A MESS OF 45s

PILCHER'S LIST - LOVERS AND ODDITIES 45

As a joke on the iTunes "digital 45" concept, we recorded two songs and had the intention of handing them out back in August. We still haven't done it.

Here's what I know -
I played drums and didn't do anything with mixing. "Lovers" (an original), sounds a little thin, but not too bad. "It's all over now" (dylan) is more of a problem. The bass seems to be an after effect and the bass guitar is in the mud, with drums sounding like cymbals and snare. I think someone ran compression on this as it sounds terrible.

Silly things:
John! WTH? that mando part at 3.16 in "Lovers"??
Also, we need MOOOOOREE MAX!!!!! He's indistinguishable throughout both of these songs...

I don't know what Minnix is singing about, but his voice sounds nice.

I love all of you.

OVERALL RATING - nice, but suffers like all the other pilch recordings
KEY TRACKS - lovers and oddities

BLITZEN TRAPPER - WAR IS PLACEBO

Record Store Day 7".

Two songs that are acoustic and sound like Wilco, and therefore, more enjoyable than anything else by Blitzen Trapper. I'm determining that I really enjoy mediocre slower tempo country rock more than I should. I've listened to this dang thing 3 times already. The b-side "Booksmart Baby" is meh, but its less than 2 minutes, so why not?!

OVERALL RATING - decent. like eggs. if you like them...gross
KEY TRACKS - war is placebo

ROCKET FROM THE CRYPT - BOYCHUCKER

One of my first 7"s when I started buying vinyl regularly. It was actually a christmas gift (thanks parents) and it has my all time favorite RFTC song "Jumper K. Balls". To be honest, "Jumper" has no decipherable lyrics, but who cares?! It's a wonderful 2 1/2 minute rocker with a great chorus. "Boychucker" is classic RFTC that you should all know and love. "Lefty" is a song that's just there - like some surfy spooky thing with muffled vocals, and lack of real drums. But still nice!

I still enjoy RFTC and you should too.

OVERALL RATING - gotta have it.
KEY TRACKS - jumper k. balls

THE RESIDENTS - SATISFACTION

Here, the Residents take on The Rolling Stones "Satisfaction" in a mess of synths, yelling, Snakefinger, an bad taste. But bad taste tastes so so good with these boys! If you don't like the Residents and fail to see the humor, you'll be annoyed. But if you're like me, you'll love it. The b-side ("Loser=Weed" ((said as "Loser is congruent to weed")) is a number that sounds like video game music with a bouncy bubbly keyboard line and fast repetitive vocals. Its only 2.15 or so and its enjoyable, but not the best. Better than some Residents stuff though...

OVERALL RATING - choco taco
KEY TRACKS - satisfaction

BECK/JAY REATARD - GAMMA RAY

A song from Beck off some album I havent' heard. The song is decent enough, better than a lot of Beck I've heard, but Jay does the b-side. And he tears it up!!!

Well, in all honesty, it isn't drastically different from the Beck version, but recognizable enough so someone would know that it was Jay. And it sounds great!!

Man, Beck should have Jay record more of his songs....

OVERALL RATING - klondike bar
KEY TRACKS - gamma ray (jay version)

THE FALL - SLIPPY FLOOR

The sole Fall release of 2009 is a cranker.

"Slippy Floor (mark mix)" starts off with some jam with MES saying in some snarking little kid voice "we're gonna get married-uh". then its a song with 2 chords for like 4 minutes!!! at one point nell remarked "so, there haven't been any changes in this". and i replied by going "uh-huh" and giving a rambling oral history of the Fall. After the cranker, there's another practice tape thing followed by a voicemail.
B-side "Hot Cake pt. 2" is a bass driver rocker that has Mark talking about a "slippy floor" and cackling in the background. maybe this has something to do with his recently broken hip? who knows?! There's a lot of slippy floors out there. Usually there are signs. Now, there's just gonna be copies of this fine release around them instead.

OVERALL RATING - strawberry shortcake
KEY TRACKS - slippy floor

THINKING FELLERS UNION LOCAL 282 - EVERYDAY

First song is a silly bassline with vocals, trumpet, and hi-hat and some squirbly guitar noise. It isn't much more than that, but the b-side is why you are here...

It's them doing selections from Morricone's "A Fistful of Dollars". A multi-movement romp through Spaghetti Western Madness Land. And its great. Because in case you didn't know, these Fellers are quite the musicians who are just great at what they play. There's also a live version of this on Porcelain Entertainments (ltd. to 2000 copies - one of which I have), and its hard to say which i prefer. The live is nice because its great to hear them do it spot on without any sort of overdubs or stopping. Not sure if this version does, but most likely. Still its great!!!! They also totally nail the ending and its fantastic!!! Yeah!

Thinking Fellers + Morricone = match made in heaven...

If you can find this for $2.99 like I did, you'd be a fool not to buy it.

You silly silly fool.

OVERALL RATING - Nestle Drumstick
KEY TRACKS - Selections from "A Fistful of Dollars"

THE PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART - S/T

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart are 4 folks (3 guys and a lady) from the Brooklyn area who play and write songs with a terrible name. Other than that, I can find no reason that they should be listened to on a regular basis.



Well, let me back up.



As lots of people know, in the early 1990’s with that “shoegaze” movement, there was an influx of really great bands. Two that come to mind right away are Ride and My Bloody Valentine. While My Bloody Valentine became known for the landmark “Loveless”, their earlier singles (anything pre-1988 or so) were pretty much nothing more than jangly guitar pop songs. But the songs were good and while it wasn’t a “new” sound, they were doing it well and it paved the way for them to make such fantastic albums as “Isn’t Anything” and the aforementioned “Loveless”. However, I have a strong feeling that the Pains of Being Pure at Heart will never create an album that has any amount of impact greater than getting a “Best New Music” from Pitchfork.



The songs here all sound just way too similar. Never before have 34 minutes felt so repetitive. And this isn’t good repetition that you can find on any album by the Fall, Faust, or Can. Instead, it sounds like they wrote a few songs and just rearranged them adding some new lyrics or a sparkly new keyboard line. Most pop music can be sweet, maybe even sweet enough to get a cavity from. This makes me sick to my stomach. Everything sounds like their main goal was to be playing 25 minute sets at outdoor music festivals where all they have to do is get up and rock out, say “Thank you (insert generic city name)!!!” and walk off the stage as a group of 20-somethings with messenger bags and rolled up jeans proceed to discuss the upcoming Pavement reunion and grabbing a bite to eat at the local vegan friendly diner after.



It’s a shame too, because the Pains of Being Pure at Heart have potential to be a good band. The cool sounding production (loud drums, slightly buried vocals, and emphasis on the guitars, all of which were definitely lifted from Ride’s “Nowhere”, or at least the early Creation Records LPs) is a nice touch and the melodies aren’t bad either. But, it all comes off as being way too derivative of, well, pretty much every album that came out like this almost 20 years ago.



Even the album artwork, which has been used on maybe 3 or 4 of their releases with color variations looks like it could’ve been used for either those early My Bloody Valentine singles (look up “You Made Me Realise” for reference) or any of the countless Belle & Sebastian LPs since their first one. The Belle & Sebastian nods are also given in the song titles, which include titles such as “Young Adult Fiction”, “A Teenager in Love” and “Gentle Sons”..



However, some songs are just terrible. These include “The Tenure Itch” and “Everything With You”, which also tend to sound less like their shoegaze influences and more like boring and uninspired 4 chord 3 minute romps through the land of 2 note keyboard lines and vocals.



The late Jay Reatard was talking about bands from Brooklyn and he made some comment about the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, saying “…oh it must hurt being so bland”. I have to say he’s right. Longtime friend and colleague Garret Kriston and I were discussing this and agreed that why should anyone listen to this if you can just listen to the real thing?



Maybe it’s also due to the album format. I’d be tempted to buy a single by these folks. Because sometimes, you do need something to put on for 3 minutes that is just some pleasant sounding music that doesn’t require an IQ larger than your shoe size to understand. But the ideas and execution suffer from trying to create an album full of songs that all sound like they were made to open and close their live show. One or two songs in, I was doing some toe tapping. 4 songs in, I couldn’t wait for the album to stop. I might be raving about them if I was only reviewing a single, saying words like “fresh and exciting”, but even Guided by Voices and Rocket from the Crypt knew that you had to go outside of that realm every now and then. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart are probably fine for your summer nights, but just to listen to? I wouldn’t be so sure…



OVERALL RATING - Bland, generic and mediocre – just like McDonald’s, or at least the new Vampire Weekend LP which shouldn’t be listened to by anybody.

KEY TRACKS – “Stay Alive”, “Gentle Sons”, “Come Saturday”

THINKING FELLERS UNION LOCAL 282 - ADMONISHING THE BISHOPS

WOOWOWOWOOW!

4 songs only. But its almost 20 minutes long! Awesome!

And its 4 songs, not 20 minutes of grinding a puppy on a banjo and doing Strong Bad impressions.

And Bobby Weston recorded them, so they don't sound like they were recorded out of shoehorn's christmas stocking.

Now, I know what you're thinking, "well, this is what I love about the thinking fellers! you're telling me that they did an album with no cool stuff that makes them less boring than Live or Collective Soul?? Awwww mann!"

Well first I say that it is spelled "man" and not "mann", unless you're talking about the 1999 film directed by Indra Kumar.

Second I say that the Thinking Fellers are damn good songwriters and musicians in case you didn't notice. So even the cleaner sounds are super enjoyable because of the moods they conjure. "Million Dollars" has a part that sounds vaguely like "Love Will Tear Us Apart" but doesn't! Woooww! "Hurricane" is a nice little 6 minute ditty with a great solo towards the end thats all up on this trampoline. "Undertaker" is a square dancin' ditty that you'll later hear on "Porcelain Entertainments" if you're me and you own it. It sounds great.

My personal favorite is the closer, "Father". It starts off with some bad sounding chords and a vocal melody that you could think has nothing to do with the background guitar noise. THEN the beat comes in and its just kinda chugging along and goes into this weird waltz-y pattern and it seems like it can completely fall apart. But then it turns into another hoedown complete with banjo with the lyrical refrain of "Father has come to save me! Run! The devil's behind him" for 2 minutes. And all of the Fellers get into it with a beat coming in, and then switching again to some faster beat and 28 seconds later, its over.

yay!

and what's great is that you can just listen to it again since its so short! i found a copy of this here in boston for $4.99 or so. good purchase i have to say.

OVERALL RATING - well, its the thinking fellers, so its better than most other things.
KEY TRACKS - father, million dollars

Uncle Tupelo - Anodyne

Before i get to this, i need to get some oreos.

Hold on.

Eww.

Well, I left some thai food in my fridge, which stunk it up quite nicely, even making the milk smell like the food. And I have a box of baking soda in there too! Ahhh! And that darn fire alarm won't turn off. It keeps buzzing. It sounds like those cicadas from back home.

Here, Tweeds and Farrar expanded to a 5 piece and this whole dealie was recorded with each song in one take. Tweeds was able to stop playing bass now, so he plays on the guitar for his songs. Yay!

The songs here are what you would expect from the Tupe - alt-country hoopladoo, but it sounds good at times. I mean, look at the one-two punch of "Slate" and "Acuff-Rose". Sure, its no "Boilermaker" and "Gladiator", but 2 good songs at the beginning. Nice! I actually really enjoy "Slate" probably more than "Acuff-Rose", but its great. Farrar sings "Give Back the Key to my Heart" which has a little too much fiddle at times. The solo is nice, but during the verses, its kind of overkill.

The rest of the album follows along at a nice folky pace, filled with banjos, but some stuff is just not that great..."No Sense in Lovin'" has its moments, but on the whole, the lap steel is just too much. "We've been had" has an intro that sounds like that REM song "I believe" and the lyrics are too much of that cliche rock lyric of "there's a blah blah blah, and its a blah blah blah" that we've heard too much.

"Anodyne" is a fine song, if a little dragging at times, but still enjoyable. Then the album is just some country stuff that will put me to sleep right now if I don't review something else.

OVERALL RATING - great for your drives of middle america.
KEY TRACKS - slate, anodyne, the long cut (a crazy horse rocker!)

Coldplay

So Coldplay here is a band. They've got 4 people. I tried to review all of their albums for tonite's reviews, but I couldn't get through more than 2 songs in a row.

The Flaming Lips w/ Starlight & White Dwarfs - Play "Dark Side of the Moon"

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To be completely honest, I was never going to listen to this release. From what I heard of “Embryonic” (the album the Lips put out last year), I wasn’t preparing to be blown away. Furthermore, I really don’t care for Pink Floyd. Maybe it has something to do with my junior high years, but even today, I can not make it through a full Pink Floyd album without falling asleep or becoming bored. But since there were the holidays and I can’t find anything by new by a group that I enjoy that is somewhat recent, we’re left here with this. And since I’ve never heard all of “Dark Side of the Moon”, this review won’t be me comparing it a whole lot to the actual version, but whether or not it is pleasant.



Some important things to note: I guess that on “Dark Side of the Moon”, there was some sort of talking happening there. Well, all of that talking has been replaced by a Mr. Henry Lawrence Garfield, or Henry Rollins as you might know him (from Rollins Band and “The Henry Rollins Show” fame). In between tracks like “On the Run” and “Time”, you get to hear the man who was shouting out Black Flag hits like “TV Party” and “Damaged I” coughing…Coughing? You mean to tell me that Wayne Coyne dragged in Henry Rollins to cough over the same sound loop found on the 30 minute hidden track off of “Hit to Death in the Future Head”? Way to go! Ohh! And how about Peaches?! That’s right, Peaches is on here. What does she do? Well, when not remixing songs of the most recent B-52s album, she finds time to screams all over “The Great Gig in the Sky” (which I’ve read is actually on the Floyd version).



And then there are songs like “Money”. This one I’ve actually heard. Usually I’ll turn it off, but I know it well enough. This version sounds completely dead and lifeless. Then after the groove is looped for a bit, Wayne comes in sounding like he’s singing through a vocoder or something to that effect and then it ends with the groove and Henry Rollins talking in a cave or something. Also, it turns out that I know some other songs on here. I never knew what Pink Floyd song “Brain Damage” was until I heard this version. The Lips do a nice job with it, but once again, Henry Rollins laughing? What?! “Eclipse” sounds good, but really, it just makes me think “Man, the Flaming Lips need to stop listening to Pink Floyd, get Wayne’s brother Mark back in the band, and record some Spacemen 3 covers!”



Furthermore, let’s chat about who Starlight & White Dwarfs really are…Turns out, Wayne has a nephew who enjoys playing music and helping build stuff for the Lips’ live concerts. So, he started a band and Wayne, who was presumably preoccupied at the time designing the “Silver Trembling Fetus” Christmas ornament called on them to help out. Well, call me crazy, but I can’t tell who’s doing what. It’s obvious when Wayne is singing, but as for the instrumental parts, how can I tell who’s doing what? What if I really want to appreciate Steven Drozd? Is Kliph drumming on any of it? Also, from what I’ve read, “Dark Side of the Moon” is pretty heavy in terms of the bass. How come I can not hear any? What’s Michael Ivins doing over there? Other than wearing CCCP t-shirts, presumably NOTHING.



So did you hear? There’s a new Guided by Voices release – “Suitcase 3”, featuring 100 demo recordings, including a version of “Alright” with lyrics! Let’s see how Steven Soderbergh’s match up.



OVERALL RATING – Kind of like going to Zuma - play it once, laugh at Rollins, and never listen to it again. Unless you liked “Embryonic” (in the Zuma case, its tex-mex), then you’ll be in heaven here.

KEY TRACKS – “Brain Damage”, “Us and Them”, “The Great Gig in the Sky”.

Crass - The Feeding Of The 5000

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OI OI OI OI!
ANARCHY!!!
FIGHT WAR, NOT WARS!!!
THERE IS NOT AUTHORITY BUT YOURSELF!!!

That's the kinda sloganing your going to find on this 18 song, 30 minute debut LP released in 1978 by Crass. Crass was an anarchist punk band that actually wrote some catchy songs. Granted, the copy around nowadays starts with 2 minutes of talking about religion over guitar feedback that ends with "Jesus died for his own sins, not mine". DANG! The next song has a drum beat that goes "dumdumdumdumcrash!" and a guitar that goes "chchchchchchch" with the chorus "Do they owe us a living? Of course they f**king do!". "They've Got a Bomb" is a jam that starts off and turn to silence about a minute in. I've read it was a tribute to Cage and that it was supposed to be "the bomb going off and everybody would stop dancing blah blah blah". Then the bassist sings 3 songs and he sounds like a rugby player (main singer, Steve Ignorant, had a cockney sounding high pitched voice).

Most of the songs are completely interchangeable, but its so enjoyable! I mean, you wouldn't think so, but these guys and gals had a sense a melody and humour. And don't get me started on the lyrics, because their great! I mean, I'm not saying its Kerouac or nothing, but they get the point across. Crass was that kind of band. I can't listen to Crass and not smile. I just can't. Something about it just makes me think "man, they lived in house together, didn't shower often*, wore all black clothes, and were anarchists who listened to Bach and Cage". Its just like living in the dorms. And the album ends with the song it started with, with the same melody and lyrics, just a lot faster.

Regarding the 2 minute intro, the first time it was pressed, the pressing plant refused to press the album because they thought the first track was "blasphemous", so it was replaced with 2 minutes of silence called "The Sound of Free Speech", which some view as another Cage reference.

Anyway, enjoy it! I did when I was 14.

OVERALL RATING - better than bjork's first band KUKL.
KEY TRACKS - banned from the roxy, they've got a bomb, punk is dead.