THE SKYLINE 50: OUR FAVORITE SONGS OF THE YEAR, PART ONE

OH SNAP! This has been such a whips year for local releases. The beautiful people that we all rub elbows with on a daily basis have put out a slew of aces recordings, both those barely registering on the local radar and ones getting good reviews in publications across our mighty and rarely making erroneous foreign-policy decisionsish nation. Therefore, in the week leading up to the announcement of our first ever SAMMIES AWARDS (you’ve voted, right?), we are pleased to unleash upon you our fifty favorite tracks 0f 2007. To qualify, the songs need only have been released on some media or another (LP, CD, CDR, tape – whatever) and be really really party call me.

So, without further ado, we present the 2007 Houston 50, in totally non-biast alphabetical order:

Alien Abduction – Linus Pauling Quartet
All Things are Light
What better way to start our countdown than with a nearly nine minute album-opening opus by one of the 713’s has-been-around-but-definitely-not-has-been stardog champions. Combining the big fuzz that got you listening to Soundgarden in the first place with enough of a groove to tempt Herbie Hancock, Abduction rides out her parts to the last exit for Roswell and then loops back around to enjoy the drive a little longer.


Ankstiyeti – Cop Warmth
Centaur Cop Top
We remember in High School there was this total dish of a photographer who wrote angry editorials in the school paper and once took this picture of a rack of girl’s clothes, all identical and neatly placed next to each other, under a sign that said “Be an Individual.” We freely admit that we were not yet sophisticated enough to immediately understand a pictorial representation of the irony of wanting to be different just like everyone else. In a sense, Anksiyeti is similarly satiric of that part of life, with its demand that no on/every stop looking. It baffles us to no end how a song so chaotic can be so catchy at the same time.


Art of Malnutrition – Bring Back the Guns
Dry Futures
A friend of The Skyline (and BBTG) asked the question, can a song that’s been played live for so long really be considered one of 2007’s best? Yes. Absolutely. Even if it had taken another five years for this record to finally come out, this song would have been one of 2012’s best. A band notorious for not riding out any of the gunch-busting riffs that pack their songs like a wet burrito, Malnutrition is one of those rare exceptions where an almost, dare we say it, conventional approach to rocking out pays off like Casa Ole green dip. Pass the salt.


Ashes – Balaclavas
Inferno
When we first heard this ep, we immediately got in touch with Chris Ryan over at Dead City Sound to ask how he recorded the bass on it. While we won’t reveal his secret, we will say that in terms of the tone it’s a complete departure and total breakthrough for the band. It slinks around heavily and without hard edges, like a gigantic scorpion’s tail stabbing about with unknown intentions in the dark. On Inferno especially, it adds a new form of pleasurable disquiet to what was already one of the most unique sounding acts in town. It gives us the creeps and we love it.


At a Second Glance – Balaclavas
Balaclavas
Sometimes, you’re supposed to avert your eyes and not look directly at something, even when it might be polite to look just as though there were nothing shameful, awful or disturbing about what you’re seeing -because you know that, if you look away, every muscle in your neck and ocular sockets will try instinctively to go back for that second, perversely satisfying glance. For us, this song isn’t about that second look – it’s the struggle not to, and the bit of self loathing when you do.


Beatle Battle – Golden Axe
Kill Them Allah
If Golden Axe had put out a 50 song release, they would be the only band in the top 50 this year. Fortunately for everyone else who poured blood, sweat and tears into their Tele’s f-holes during 2007, Golden Axe did just a Grey Ghost single this, which means that there isn’t an overwhelming amount of material evidence that your band is not as good as Golden Axe and that you really should stop practicing right now and start spending more time planning for what the world will be like when it is ruled by James and Warren’s benevolent co-dictatorship.


Bird – Jana Hunter
There’s No Home
We iTuned this album, as it came out on the net a few weeks before the actual release, and we needed something that reminded us of home to listen to while we walked aimlessly around the akward Stevedore paradise of Long Beach, California. As such, we’ve never (to this day) seen the credits for this song and who all it is that’s singing and strumming along with our city's favorite daughter-in-exile. Even if there isn’t one, this track always sounds like home to us, and every few months we’re both surprised and not to learn of someone else we know who was sitting around the campfire when the gentle romp got put to tape. Come home soon.


Bruise the Paper – The Western Civilization
Letters of Resignation
Aside from platinum selling and prematurely deceasing rappers, Houston is generally know for bands that ride in a very different bumper car from bands like The Western Civilization. Bruise the Paper, in spite of lyrics that might get a troubadour down, is pure pop bliss. But this syrup is anything but factory processed maple that’s never seen the inside of a tree – so far from it. This taste of Karo doesn’t have a lot of local contemporaries, but they’ve sure got the pancakes to put them on.


Cuttin’ a Rug – Arthur Yoria
Handshake Smiles
We’ve heard the studio chatter lead-in to this song, “I do need a click for this one,” so many times this past year that we’re more than a little astonished it hasn’t become a catch-phrase around the newsroom along the lines of the now ubiquitous “oh word?” Frankly, we wonder why Arthur Yoria isn’t more ubiquitous either. It doesn’t speak very highly of the music industry that Cuttin’ a Rug hasn’t cut its way up the charts of some sort. Maybe it’s for the best, as it means we get to keep our local treasure around just a little longer. Party call me.


Drugs and Drawing – Wicked Poseur
Wicked Poseur 7”
Arthur Bates is a weird weird weird dude. We’re not really convinced that this song is about drugs or art. Seems too obvious and, well, not weird enough. That’s pretty subversive, to write a song about the role of chemical substances in artistic expression and spell it out plainly but still have people wondering "yeah, but what is he really talking about here.” Weird.

TONIGHT: BE SURE SOMEONE IS THERE TO HOLD YOUR HAIR

You know the Interpol song "Length of Love" how right from the beginning the guitars are doing that little two-string pluck riff? Man, that always makes our stomach a little sick. It’s not like a brown note experience or anything bowel rumbling. And nay, the feeling one has drank too much. It just gives us somewhat of a discomforted stomach – a tummy ache, if you will, in the classical childhood sense. We’ve never really shared that before. We tell because we love. Because there is trust between us – and because you are beautiful and we cannot resist beauty.


Which is why we’re completely ace in the hole to share with you something else of the pepto-requiring variety. Tonight at The White Swan – it’s Sickish Fest. Armed with little more of an explanation than “Get Sick”, a full evening of entertainment has been culled from the best of last weekend’s live options (Friday’s set by Cop Warmth and Indian Jewelry; Saturday’s matinee by The Wiggins and Hearts of Animals – though tonight you’ll substitute one of Mlee Marie’s other bands, Vaarg, for the HOA). Rounding out the bill in the fabled Eastside mecca of smoke machines and American Flags are A Pink Cloud, Balaclavas and Satannabis, who we were disappointed to learn has absolutely nothing to do with Santana.

But in spite not knowing exactly what is so Sick about this whole thing (beyond a SoCal surfer slang reference to the lineup), we’re pretty sure it marks the start of the Halloween party season, which continues on into the weekend and climaxes with you having to choose between two other damn sick shows (if we may say so) on Wednesday. Get your costumes ready people – you’ve got Pepto to drink.

BALACLAVAS - BALACLAVAS E.P.

Some credit Sherman’s march through the South as the earliest example of Industrial Total War. Down to burn Atlanta, East to raze Savannah, and North to squeeze Lee like paste from the tube towards Grant. Deny supplies; end production; hasten ends; all in the context of a war fought as much for competing economic models as it ever was for notions of equality or human rights.

We prefer The Crimean War, however. From beneath the pudding-skin guise of defending the Holy Lands, a completely pre-Industrial pretext for conflict, Rail, Telegraph and Nursing are taken from quiet halls of theory to dirty hills of hell. Trenches are first dug for men to kill from and die in; artillery is fired to where the eyes cannot sea; musket balls are given points and barrels are rifled. Scientific enhancement of the tools of violence trips and tumbles down an ever steeper gravel path and not for a century will the restraint not to use it catch up and clutch the collar of the white coat right before the precipice.

In music, in literature, in film, and in military theory, one action in particular from this war between Imperial Russia and the armies of France, England and the United Kingdom comes down to us through the subsequent volumes of conflict, fog, spoils and victory – The Charge of the Light Brigade. Dragoons, Lancers and Hussars all, under the charge of the Lord Cardigan, hasten into a valley to deny retreating Russians of their heavy guns and during the mile gallop many hasten the denial of their own lives. Alfred, Lord Tennyson immortalizes them in prose; Iron Maiden, Megadeath, New Model Army, Pearls Before Swine and other immortalize them in song; students of the Fog of War immortalize them in countless essays. The survivors limp back, far from the Holy Land and close only to the quick consequences of Industrial war, to their camp in a Crimean valley, a valley named Balaclava.

It took us weeks to find the right words for this record, Balaclavas’ self-titled EP. In part, we are desperately late-pass in sharing our thoughts on this record because we did not understand it so easily as we should have. We understood why, like defending the Holy Land, it appealed to us. Crisply plucked guitar strings that cannot gallop fast enough to escape their own reverb and delay; drums that urge us forward though their escorting fife is absent; bass-lines that hold it all together but shouldn’t. Tracks and vocals that occasionally command us to dance, but tones and moods that cry mutiny. Yet we could not draw sense from it anymore than we could digging heels deep ever deeper into a steed’s side to speed ascension to the Holy Land above in defense of the Holy Land below.

This record made us nervous; it gave us discomforting stomach aches and questioned our ability to comprehend - it tempted us to use the words ‘avant garde’. In the end, we may be no closer than before to cracking its defenses. But its strangeness is no longer strange – it is now accustomed beauty, though we don’t know why or how that happened. It is crying out to us, and we hear its words clear as a telegraph, though their message remains in the incensed mystery of occultation. This is a record for the heat of the advance and the rain of the retreat both. For when you have a cold and when you are nursed back.

But in the local context, this is a record for this season – for this holy time to have a stack of Houston records in your heavy play bin. The year’s regiment of aces releases continues to muster towards industry and broader commerce on the horizon. Balaclavas is unique in Houston and uniquely Houston. They are a sign of these powerful times as any. Recommended.

Balaclavas’ self-titled EP is available for sale at Sound Exchange.
Stream: Balaclavas – various tracks

PHOTOS: JANA HUNTER CD RELEASE PARTY

YUSS! We love a good party, especially when it is for the release of one of our favorite new CDs (do you have a copy yet? Well, its available already on iTunes if that’s yr style)(P.S. That’s our style – We like when the Panda Bear says “coolness is having courage / courage to do what’s right”.)(P.P.S. No more asides in this paragraph, we promise). Though we couldn’t be there due to our mad SoCal assignment, Skyline Contributor and TOP ACES photog Elissa “Settle Down” Brown was there to capture all the action. The complete set should be up on her Flickr soon, but here are some highlights in the meantime:


Arthur Bates (Wicked Poseur) serves as the evening’s MC


Tyler from Balaclavas brings the pain!


YO! It’s the Jana Hunter Folk Explosion


Who is that masked man?! It must be JRACULA


MORE MASKED TRICKERY!


OH SNAP! Bates halts Jracula mid-set to conduct a chugging contest….


…and is rewarded with a wedgie from John Hunter (Inoculist, Dethro Skull).

Like we said, this is just a taste, be sure to check out the entire set to reveal such secrets as which member of Bright Men of Learning was recruited mid-set to play some guitar (Hint – the same one that Jana brought in for the set-closing Isley Brothers cover at Noise and Smoke). Thanks again Elissa!

IN PROGRESS: JANA HUNTER/DEER TICK DUETS

What highlight to pick from an evening with Jana Hunter and Deer Tick sharing a few tracks from their in-progress duets album: Was it instances of affected Texas accents? Was it the Black Velvets, a mix of champagne and Guinness that Mr. Tick (whose driver’s license gives him the nickname “John McCauley”) introduced us to as the favored drink of Roaring ‘20s NYC Mayor Jimmy Walker? Was it an open-doored pickup truck piloted by Will Adams roaring down the street with John Hunter on the roof of the cab? Was it the pizza? Or was it the on-tape dialogue between Jana and Deer that contains the retort “Duet albums are Corny”

We’ll save the context on that last one for another day (i.e. MP3 coming soon).

But yes, its true, like Nat & Natalie, Sinatra & Bono and Huey & Gweneth before them, Jana Hunter and Deer Tick are in the middle of recording not just one, but an entire album’s worth of duets. The track list includes ‘Stranded in Your Love’, ‘Islands in the Stream’ plus a healthy assortment of country and soul miscellania that shall remain cloaked in mystery for the moment.

Wherever did from such mischief spring? Sayeth Jana: “One impetus was definitely john's wicked crooner style. And I was [messed] up on a tour that was way monotonous, oppressively so. The idea could have easily been something more ridiculous and even worse than a duets record.” Well, it may be ridiculous, but it sure sounded aces.

Even the unfinished, unmixed arrangements that we got a taste of showed that Deer Tick is, in fact, a wicked crooner, and that the fever between her cat and his scratch will be worth the wait. And wait you shall, as Hunter doesn’t expect the album to be out until late this year at the earliest as she and recent local beard-club president Will Adams work on the arrangements (John has returned to his native Providence – come back soon).

Fear not, Jana’s second full length, There’s No Home, comes out on Gnomonsong April 2nd. And you don’t even have to wait that long – the album’s release party is hosted by Wicked Poseur’s Arthur Bates at the Proletariat March 31st . That evening, Jracula, Jana’s band with Aaron Bartz, Jay Crossley (woozyhelmet) and Toto Miranda (woozyhelmet/The Octopus Project) will ascend from their coffin crypt to suck out our blood alongside stage-sharers Balaclavas. Corny.

Oh yeah, SXSW INFO HERE.

Stream: Jana Hunter - various
Stream: Deer Tick - various

AXIOM AND ALLIES: Noise & Smoke Changes Venue

The Saturday lineup for March's Noise and Smoke Festival has changed venues and, sadly, changed lineups. The second day of favs will now take place at the Axiom, a venue that organizer Liz Molina is right in pointing out will be far less likely to suffer the slings and arrows of an HPD visit. In announcing the move, N&S broke the news that God's Temple of Family Deliverance won't be able to play due to the state of drummer Chris Ryan's foot (this is the only time we have ever wished he just played lute or dulcimer or something without a kick drum) - get better buddy.

In related Noise and Smoke news, true to their word, though both Joey and Liz are both in the C-Ya Later former Houstonian camp, they're putting together other shows. Recently announced is a bill featuring Clipd Beaks, Church of the Snake and local troublemakers Balaclavas and Wicked Poseur - March 24th @ Notsuoh.