So Many Dynamos - "New Bones" 7"

So Many Dynamos – “New Bones” 7”

Vagrant, 2010

Acquired: KJHK Music Staff, New, 2010

Price: $0

St. Louis’ So Many Dynamos was a band I always heard about (given their relative proximity to the Kansas City Metropolitan Area) but never heard a single one of their songs until just now. The rhythm section of “New Bones” has lingering aspects of mid-00s dance-punk craze which makes it feel ten years old rather than five. It’s like a Tapes n’ Tapes song. I remember that band, I remember liking their music, but I couldn’t tell you for the life of me what a single one of their songs sounds like. “New Bones” just finished and it has already faded from memory. Hang on let me dig around in my desk for the commonplace response to this music: It’s technically fine, these guys know what they’re doing, it’s definitely not a mess, but it lacks the necessary personality to create any sort of engagement outside of Eastern Missouri/Western Illinois. The remix on the b-side replaces the dancey drums with a run-of-the-mill dance beat and I wish they’d just put a stripped-down demo of the track on the b-side instead.

Oblivians/Andre Ethier - Split 7"

Oblivians/ Andre Ethier – Split 7”

Audio Visual/Vice, 2010

Acquired: Scion Garage Fest, New, 2010

Price: Free

I don’t know how it happened, but for some reason Toyota decided to hoste one of its Garage Fest events in Lawrence Fucking Kansas. Considering that bands frequently skip over the KC Metro Area, this was a bit of a shock, but not at all unwelcome. There I got to see the Clean, the Oblivians, Cloud Nothings, Hunx and His Punx, Times New Viking, Gentleman Jesse, Best Coast, and (my) beloved local heroes, the bygone Rooftop Vigilantes (fuck the Get Up Kids, they the best Lawrence band evah). Fucking weird. Fucking awesome. Sometimes big corporations do cool things. It’s rare, but it happens. Anyway, the Oblivians played right after the Clean and since I started drinking at around 3:30 that afternoon I’d developed a massive evening hangover and left early. I was bummed, but not as bummed as I would have been had I had to skip out on Oblivians frontman Greg Cartwright’s other band the Reigning Sound, who I was massively, head-over-heels in love with at the time. The Oblivian’s contribution to this 7” is a surprisingly clean sounding garage rock track titled “Oblivion” (Wryly not titled “Oblivian”?) and… it sounds like what almost all garage rock sounds like to me. Pretty good, I wouldn’t change the station if it came on the radio, but doesn’t really move me. I don’t know why the Reigning Sound does and the Oblivians don’t, this I just plain cannot explain.

Canadian singer-songwriter Andre Ethier (not to be confused with the Dodger’s outfielder. Seriously, how are there two dudes named Andre Ethier? Fun fact: Ethier sang the Canadian National Anthem in LA when the Toronto Blue Jays were in town and got the job purely based on his shared name with the aforementioned Dodger) does great work with his bluesy juke joint inspired b-side "Promising Rainbows," which plays like a b-side by the Band. He’s a kindred spirit of Kurt Vile and the War on Drugs and that ilk. You know, those folks who want to bring back rock n’ roll. 

Oblivians - "Oblivion"

MGMT - "Congratulations" 7"

MGMT – “Congratulations” 7”

Columbia, 2010

Acquired: Half Price Books, Used, 2012

Price: $3

 

Like Arctic Monkeys, MGMT were somehow on the receiving end of a lot of my ire before ever actually listening to them in depth. The singles from their debut, Oracular Spectacular, were infectious synth pop gems, but the way the band torpedoed their surefire road to success by making a weird, psychedelic follow-up really earned my respect. Granted, my respect is almost guaranteed if you namedrop Television Personalities front man Dan Treacy in a song title. Congratulations was a wonderfully weird album that received less than wonderful reviews. Produced by the living legend Sonic Boom, it sounds like the album Benjamin Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden wanted to make. There are shades of their old sound on the Erol Alkan remix that haunts the b-side on this 7”, but “Congratulations” on its own is a spare, laid-back affair that borrows the descending chord progression from The Band’s “The Weight” and somehow wins soulfulness on the back of acoustic guitar and falsetto vocals. It’s beautiful and trippy and goes nicely with the 16-page wordless comic that adorns the 7”s gatefold.

"Congratulations"

Let's Wrestle/The Love Language - Split 7"

Let’s Wrestle/The Love Language – Split 7”

Merge, 2010

Acquired: Love Garden, New, 2010

Price: $6

 

This is a Record Store Day exclusive, no doubt purchased because I got up early and didn’t want to leave Love Garden empty handed. Even though I think $6 is a bit excessive for a 7”, I fucking love Let’s Wrestle. And their contribution, “I’m So Lazy,” is an exemplary slice of the slacker-tinged alt-rock the band worked to perfect over the course of their early EPs and first album, In The Court of Wrestling Let’s. The aforementioned first album was a little overstuffed for my liking, and I don’t know if I ever made it all the way through, but their single “I Won’t Lie To You” is one of those songs that pops up every now and then and I’ll stop in my tracks to enjoy the pure, sloppy glory of that number. The Love Language is a band I’m not familiar with, but their contribution to this 7”, “Brittany’s Back,” is a damn good piece of middle of the road indie rock thanks to the fact that it sounds like it was recorded through a camcorder, which paints an intriguing film over the song.

Let's Wrestle - "I'm So Lazy"

The Love Language - "Brittany's Back"

Abe Vigoda - "Throwing Shade" 7"

Abe Vigoda – “Throwing Shade” 7”

PPM, 2010

Acquired: Crossroads Music, Used, 2013

Price: $2

 

In my head, Abe Vigoda is a neo-punk band that came up with No Age in LA in the late 00s. The trouble is, I’m having the hardest time remembering what they sounded like on their breakout album Skeleton. I remember liking it a bunch, and seeing them live a couple of times, but the sonics are absent. I know for sure they sound like a totally different band on “Throwing Shade,” the lead single from their Skeleton follow up Crush. I never heard that one because it was released in my “I am never listening to new music ever again goddamnit!” phase, which lasted for the tw years immediately after I graduated college (an effect of working at a college radio station for three years and living, breathing, sleeping, drinking, absorbing by osmosis every hot new album that showed up in the mail every Monday). The one thing I vaguely remember about Abe Vigoda was their angular, chiming guitars wrapped around spastic punk structures but filtered through layers of reverb. “Throwing Shade” is a straight up dance track jam packed with New Order synthesizers (and structure, for that matter) with a heaping scoop of dark wave drizzled over the top. The guitars still chime like the used to, but just a little, and just barely. While the song is technically fine, it’s boring and way too derivative of New Order and the rest of the 1980s new wave/post punk ilk to leave any lasting effect. B-side “Vivid” is firmly mapped on the post punk spectrum of that period, and suffers the same ill effects as “Throwing Shade” in that it abandons all of the interesting stuff the band was doing in favor of singing songs that have already been sung a thousand times before.  

"Throwing Shade"


"Vivid"

Fucked Up - "Couple Tracks" 7"

Fucked Up – “Couple Tracks” 7”

Matador, 2010

Acquired: Crossroads Music, Used, 2013

Price: $2

 

The “Couple Tracks” 7” offers up a glimpse of Fucked Up in between The Chemistry of Common Life and David Comes to Life. As sophisticated as those two albums are (and I mean genuinely sophisticated, not just sophisticated for a hardcore band), “Couple Tracks” and “Heir Apparent” are down and dirty, no nonsense hardcore jams that are easy to get behind. Fucked Up have a knack for making songs that are both blistering and accessible. Songs that are full of sociopolitical messages or narrative structures that also kick total ass. They’re a punk band’s punk band and yet they’re also a punk band your girlfriend who hates punk rock on principle might like (I speak from experience, and while Jenny can’t tolerate Fucked Up for extended periods of time she did enjoy a few tracks from David Comes to Life and I put it on the board as a victory). The thinking man’s screamy music. Fucked Up are untouchable and should be feared and respected by every other band in the game. Even when they’re just turning out seemingly by the book punk rock as they are here, they’re still doing it at an extremely high level with sonics that never fail to sound artful.

"Couple Tracks"

Joan of Arc - "Meaningful Work" 7"

Joan of Arc – “Meaningful Work” 7”

Polyvinyl, 2010

Acquired: Crossroads Music, Used, 2013

Price: $2

 

Some days I feel like Joan of Arc’s sounding like white noise to my ears is to be blamed on my never having listened to Cap’n Jazz. At one point in the dorms I had Analphabetapolothology on my hard drive but it has since vanished and I’ve been to lazy to reacquire the album. Sometimes I feel like that might make Joan of Arc click. It might also be that it’s too weird for my tastes. I love the 90s emo guitars that still lurk on this late Joan of Arc 7” but their noted avant gardiness brings on the washout. I zone out. Maybe Tim Kinsella just releases so many albums that his discography becomes too daunting to keep up with. That said, after listening to this 7” a few times I’m kind of into it. While I’m more partial to Tim’s brother (and Cap’n Jazz and occasional Joan of Arc bandmate) Mike’s bands American Football (for the smooth, late night true blue emo that both Kinsella’s are responsible for propagating in the face of a genre overrun by artists who think emo is all about screaming infidelities and so on etcetera) and Owen (for the broken, quavering prettiness of Mike Kinsella’s sadness), that’s mostly because those two bands are a lot easier to swallow than Joan of Arc. Both “Meaningful Work” and “The Thing of Things” are packed with odd time signatures, angular guitars, and weird lyrics that make the tracks something to stand back and stare at hand-on-chin rather than internalizing them on an emotional level.

"Meaningful Work"