only should you nail down all moveable household objects but perhaps consider moving zip code to escape the crater sized hole that this cutie will redecorate your living space with. So good it hurts – essential.