Space and the City
Music
THE 2008 SKYLINE 50 – PART THREE
Dec 17th
UH OH! TODAY IS HUMP DAY! You know that means it’s time for part three of our countdown.
It’s Easier to be a Hypocrite – The Sour Notes
The Meat of the Fruit (Self Released)
With an exiled pedigree that’s as rich as the production on this, potentially the best sounding release to make it onto our countdown, we’re willing to take the title on ourselves to be sure this song, band and EP gets a wider audience (technically, this doesn’t qualify for the countdown as not a single member of the band lives in Houston anymore). There’s nothing particularly shocking or world music about the instrumentation, just judicious use of keyboards, background content electric guitars and fader levels that don’t stay in the same place the entire song (hello mute banks!). Again, a disheartening example of local talent putting out their best work after moving away and a reminder that by not opening ourselves up to a wider world, we’re leaving far too much aural pleasure on the table come desert.
Jazz June – The Tontons
Sea and Stars (Self Released)
Some people get the Tontons right away, and some people need a bit of a lense from which to view it. There was, for us, always something that kept us listening to their debut EP and sticking around for their shows long after we decided we didn’t really know how to approach either from a critical perspective. It’s clearly unique around town, worthy of its numerous accolades, and fires the same synapses that has us instinctively acquiring every Daptone and Stax track we can get our hands on, especially ‘Jazz June’ with its latin percussion and bright guitar chord work balancing out the bubbly leads that fill out the second half of the song. If we asked to pick a starting point for The Tontons evolution this would be it, cause we really feel this track and look forward to having a second chance on explaining how they register in our register on their next outing.
Lazy Bones – Papermoons
New Tales (Team Science Records)
Just last night, a friend of ours made the comment that coverage of local music was in grave danger of jumping the shark (we’d give them credit, but they’re not the type that’s into backlash) and we had to kind of sit there for a second and let it soak in that we were pretty culpable in that extremely truthful statement. Later, as we sat staring at the ten empty best records slots on the Village Voice’s Pazz and Jop ballot, we realized that there wasn’t much overlap between what we would tell you the ten best records this year were and what we were going to tell them. Now granted, we have a deliberately narrow editorial scope (we don’t even take into consideration for review most of the records that people outside the city would even know, such as I am..Sasha Fierce). But it was pretty gratifying to be able to type the name of this record in alongside the Fleet Foxes and Girl Talks and She & Hims of the world. Maybe we don’t have the momentum anymore to make it over the shark tank, but as we fall, too small not to fail, discovering records like this along the way certainly made it worth the ride.
Lead Skin – Buxton
A Family Light (Mia Kat)
We won’t hazard a guess as to how the members of Buxton ended up with a post-doc mastery of touching melancholy so early in their lives or catalog, and it goes without saying that their approach to it is neither hamfisted, corny, angsty or insincere. On ‘Lead Skin,’ for example, it’s clear they don’t actually have one, even if you block the lyrics out (which are great, btw). The song’s cripple creek acoustic guitars, lap steel specter and forceful piano are a sterling example of the outfit’s updated Americana and a reminder that quite a few acts in the city should be looking to their own backyard rather than the coasts for inspiration. A+ Very Fast Shipping Would Buy Again. No Shark.
Long Brown Hair – Welfare Mothers
Long Brown Hair 7″ (Self Released)
If 2008 was anything, it was the year of the return of the rawkus garage 7″, and this Sweatbox-recorded debut from the Welfare Mothers is decidedly part of that wave. Featuring an economy of sound and plenty of OH YEAHs, this ode to having a “sexy friend” doesn’t break any new ground but is a splendid gateway into an entire subgenre of good times, pull tabs, and the best satellite (or terrestrial) radio station going on right now. If you’re looking to get a bit of the throw-back feel without coming across as skate dad, catch this 7″ if you can and one of their shows like your button-up dickies top depends on it.
Migration – Future Blondes
1111 (Self Released)
At some point in the future, people from other planets (to say nothing of internet browsing teens from other cultures) will stumble across the Future Blondes recordings. Because theirs are electronic compositions, there is the temptation for us to think that they may be perceived as somehow more modern, or forward looking (as if the cheap-guitar industrial complex could ever be ground to a halt). But for us, these recordings and “Migration” specifically are so of this point in time and a deafeningly pessimistic short term outlook. The song’s title is randomly interjected into the track, distorted, with the force of strained neck muscles behind the all caps exclamation. Forced. This is the sound of forced, strained migration. Of men fleeing war and genocide. Of children and mothers rushing from broken levies and collapsing ice-shelf floodwater. Of wage-earners hallucinating to death in the desert, moments after begging to drink their compatriots urine just to try and cross a line on a map that will make it possible for them to send their children to school. Of gas running out and white flight from the suburbs and their collapse and ghettoization. Migration is an awful, nasty thing and that is what will make this recording so prescient to those that follow, for our future is their horrid past.
Modern Girl – Something Fierce
Modern Girl (Self Released)
Can these kids do no wrong? I mean, when is it that they’re going to come out with a batch of songs that makes us shrug our shoulders and say “meh” and go back to listen to whatever it was that they recorded before this. It’s like their future selves visited them in a time traveling telephone booth with a guy named Rufus and were like “Dudes. Here is your entire catalog, don’t make the mistake most bands make by not having each subsequent thing be better and more interesting than what preceded it, so go ahead and put it in the right order and get to releasing it” and they were like “That’s chill future selves, but we think we got this on our own” and then they went and setup a show in a Starbucks parking lot, and are so cool they actually ADDED scene points for doing that, and then got bonus mods because the whole thing was busted by the police and decided that rather than sitting on their ass and bitching about gas prices being to high to tour that they would spend the summer recording their next record even though IKE kept their power out for longer than anyone we heard of. So yeah, other bands, be more like Something Fierce.
Moving Pictures – News on the March
Almost Songs (Self Released)
Though Almost Songs was intended as a stop-gap recording just so they had something to get out there and consequently doesn’t feature the full arrangement of their live sets (and their released just too late to be considered for this countdown debut EP), this rendition of ‘Moving Pictures” is almost perfect as is. Sure, we’d like to hear the cello and drums in there, but the crucial elements are all in place: the songwriting and the vocal harmonies. From henceforth (and thank goodness someone finally proved everyone speaking to the contrary wrong) we shall no longer take “the vocal monitors in Houston clubs suck” as an excuse for why the singing in your band does. High fives News on the March, we’re totally stoked on spending some quality time with you in the years to come.
Nixon – Woozyhelmet
Get Down (Soda Pop Productions)
Way back in the day there was this girl in the scene named Jessica Nixon that was monkey barrel fun and for whatever reason we had a secret compact to always drink copious amounts of Goldschlager (ok, maybe just a shot) with her whenever we saw her even if it meant walking up the street to the store and buying a bottle and a flask so that it could be consumed in locations where it was not available and it was just like being back in college except that even in college we were smart enough not to drink that schleck and if there is any upside to her having moved to Austin it’s that we haven’t had to taste a drop of that yeech since she left. Oh, and this song is about that same Jessica Nixon and one advantage California Governor Schwatzeneger has over failed California Gubernatorial candidate Richard Nixon is that is that he can pack a bunch of ideas into a single long run-on sentence and get away with it because of his accent. Why aren’t you into this album yet?
Rickshaw – Sharks and Sailors
Builds Brand New (Self Released)
Not to contradict ourselves, but to completely contradict ourselves, we were actually big fans of all that hipster metal we said Sharks and Sailors had moved away from on this record, so it’s nice that they threw us a big riffed chunky bone of a treat to go bury in the backyard and retrieve when the situation warrants. A complete list of those situations is beyond the scope of this piece, but should be said to include overcooking the chicken during the final step of a long dinner preparation, playing 5 MINUTES OF HATE style video games, driving your tank around the Iraqi countryside, needing something to transition between Queen’s “Tie Your Mother Down” and Rusted Shut’s “Godstrike”on a mix tape, running from super fast zombies, making out with someone with bad breath and taking a quicker shower than you intended before work.
The 2008 SKYLINE 50 – PART TWO
Dec 16th
The second installment in our look at the 50 songs that, to us, were Houston this year.
Dawn Dipple – Two Star Symphony
Love and Other Demons (Self Released)
Most of Demons is a superb specter, a chamber quartet of violins, cello and viola that covers the sounds of monsters stealing into the rooms of children afright under their covers. “Dawn Dipple” especially is pure fear. Horror of an old man’s memories, on a park bench alone in his garden, collar turned up to the cold spending too many moments trying to remember if the leaves on his crepe myrtles turned so decayed a pallet of peach and pink last December. Losing his key, locked out of his home, scaling a fence he cannot survive a fall from. Teetering flat footed on the presipice, a thin sail of might-have been at the mercy of winds and the pull of Issac’s apple. Horror.
Don’t Tell Me, I Know – Born Liars
Don’t Tell Me, I Know 7″ (Ditchwater Records)
We know it’s only rock and roll – but we like it. We love rock and roll, so put another dime in the jukebox, baby. We wanna rock and roll all night, and party every day. Everybody’s talking bout that new sound, funny – it’s still rock and roll to us. We wanna rock. ROCK OF AGES. Even if there are a million rock-related chicklets that pulse-pound a horse to death with a stomp of the kick pedal, we’ll still never get tired of straight-up straight-on straight-through rock anthems.
Fear the CIA – No Talk
Invade Iran 7″ (Rescued from Life/Psychowolf/AG82 Records)
When we were kids, we used to watch hella episodes of the Cosby Show, and had a distinct memory of Cliff’s character having a nickname from his days as a track and field athlete: Combustable Huxtable. We imagined his lanky form rushing so quickly around the track that his feet literally burst into flames. It gave us an enduring chuckle, and was a visual image that carried us through much the poor decision making later in his career. Dear lord, is Leonard really using special meats acquired from a gypsy to fight an evil vegetarian overlord? Feet on fire. Another pudding commercial? Feet on fire. Do kids really say the darnedest things, or are they just kinda annoying? Feet on fire. Recently, a whiskeyed night fever caused us to dream out a supposed Leonard VII in which, finally, his feet did indeed catch on fire. There he was, dancing around a castle made of legos and occasionally high-kicking a mischievous intelligence goon while “Fear the CIA” played in the background. Go Leonard, Go!
Feed the Ghost – The Wiggins
Feed the Ghost 7″ (Dull Knife Records)
There’s a distance to The Wiggins. Be it the ubiquity of Jonny Reeves’ darkened spectacles, the fact that he enjoys the company of no others in his retinue of rock, the sheer performance volume that necessitates a spectator’s distance, or even the affectation of his voice – there is always something that is keeping you apart from the man, the music and the performance. “Feed the Ghost” sounds of another time (maybe past, maybe future), but certainly not the one you’re experiencing it in. And yet, it feels completely of this place. A town that relishes in the bizarre; that birthed to the world the world its Jandek and Daniel Johnson and Rusted Shut and Pain Teens and Indian Jewelry and Jana Hunter and Richard Ramirez and Insect Warfare and DJ Screw. What’s surprising is only that The Wiggins sometimes seem like a smaller fish in this pond than they should be. Feed the Ghost may seem otherworldly and distant to others, but it sounds like the very heart of home to us.
Follow the Sun – Papermoons
New Tales (Team Science Records)
There aren’t enough good songs about giving in to love anymore. Thank blog for the Papermoons and this slow tempest of a temptress that has us roaring west towards mountains and the purples and pinks and reds of a dusty sunset with the windows down shouting GIVE INTO LOVE in blissful unknowingly ironic aping of a behavior we’re probably too chicken shit to even attempt again but fuck the torpedoes we’re no Hesseian steppenwolf and are living in this moment like it’s the last and dear God please put a stalled semi into our path so we can die with this smile on our face and these perfectly interwoven gentle three guitar parts and midas drums in our ears. We give in. To Love. This song is so beautiful that it shifts our whole aesthetic and makes us feel like whores with hotels for hearts.
Genocide – Teenage Kicks
Aesthetic vs Substance (Self Released)
This is a teenage anthem, though best we we can tell it isn’t about Darfur or the Eastern Congo or north Niger or any other people or place in the hells of Africa specifically (just the teenage nation. Teenajistan?). It’s not that we think Teenage Kicks can’t or shouldn’t follow in the footsteps of punks who melded social consciousness into catchy riffs. But frankly, it’s just as well in this case because we would totally feel Simpson guilty if we were all “Yeah Yeah Rock Rock Dance Dance” and this song was about the use of rape as a military tactic or something horrific like that.
GG249 – Alkari
Kubli Khan (Self Released)
This one time we flew across the rockies to San Francisco (hiss) to hang out with a friend and check out this band that was playing one of their first US shows after having developed a small but growing following in their native London. Their CD had come out stateside and in the time between when we booked the ticket and arrived at the box office, the show had sold out and their first single was catching on like wildfire. It was catchy, popy modern rock that reminded us why we were never so terribly turned off by even the weakest parts of the U2 catalog. So yeah, we were there for Coldplay’s second stateside performance cause we’ve always had a soft spot for music that was done for its own sake and who gives a damn if it sounds too conventional to most people and like we care if it accidentally becomes popular. Oh, btw, this sounds nothing like Coldplay.
Holy Cow – Papermoons
New Tales (Team Science Records)
You know, in spite of the fact that the bulk of the Papermoons catalog (especially our favorites) have a distinct gleam of melancholy, we really don’t get bummed out when we listen to them. In fact, though songs like this couldn’t find a major chord with a tone tube and James Love’s presumably perfect pitch, we’re decidedly Guy Smiley the whole time these notes ring out and glisten like dew on the leaf pile. Even when that sad as dead ducks harmonica cuts a roman candle across the pond moments after hearing “All we are now is past tense”, we still can’t help but smile a knowing smile. Someone has taken a great universality, distilled it down to a paste, made a candle out of it, and put it there for us to enjoy its flickering. How can you not love that?
Hornless Unicorn Anthem – The Mathletes
#$@% You and Your Cool (Asaurus Records)
It’s certainly not possible to label any one Mathletes song as typical, regardless of whether you are talking about music in general or their catalog in particular. Channeling the best of Elvis Costello on this outing (which means, by default, the fantastic Radio Radio keyboard vibe as well), we’re taken along at a hard gallop for the tale of, surprise, a hornless Unicorn. Full of earnest goof that charms the wizard cloak right off of you, we’re just way too into this song to throw it in the pigeon coop of poor man’s indie rock ‘Dick in the Box.’ Yeah, it’s funny as hell and quite possibly the only thing that could make it better might be a video featuring Justin Timberlake as the Unicorn, but this is more than gimmickry. It’s wickedcry.
I Heard You’re Having a Baby – Jenny Westbury
Jenny French and the Pelican Wrench (All Star Power Up Records)
Most of Pelican Wrench is Jenny along with a guitar, miniature or otherwise. For this ditty, her own coos, chants and ba ba dahs providing the instrument track, more choir than barbershop. Actually, not barbershop at all. Its lovely, haunting, celebratory, endearing and evocative of the more layered approach she is taking with the new recordings that have been showing up on her MySpace since her recent move to the great Northeast. Perhaps people move away to do their best work in places new and strange, but it’s good to hear the root of it play out with simple, fragile grace in bedrooms and quiet spaces here at home.
THE 2008 SKYLINE 50 – PART ONE
Dec 15th
HORRAY! IT’S SAMMIES WEEK! As you may recall from year past, to help satiate your craven craving curiosity in the lead-up to the announcement of this year’s Sammy Awards winners we offer up a little something called the Skyline 50. That is, 50 songs that caught our ear this year for one reason or another. Now, it would be wrong to call this our 50 favorite or the 50 best because, let’s face it, we would just list the five tracks from Powerhouse‘s Yeah! ep and call it a day as we would rather listen to that ten times in a row than anything else. So maybe it’s more like our 50 favorite songs if we limited ourself to just a few Powerhouse! tracks. Oh, and once again, all these bands lucked out by there not being a Golden Axe release. Rules are same as last year, where the song must have been on a physical release of some sort and have come out since the last time we did this. Songs are listen in alphabetical order.
PS: Don’t forget to vote in the Sammies! Especially if you are into bands that are not from Pasadena, because those are the only people winning right now. Seriously.
Acrylic Tomb – Wicked Poseur
Wicked Poseur/Little Trooper 7″ (Shdwply Records)
More than their self-titled 2007 7″ debut, this split with Norfolk’s Little Trooper captures the primacy of guitars in Wicked Poseur’s live performance, a welcome evolution. Though still lock-stepped to the regular beat of a drum machine, by having the human touch of the six string at the forefront, the anything can happen element of frontman Arthur Bates’ personality gets a big bottom boost (along with the overall fullness of the composition). Simple China Girl keyboard sprigs counterpoint vocals that rarely take a breather and punch up a surprisingly punchy dance track that manages to avoid the pitfalls of both New Wave worship and too-little too-late electroclashism.
Adventure Renor – Giant Princess
Grey Ghost #61 (Grey Ghost)
Spunky throwback to the uncollapsed heyday of early 90′s college radio. Makes us think of park bench polariods of little consequence that ecstatic fanboys will spend their afternoons fashioning into heady zines while the Pepsi goes flat and the doorbell stays broken. Certainly the best organized of GP’s tracks, and a peek into how rawness can be done right with a little bit of heart behind it. Sorry Mario, your princess is potentially moving on to bigger castles.
Aku Benci Kamu – The Secret Prostitutes
The Secret Prostitutes 7″ (Psycho Wolf/ArseGestapo1982/Death Exlamations/Cutthroat Records)
Almost Devoesque in the application of angular speed to concerted tightness. Simple riffs spit out over a matter of fact lyrical slate that could be about working in a cola mine for all we know (The Secret Prostitutes’ songs are sung in a language said to be indigenous to Indonesia). A minute and a quarter of deadly serious sounding goof that we hope isn’t meant to be taken seriously, because it’s some serious fun. Seriously.
Death Ride – The Monocles
The Monocles/News on the March Halloween Party Split (Self Released)
Putting the brakes on their usual Camaro tempo, “Death Ride” is the menace of a black and tint Coupe de Ville, jilted lover behind the wheel with tear streaks on his face that could be from sadness, anger or madness (and why not all three). Whitewalls slowly turning, the worse half of ourselves ascribe motive to why this man is on this particular street at this particular time of the night. With the methodical, tom-dominated drums and increasingly well honed dark guitar tone of The Monocles best recording to date as the soundtrack, don’t expect that it’s going to end well for somebody, if anybody.
Big Big Jokes Jokes – BLACKIE
Wilderness of North America (Self Released)
The most interesting (and shortest) track of BLACKIE’s Pasadenaization of Grime may lack such wiley features as a 2-step beat, it does convey the off-kilterism commonly thrown about when describing the genre. With a healthy ooze of refinery slime and a taste for massively clipping volume that somehow preserves a plink plink subtelty, Big Big Jokes Jokes shows, with its chiding battery of the stereotypes of taste and self image, that there is substance behind the slapdash smokestack of his sound (even if the entire enterprise is in danger of collapsing under the hype of a very narrow band of IP addresses. Cue BLACKIE fans who take the internet too seriously calling us ‘faggots’ in the comments).
Blue Line – Andy McWilliams
The Shoegazer EP (Three Ring Records)
Years ago, when we were spending a considerable amount of time paling around with the Scattered Pages’ multi-instrumentalist Andy McWilliams, he burned us a CDr of some recordings he had been putting together under an umbrella name of his ‘shoegaze recordings’ in response to our sharing some of our own work with him that we were doing under the same nom de rock. Though neither his work or our would fall under any conventional understanding of that jazz-mastering, jaguaring genre of swoony-balooney stompbox fetishism (we appeared to both be taking the approach of litterally looking at one’s shoes in shyness), what those recordings did do was blow our minds. Fastforward to the present, and those recordings are finally getting a wider release. Blue Line, with it’s pastoral acousitcs married to drum and bass sensibilities is a standout among a collection of mostly instrumental explorations of rich sounds, honey-eared melodies and sad summer days.
Builds Brand New – Sharks and Sailors
Builds Brand New (Self Released)
Casting off any remaining doubt that they are still the plodding, loud, hipster metal act that populated their debut EP, Builds Brand New (both the album and the song) demonstrates how a re-alignment of dynamics away from brute force and towards a wider battle between greater angles and lesser demons can be both more captivating and weightier. This single song walks through a blue-water beach and a dead-dog ditch; a dumptruck with a swan’s grace; a hope with horror in the foreground. It shouldn’t ever be a suprise to see a bill with a band doing something interesting visiting town and Sharks and Sailors opening up considering most of the songs on this album are better than most of the songs on this countdown.
Carter – Woozyhelmet
Get Down (Soda Pop Productions)
Now, just because Woozyhelmet can come to your house and play in your livingroom and transform your dull chips and dips New Year’s open house into a spontanious baccalorian chariot race doesn’t mean that they play an endless series of dumb party jams or have shifted their focus from songcraft to mindless destruction and self elevation under the guise of a musical act (something sadly common). Carter is one of those jams that has your head nodding one way to the beat and another to the Brian May-bright guitar riff on the top of it all. And just when it does seem to careen into a premature end, there’s the comeback – a second round gift from a band that knows the difference between milking and satisfying as well as they do ortund and sonorous.
Champagne – The Gold Sounds
Gold Sounds EP (Self Released)
So, when you plug an electric guitar into a tube amp, the first stage (the pre-amp) amplifys the weak signal coming from the instrument’s pickups to a more managable level using a series of vacume tubes. If you amplify that signal too strongly, though, it will attempt to extend itself outside the physical limitations of the tubes, forcing an unintended modification of the original signal that results in a series of harmonics and other whatseycallsits when it comes out the other end. In short, distortion. It’s a pure, simple concept that allows for endless tinkering and variables and outcomes. In other words, its the perfect meaphor for Rock and Roll itself. Champagne is one of those pure, simple rock songs that hits all the highlights. A good, catchy riff with an amazing sounding guitar, a solid rythm section, and a fine (if harried) voice to top it all off. It shouldn’t catch us off gaurd whenever we hear something something so understandable come off sounding so effortless, but it always does.
Crooked Shepherd – Hollywood Black
Crooked Shepherd EP (Mia Kat)
You know, this spring and summer we were dating a jaw-dropper of a law student who invited us to spend a week with her in Guanajuato, Mexico which is this amazing Spanish Colonial silver town hidden away from the greasy hands of narco-gangs, neon lights and American tourists. But rather than our memories of this place being making love to the sound of cobblestone streets below or rooftop breakfasts in private gardens or cups of coffe and quiet moments holding hands or watching old couples dance in public squares while the sun goes down and fantasizing about one day joining their ranks, all we can seem to recall is the endless hours we spent wandering around waiting for her to get out of class while we listened to this record and tried to figure out how to review it. We can’t think of that amazing place or that astonishing catch of a woman without thinking of regret and our own shortcomings and this song and vice versa. So yeah, fuck this catchy ass song.
REVIEW: WOOZYHELMET – GET DOWN
Nov 14th
SCIENCE EXPERIMENT:
Playing 9 lines per spin, one cent per roll, with each horizontal point the dollar amount left in the machine after each track of the new Woozyhelmet CD, a record that has provided us much joy since the first catch we got of the unmastered tracks. Party punkie fun indie quiet loud bang bang party pop most extreme.
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CONCLUSION: Your money is way better spent buying the new Wooz rather than gambling. Shit is aces, with that dark loud Space City Rock sound that we bet they are wary of but that we love. Saturday catch them at them Artstorm at 7pm for free. Oh and free beer too. With Wild Moccasins and the Jonx. Take a few bucks and pick up the CD. It’s certainly worth the twenty we spent, but getting to see them free and the record for far less than that? Recommended.
REVIEW: BORN LIARS – DON’T TELL ME, I KNOW 7″
Nov 7th
HOLY CRAP SO GOOD. Earlier this year, we were pretty keen on the Born Liars’ Go Back One Day 7”, and why not, it was a tightening up (if not branching out) of the sound they rocked out hella on their Exit Smiling debut. With this new 7”, they’ve kept their better halves in the rock garage while buffing out the little bit of twang their boots tracked into the house with a healthy schmear of power-pop bluster. “Don’t Tell Me, I Know” is a cigarette boat pressed into service as a party barge: all speed/all good times. It’s simple four chord verse holds everything together while the lead guitar sparks around the edges, never giving the good times a first chance to catch a second breath.
B-Side “I Don’t Know Why” is a Stevie Wonder cover from 1968, while his creative output was steadily ramping up to the genius of Talking Book, Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life. In Stevie’s hands it’s a classic Motown ballad from the height of the classic Motown suit and tie era. The Born Liars capture the bummed out soul of the composition, but bring a worn-down desperation that sounds way more hurt than Stevie’s measured delivery and slick strings.
This is the first release by Ditchwater Records, the recording arm of scene photographer/promoter/Radio DJ/institution Miss Rosa (trivia nerds take note – this is officially the second entry in the Ditchwater catalog, the first being a collection of recordings by now-defunct punks Gay Marriage, though production delays resulted in this 7” actually hitting the shelves first). Anyone who’s seen her Ditchwater photo-zine knows she has a great eye for capturing the wonderful visual grit of our scene. Sounds like she’s got a hitmaker’s ears to match. Recommended.
The Born Liars’ Don’t Tell Me I Know 7” was available for a while at Sound Exchange, though it is alleged to be sold out. You might visit the Ditchwater blog to try and get a copy, or, better yet, get one from the band itself at their show Saturday night with Patt Todd & the Rank Outsiders and Hickoids at Rudyard’s
