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REVIEW: THE MATHLETES – #$@% YOU AND YOUR COOL
Aug 12th
There is a moment, a point in your time-line, where self-objectivity and the theory of cool split and you’re forced to make a choice about it. Usually, this has something to do with the Odyssey of the Mind. The further back in your personal narrative you go, the harder it is to have any real objectivity about yourself and who you are and what you do. You are the best at something, and if you aren’t it is because you don’t really want to be. Other boys might capture more flags, but you are more interested in the stealth and counter-insurgency aspect of the game. Therefore, you are a better/cooler player. The pickets and the strikers, they may have failed, but you did your job – you are the best. The rose smell of your own shit goes back, generally, as early as your memories. Yours was the best matchbox car. Your ability to draw Garfield was tops. Or even if it wasn’t the best, atleast it was cool. Because a lack of self-objectivity is tied quite directly to a lack of self-consciousness. Not that you couldn’t think on your own, but let’s face it – the home made jams and matching shirt that your mom made might not have actually been the jam, but you rocked them, sailboat print and all, until that same loving mother designated them far too threadbare for the family’s reputation. To you they were cool. They were the jam. Then the actual theory of cool takes over, and, unfortunately, right around that same epoch in the dragging days and months of young life (not Young Life), it’s time to decide if you want to be involved in Odyssey of the Mind.
More than anything, more than even the Boy Scouts, which are a natural ourdoorsman out-growth of the myrthy glee of Webelos and all that comes before, OM represents a crucial moment in youth where the largely undeveloped capacity for duality is easy prey for what must be an absolute decision between the fun of building a bridge out of popsicle sticks and the yearning to be cool. How unfortunate. If you choose the former, so terrible is your hell – and for atleast a decade – that no amount of consolation from the yearbook advisor that she wishes she would have been smart enough to like boys like you when she was in middle school can make up for the fact that you are going to be beaten up alot in gym class for being stoked about developing and re-enacting an imaginary 13th labor of Hercules.
The other half takes a different path. One, ironically, that you may have a even better understanding of due to your geeky desire to talke the course in college titled “The History of Cool – Miles Davis to Jay Z.” And you find, about this time, that you’re cool afterall – that all that time in the wilderness away from the in-group and the need for a broadly and media-defined indentity has made your an outsider, a person apart – and except when they are feared, it turns out that noting is cooler than the other. Your geekieness, the insecuriteis you were secure with, they provide a truck-month chassis from which to draw art that is unique and self relient; one that draws harder from the self than the polish. We bet The Mathletes were really really good at OM.
On #$@% You and Your Cool, which may be Asaurus Records’ last release but seems unlikely to be close to the nightcap for the band itself, Joe Mathlete and company strut their outsider stuff in song after song that appeals to the Comicon pop-life in all of us. Things get kicked off with “Hornless Unicorn Anthem”, a big rawkus silly bopper full of Elvis Costello-at-his-prime organs, Jolt Cola beats and words about as serious as the BBS your lab partner in Biology II kept asking you to dial into. From there is runs a shimmering 20-sided die gauntlet, from the world-ending drum cascades of “ASTEROID!” (recorded live on KTRU, no less) to the earnestly apologetic “Clumsy Little Symphonies.” It’s the duality here that the Mathletes finally confront, all these years since they may have asked themselves how best to built a weight supporting structure out of balsa wood and glue. Are they clumsy because of the lo-fi recording, or because the words they convey aren’t as polished, as slick, as double-breasted with a perfectly folded handkerchief as they could be? Are they both? To us, that unknown, or rather that combination of the two, wrapped in catchy pop that balances cotton candy with Taco Bell is what makes The Mathletes not just enjoyable or enduring… but just flat-out cool. Recommended.
The Matletes are playing the Skyline Network and BDM curated OLD FARTS EARLY SHOW tomorrow night (Wednesday) at the Mink. Doors at seven, no cover, all ages. Party.
BREAKING NEWS THAT MELTS OUR FACES: THE RETURN OF CECIL’S JUKEBOX FESTIVAL @ FITZ!!!!!
Aug 8th
SHAQDANCE.GIF!!! JUMP OUT OF PLANES INTO FIRE!!! DESTROY ALL ROBOTS!!! PROCEED DIRECTLY TO THE SUMMIT OF THE VOLCANO!!! OH MAN! One of our favorite shows last year no joke was the Hootenanny-inspiring evening at Fitzgeralds officially called “You Ain’t Punk” that featured lots of locals covering bands you are most assuredly going to hear playing on the jukebox at Cecils Pub on any given night. WELL ITS BACK, AND MORE SINGLES SOUNDTRACK THAN EVER! This time the event is called “You Ain’t Grunge,” and we have not one moment’s hesitation in saying this is going to rule and we will see you there. CAN WE GET A POSTER?
OH MAN. PEEP THE WHO’S WHO:
Full Release – The Toadies
Cellcyst – Korn
Dine Alone – Deftones
Smoke Eaters – Foo Fighters
Meaningless Conflict – Helmet
Brown Vs Board – Rage Against The Machine
Deus Machina – Nine Inch Nails
Darwin’s God – Soundgarden
Sun Machine – Stone Temple Pilots
Numero Unos – Screechin’ Weasel
Oh man – THE RETURN OF THE SMOKE EATERS! You may remember from last time how they kinda did a little bit more than destroy as the Pixies. And Full Release? Don’t even get us started. Our fav cover band in the city, hands down. As you can see from the above, this whole thing goes down Saturday August 23rd. Get into it.
REVIEW: WORLD’S MOST DANGEROUS – SOUTHERN FRIED THROWDOWN
Aug 8th
OH MAN OH MAN! Are you a fan of rock kissed with the wet lips of Dixie? You know, that sho’ nuff Southern stuff that mellows like mash in an oak barrel? Well our friends, you are in for a treat this here weekend. For starters, Saturday night at the Woodlands none other than Lynyrd Skynyrd is taking the stage with this generation’s most extreme Michigan-born hero of the trailer park – Kid Rock. Oh Man. He loves the troops. But, for those in the know, there’s an even more swampy happening tonight over at Danelectro’s Guitar Bar in the Heights (aka, the new Montrose) – Local channelers of the non-Billy Idol rebel yell World’s Most Dangerous are having their CD release party.
Now, we know what you’re thinking. This album cover does not invoke images of sleepy indie rock, sweaters, songs about sweaters, or being stoked that Converse are now available on sale at Target. Truth. But we enjoy going outside our comfort zone now and then, and we don’t see why you shouldn’t follow us, even if we wouldn’t have been allowed to wear their t-shirt at our high school. (All joax aside, though born in New Orleans and spending all post middle-school years of our lives in Texas, no member of The Most Extreme Party Call Me Skyline Network Staff is technically a Southerner, and therefore don’t have the cultural vittles to put up any sort of informed pro/con argument about the regional pride vs racially suggestive meaning of the Stars and Bars. We’re totally not wading into that argument. Massive cop-out complete.)
What we do know the pro/con on is this record, which is pure beer-can smashing fun, referencing the welter-weight metal of Pantera almost as equally as Texas roadhouse blues. Think of it as Whorehound with a greater amount of Southern Credibility. How much cred? To illustrate, we compared cultural references found in three songs by each of the sub-Mason Dixon rockers in town this weekend to see who came out on top. The songs used were “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyd, the Sweet Home Alabama-sampling “All Summer Long” by Kid Rock and “Texneck” by World’s Most Dangerous. Observe this chart in the style of Ira Glass:
As you can see, Lynyrd Skynyrd does come out with the most cred, in the end, edging out the other competitors only by 1) Having a Reese Witherspoon movie named after their song and 2) Being Lynyrd Skynyrd. Poor Kid Rock gets trounced, which only seems fair since he’s from the land of the Juggalos. Better luck next time Kid.
Catch World’s Most Dangerous at the CD release party tonight, August 8th at Danelectro’s Guitar Bar. Also on the bill are Train Woodburns and Hell’s Engines.
REVIEW: MOTION TURNS IT ON – LIVE AT THE SOUTHPAW
Aug 7th
Now here’s something we don’t enjoy everyday – a live album. When we were growing up, no doubt influenced by what appeared to be the relative ease with which Primus and the Beach Boys were able to capture the essence of themselves on Suck on This and Beach Boys Party!, respectively, it seemed like a live recording was the way to go. Why even bother with studio trickery! Just show up, plug in, rock out and dub it onto tape! Frankly our views were more hardened by de Schmog’s Fairy Tale, which we, to this day, will swear an oath to blog is a better sounding version of the band than any of their studio recordings. Oh youth.
Fairy Tale, we later learned (aka, when reading the liner notes), had some post-show work done in the studio. And it turns out Beach Boys Party! wasn’t live at all, recorded entirely at a studio, a gimmick cooked up by Brian Wilson himself. Oh yeah, and we liked Primus. Now older, and listening to Rattle and Hum with significantly less frequency, we’ve come to view the live recording as a junior partner to the subtler and more satisfying craft of multi-track recording. Granted there are exceptions, like Spiritualized’s epic Royal Albert Hall and Nirvana’s catalog deconstructing Unplugged in New York, but for the most part they just come off as half baked; something thrown out there by a record label to maintain brand awareness while their hit machine struggles to compose its next opus. Rarely if ever, afterall, can the entire sensory experience of a concert be re-created by a feast only for the ears.
Doubly so for “local” live albums (again, Fairy Tale being an obvious exception). Frequently, they’re a bad microphone in the audience or recorded directly from the sound-board, neither one being particularly good source mater from which to construct a decent final mix. MySpace is littered with live recordings of local bands that sound so awful it boggles the mind people would put them up there for others to hear. Sure, its great to be stoked about your music and what to put it out there for people to hear, but good biscuits and gravy from AAA Cafe, have a little respect for the shape your art is in. So, with all that on record, you might be just as suprised as we were at how Burt Reynolds as Malone Motion Turns it On’s new Live at the Southpaw EP is (note: Burt Reynolds as Malone kicks ass).
Setting aside the production pitfalls of live recordings for a minute, it actually makes more sense for MTIO to make a live album than almost any other band in town. During the year of the INSTRUMENTAL MADNESS of our lord that was 2007, you could generally wheat and chaff the various vocal-eschewing acts around town with a few simple descriptors. Blades are the guys with the mathy time signatures and angular riffs; By the End of Tonight are the guys who can’t write a song with fewer than one thousand parts; Co-Pilot found the part of outer space that has lots of clouds; Rustler builds slow and steady to shredertaining metal heights; Golden Axe WILL MELT YOUR FACE; MTIO are looser and more improvisational. That right there is why Live at the Southpaw works so well.
Their debut outing, Rima, though a fine piece of work, froze their songs into a static, repeatable artifact. So while we enjoyed it, we felt it wasn’t as ‘genuine’ as the band was live, when it felt like anything could happen and their songs a stack of Mad Libs waiting for whatever outside influences might make one outing so distinct from another. Here, like a rock solid jazz quartet doing its thing in black and white photography cool, the songs are freer, and the improvisations more organic than the could be in a studio where second takes are allowed. “Satelightening”, a track on both, clocks in a full three minutes longer here than on Rima. And granted, while anytime you put something to tape you run the risk of making it definitive, the effect here is making us want to head out the door to their next show and see what noun, verb and adjective they throw in this time.
Motion Turns it On’s Live at the Southpaw is available at record stores around town and, starting yesterday, via digital download from iTunes and their MySpace (careful Mac users, you cannot download SNOCAP songs, but you won’t figure that out until after you pay for them). Party.
REVIEW: BALACLAVAS – INFERNO
Aug 6th
The second circle of hell is reserved for the souls of those who, when in the flesh, could not tamp down their desire for the flesh of others. The lusty. Those who hid away the love all hearts are meant to experience for the quick kill; the fleeting romance; the adultery; the cheat. In this place, and in all the circles of hell, the condemned are punished not by having their acts held before their faces to eternally bemoan or suffer endless Groundhog Days where they are the victims of the same heart-crimes they committed. Rather, they are exposed to metaphoric punishments, exacting their toll in much the same way the consequences of their own actions haunted them while they were still living. In the kingdom of men, the lusty drift aimlessly, guided without sea chart and only the dumb zeal of their organs as helmsman. They can never find the arms of another to call home forever, and so come and go with the wind and the tides looking eagerly for land through their telescope. But for whatever cruel and secret missive written by a Commodore they do not understand and cannot mutiny away, they never drop anchor. So too, in the second circle, do they find their souls angrily blown about by a violent storm. Never finding stability or foundation or peace anymore than they could find a spouse with which to carry out Genesis 1:28.
We think alot about the second circle when we listen to Inferno.
It’s a seductive record, one that catches you looking from across the gallery and is warmed by the attention. It doesn’t run or shout so much as it slinks and coos its way not into your heart, but into your sweating back with its seething scarlet nails. There’s nothing wholesome about it. Though you enjoy it instinctively, you can’t help but feel like it’s a little dirty. It has the sound of the darkness in a strange room where a familiar activity is about to take place – noises echoing and disturbing without a visual reference, like unfamiliar beltbuckles falling unseen onto unfamiliar floors.
The songwriting template that Balaclavas established in their first release has been honed, sharpened and intensified. Though they were already crafting some of the most unclassifiable and incomparable music in town, in this release we find them to be submariners at even greater depths. The bass is massive and formless, pendulating back and forth with such heavy subsonics that it sounds as if it should be bumping out of the trunk of a chopped 300M instead of cornering you in a dark parking garage of indie disquiet. It’s the amorphous wrapper around what is still the most distinctive rock sound in the 713, 281 or 832 for that matter. The drums keep a sort of a time but are far more accentual than backbeat. The guitar is often punctuation to the vocals, a cranky and craggy friend that alone carries the sins of the melodies along in a cave lit by only a single candle. The vocals are the ghost of a fallen man, but one who knows it could have been much worse.
Even when these four relatively simple instruments momentarily lock into a groove together, such as in the refrain for “Ashes,” the effect is a complex bouquet and more generally a reminder that, for most of the time, you simply can’t believe these individual elements are happening in the same song at the same time and working so brilliantly together. Balaclavas, we would imagine, are easy for some to dismiss as just too weird for their taste. We can’t really begrudge anyone who doesn’t connect with what they’re doing, because, frankly, we’ve never heard anything like it either. But it has most certainly sauntered up to the right sucker at the bar, because we’re taking it home with us tonight, even though we shouldn’t. We hope when we die, it’ll be playing in the second circle. Highly Recommended.
Inferno actually came out late last year on CD and has been selectively available in the finer record stores around town ever since. What it’s getting here is the full Phonograpic Arts treatment, including a re-mastering and a release on Vinyl. Phonographic Arts is the outfit that put out Jordan Graber’s beautiful (and scene packed) full color photozine “I’m In A Tight Spot”, as well as the “Gulewave” zine, whose introduction includes the advice “hey buddy why don’t you print your blog so it has a pulse.” In our own defense, we did actually create a printed version of all our stories from 2007 in sefer Torah format (you know, the scrolls), but due to the expense of the gold in its handles and its 300+ lb weight, we weren’t able to sell to many of them. We think Sound Exchange is using their copy as a doorstop. Get the decidedly more manageably sized Inferno at Balaclavas release show Thursday night, August 7th, at Walter’s on Washington, where they’re part of the opening talent pool (alongside The Wiggins) for Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti.
