Fag Cop - Complete Shit Volume 1

Fag Cop – Complete Shit Volume 1 7”

Eat Records, 2008

Acquired: Fag Cop Live Show, New, 2008

Price: $5

 

Once I went to see Fag Cop in the basement of the Eighth Street Taproom and I couldn’t hear right for three straight days. I blame that show for the lion’s share of the hearing damage acquired from years of going to shows without earplugs. Seriously, everything was dulled for THREE days after that show. Because these motherfuckers play loud. Loud is overrated. Something used as a substitute for substance. Granted, considering that literally anyone can start a punk band, punk rock really doesn’t need to have a lot of substance. Which is perfectly fine. Everything on this 7” is distorted to within an inch of its life. The guitars, the drums, the bass, the vocals. All of it sounds like it’s going to fall apart if you so much as look at it wrong. As much as I think it takes minimal effort to make noisy punk rock, Fag Cop was one of the better Lawrence bands from the post-Anniversary era. They seemed to give less of a fuck than other bands, which I liked. The fun they were having was genuine, or seemed genuine at least. Despite the hearing damage, their live shows were a blast, and it barely needs to be mentioned that a band like this is built for live shows. The recordings are more like an obligation rather than something seriously labored over. 

Eprhyme - "Shomer Salaam" 7"

Eprhyme – “Shomer Salaam” 7”

K, 2009

Acquired: KJHK Music Staff, New, 2009

Price: $0

 

Eprhyme makes "Iconoclastic Neo-Hassidic Hip-Hop." I’m not sure if he wants that to be his defining quality, but when you’re a Hassidic Jewish rapper it kind of has to be (and it's the headline on his website so, you know). Unless you’re rapping about bitches and money, but even then you’re gimmicking. You’re that Hassidic Jewish rapper who raps about bitches and money and ISN’T THIS IRONIC AND FUNNY. So on. Etcetera. Eprhyme presents transparent messages of faith, peace, love and tolerance over beats heavily incorporate traditional middle eastern instrumentation. It’s all pretty hokey and plays like God rock. That said, I’m clearly not the target audience, and despite my own personal beliefs I do appreciate an artist who can articulate his or her faith in a way that is not heavy handed. The point of God rock is to beat you over the head with The Message, whereas it is much more interesting for an artist to approach faith on a personal level. Eprhyme has a Message, but there is little meaning to it because it’s all surface level stuff. It is obvious that these things are important to him. The dude very clearly cares about his faith and his community and has the best intentions, but good intentions can’t make up for lackluster emcee skills and surface level raps.

Billy Bragg - Workers Playtime

Billy Bragg – Workers Playtime

Elektra, 1988
Acquired: Half Price Books, Used, 2013
Price: $5

Billy Bragg’s songs usually fall into three categories: Love songs, protest songs, and love songs that double as protest songs. Despite its title and propaganda-poster cover of Chinese workers unwinding after a long day of labor, Workers Playtime is almost entirely comprised of straight up love songs. 8 love songs, 2 protest songs, and 1 love song that is also a protest song (or protest song that is also a love song). Workers Playtime also sports Bragg’s best lyrics sheet and fully realizes that full-band sound Bragg played around with on Talking to the Taxman About Poetry after years of his solo dude-with-an-electric-guitar records. Though the numbers make Workers Playtime look top heavy with love songs, closing track “Waiting For the Great Leap Forwards” is probably the best, most effective political song Billy Bragg ever wrote. It’s incisive and clever and funny and sad and inspiring. It’s the love songs that kill me though. They’re probably the sappiest love songs Bragg has ever written and yet they still hit me right in the gut. They show that you don’t have to choose whether you are a lover or a fighter, you can be both. Honestly, I’m probably too close to the subject matter to write about it objectively. I’ll go through spells where I’ll listen to nothing but Billy Bragg in the car. I’ll literally delete everything else off my iPod and put it on Billy Bragg shuffle for weeks, which makes me think my Billy Bragg phase isn’t quite over.  

(I know Mr. Love and Justice himself isn't posting these videos, but it is rather funny that so many of his songs on Youtube contain preroll adverts when the cover clearly reads "Capitalism is Killing Music")

When I was at SXSW in 2008 I was walking down Red River and heard this song coming from a parking lot. "That sounds kind of familiar?" I said to myself. "Is that Billy Bragg?" And sure enough, there was Billy Bragg playing in a parking lot and I went in and watched him play an updated version of "Waiting for the Great Leap Forward" and became a Fan. And thanks to the internet, which has everything, I can see that exact performance. 

"She's Got a New Spell"

"Little Time Bomb"

The World is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die - Whenever, If Ever

The World is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die – Whenever, If Ever

Topshelf Records, 2013

 

Let’s just go ahead and get this out of the way shall we: The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die is probably the most unforgivably awful band name I’ve heard all year and I spend my free time giving shit to bands from Brooklyn who are too lazy to come up with anything better than some one-word noun. It’s like a joke that got out of control. Maybe it is a reaction to the fact that all of the good band names are taken (which I can’t argue, it’s pretty much true given the aforementioned name-your-generic-band-after-something-equally-generic trend that seems to haunt the indie music world these days). I approached TWIABP&IANLATD’s from a hate-listen standpoint. The band’s name was so convoluted I wanted to make sure their music was equally hateworthy. And then I was wrong. And I love being wrong. It is pretty much my absolute favorite thing about writing about music.

Naturally, I was totally wrong about Connecticut based octet TWIABP&IANLATD’s debut full-length is a remarkably adept collection of sweeping, atmospheric post-rock tinted second-wave emo. Fortunately they have taken all of the best bits of bands like Sunny Day Real Estate, Mineral, Texas is the Reason and the Promise Ring for an end result that sounds like American Football reconfigured by Explosions in the Sky. It’s the good emo, and despite that tag that the band is destined to wear if only for a lack of a better term, they band avoids crybaby lyrics and pour all of the emotional resonance into big builds, great melodies, vocal delivery and dreamy guitar lines. My favorite track—“Gig Life”—builds up from a melancholy little acoustic guitar number dripping with homesickness into hooky little jangly guitar licks and a warm, comforting bass line.

I keep coming back to this album because there is something very comforting about it. There’s some nostalgia at work, but I feel like there is a lot of nostalgia in the songs. There’s a theme of Home that seems to run through the album’s ten songs. This is the sound of a lot of the music I loved in high school that made it through the ringer and I still love just as much today. I like that they don’t shroud their music and lyrics in mystery. I like that they sort of remind me of Taking Back Sunday if Taking Back Sunday wasn’t terrible (screamo elements are used sparingly and effectively on Whenever, If Ever). I like that this band has a lot of heart. Sometimes you can’t tell. Sometimes you’ll find a band hell-bent on getting their song on “One Tree Hill” or with some great desire to achieve critical acclaim, but TWIABP&IANLATD just seem to be going for it. They’ve somehow managed to pick and choose elements from the cream of the emo crop and churn out something that, while not all that original, is affecting and promising. And sometime’s that’s all that matters. Personally, I rarely tend to give a damn if a band breaks new ground or not, just as long as I can keep their CD in my car stereo for two weeks and get so hooked that I don’t really want to listen to anything else. Honesty trumps ingenuity any day of the week in my book.

*Or sextet or septet, the line-up appears to be malleable.

"Gig Life"

"Heartbeat on the Brain"

"Getting Sodas"

Eastern Conference Champions - Home Away EP

Eastern Conference Champions – Home Away EP

Suretone, 2007

Acquired: KJHK Music Staff, New, 2007
Price: $0

 

I love how in the process of listening to my records alphabetically I can go from a 7” that leaves me feeling really inspired to one that makes me feel like all of the inspiration has been siphoned from the world and deposited on a diaper island in the middle of the ocean. Not to say that Eastern Conference Champions make me think of a diaper island, or maybe they do, since that’s the first thing that came to mind. It’s not that they’d bad or anything. The shooting-for-the-alternative-rock-radio-airwaves thing they do is competent and the hooks are serviceable, but I just can’t help get the feeling that this band would let any corporation tack one of their songs in a commercial no matter what was being advertised. Huggies? Pampers? I don’t know. I don’t know why I have diapers on the brain. I don’t even know if a diaper island is a real thing (it is the title of a 2011 album by Chad VanGaalen). I think it might be that I feel like this music is full of shit. The first blurb on their Wikipedia page—the one that is supposed to give you the barebones of what you need to know about a band—notes “the band gained attention when it was announced that they would be featured on The Twilight Saga: Eclipse soundtrack.” How depressing for that to be your claim to fame. Not that the soundtracks for the Twilight movies are awful or anything (no lie, I listened to the soundtrack for New Moon about fifty times when I was working 12 hour shifts at CD Tradepost back in 2009 and there quality jams on that. Or maybe my brain was seeping out of my skull and I imagined that), but c’mon. The rest of their Wikipedia page pretty much just lists personnel changes, record label drama, and TV placements in shows for teenagers (“Friday Night Lights,” “Gossip Girl,” “Melrose Place,” you get the picture). I’ve been trying to be less mean spirited, but patience for corporate bullshit is something I will never be able to possess. They note (possibly facetiously) that the reason they never took off was because their name was too long. I’d say it’s that none of it feels honest. The elements that work sound copy and pasted from Radiohead’s The Bends and I just can’t help but wonder what this band would sound like if they didn’t sound like they were trying to manufacture success. They’re a band that would move to Los Angeles than just exist in Philadelphia and be a real band. You can hear echoes of this stuff in Silversun Pickups, Mumford and Suns, the Lumineers, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes and every other band today that tries to compensate for having no real emotional resonance by sounding big. Full of sound and fury and signifying nothing, etcetera. But that’s a whole nother rabbit whole that needn’t be gone down at this particular moment. The one song I did like was the rollicking “Navy Man,” which sounds surly and ramshackle and not like Radiohead. This band has skills. The songs are listenable and not terrible. It’s just I hate having to wonder what a band would sound like if they put some heart into their music. And I’m sure they would argue that their music is full of heart because what band wouldn’t argue that? I just get the impression that this is a band that wants to be $uccessful, even though they seem less shallow than most of the posers who try to make it as a rock band in Hollywood.

The video for "The Box" is actually pretty good. Kudos for the band for not going the route of every other mainstream alt-rock band and making some boring video of them on a stage rocking out and doucebagging it up with strobe lights/hot chicks. The animation is cool and really, despite the fact that the song is so obviously produced by Oasis producer Owen Morris and the Thom Yorke-esque histrionics are in full force, it's not a bad song. It's catchy and well-written, but it feels like it's putting up a front. 

Gut Feeling: Mark Mulcahy - Dear Mark J. Mulcahy, I Love You

Mark Mulcahy – Dear Mark J. Mulcahy, I Love You

Fire Records, 2013

 

Mark Mulcahy is famous for some odd reasons. In 2008 a Mark Mulcahy tribute album was released prompting everyone to ask: Who the hell is Mark Mulcahy and why does he get a tribute album? Mark Mulcahy is was the frontman of 80s college rock troupe Miracle Legion and better known as the singer for Polaris—The band that did the theme song for the Nickelodeon classic The Adventures of Pete and Pete. The tribute album—Ciao My Shining Star: The Songs of Mark Mulcahy, featuring the likes of such luminaries as Thom Yorke, Dinosaur Jr, Vic Chesnutt, Frank Black, Michael Stipe, The National, the list keeps going—was released to help Mulcahy out financially after the sudden death of his wife in 2008. “To help Mulcahy continue making music while raising his three-year-old twin daughters,” says Wikipedia. If your heart isn’t broken by this, it oughta be.

I’m sure all of this gives Mark Mulcahy a headache. The fact that every review of Dear Mark J Mulcahy, I Love You will invariably bring up his dead wife and how sad it is. The best thing about the record though is that it makes you forget all of that pretty much instantly with the domineering opener “I Taketh Away.” Straight out of the gate Mulcahy hits you with sass, wit, and charm. There’s no sad-bastardness to in sight, as much as sad-bastardness would be totally acceptable. Sure, there are songs that break your heart because you know there is personal shit being worked through, but that’s inevitable and universal. My favorite track on the album, “The Rabbit,” is one of these. My favorite element of the track is that it’s sad and sweet but never sappy. This album is never sappy.

What the album is is great. It’s a great album. Full of heart and abandon and soul. Like the whole “Waiter, there’s a frog in my…” bit that opens the terrifically catchy “Let the Fireflies Fly Free,” which for whatever reason sticks with me and is funny every time. Closer “Where’s the Indifference Now?” plays like a murder mystery depicting a suicide. “Why would someone so young with so many reasons to be happy?” he queries. It feels like the other side of tragedy. An alternate ending detailing what it would take for one to end one’s own life with Mulcahy standing slackjawed with curious. With Mulcahy’s mythological reality in my head I read it like Mulcahy letting us know that he is capable with handling tragedy. Because of course he is.

I like to imagine what it would be like if Robert Pollard and Mark Mulcahy started a band and how I would like that. They have so much in common. Both are indie rock lifers with a penchant for great lyrics, big guitars, and old time rock and roll filtered threw new time rock and roll technique. Ultimately he’s one of those dudes who has defied Father Time and continues to make great music at a high level when his peers from the heyday of college rock are either retired comfortably with their families or (in the case of say, R.E.M.) shadows of their former selves. In my book, “Poison Candy Heart” is enough to ensure Mark Mulcahy pop supremacy for the year. I can’t think of another song that’s gotten lodged in my head so hard. “Who’s gonna clean this up?/Probably me like I always do, you gotta poison candy heart,” Mulcahy sings. The lyrics feel conversational throughout. He scatters moments of levity between moments of the real shit people don’t like to talk about and that’s why he has earned my infinite respect. The great fuck you of Dear Mark Mulcahy, I Love You is that he so easily could have made a record about how fucking awful it would be to lose one’s wife (I personally can’t even imagine, it hurts even to do so) and people would have loved it. “Oh, look at Mark Mulcahy, it’s so sad, A+, 8.5, etc.” Instead he made a record that’s fun and loose and playful and a complete fucking joy.

"The Rabbit" (I don't know if whoever uploaded this to youtube could have made it any cornier. Just put it on in the background and enjoy)


"She Makes the World Turn Backwards"

East River Pipe - "Helmet On" 7"

East River Pipe – “Helmet On” 7”

Sarah Records, 2010

Acquired: Love Garden, Used, 2009

Price: $6

The legend of F.M. Cornog is one of, er, indie rock legend. Dude was drug addled and homeless, busking on the street and sleeping at the Hoboken train station. There he meets a girl named Barbara Powers who takes him in, encourages his music and helps him start a label and after a string of cassette releases, they save up enough money to press a single. His songs attract the attention of English twee-pop label Sarah Records and the rest is history. Cornog and Powers get married and while East River Pipe never achieves any sort of widespread success, Cornog’s output is sort of universally respected and beloved by the people who matter. And despite writing some truly amazing songs he still worked at Home Depot for years and basically just lives a normal life. I have always loved his story because it illustrates how fine the line is between an unheralded musical genius dying in a gutter and achieving lasting success (even if that success is obscure and quarantined to a flock of drooling music nerds). I don’t think he ever went on tour, either. He just lived in Queens and recorded these sad, beautiful pop songs. It’s inspiring as fuck.

So when I saw this at Love Garden a few years ago I flipped and bought it immediately. At the time I was very into his 2003 release Garbageheads on Endless Stun, which I picked up at the Lawrence Public Library tent sale. My affinity for East River Pipe is a sprawling one. Since falling head over heels in love with indie-pop in 2007, East River Pipe had been on my radar. There were a handful of MP3s kicking around on my hard drive from the time I downloaded the entire Sarah Records discography, and through osmosis (i.e. working at a radio station and broadcasting from a studio where I was literally surrounded by CDs) I picked up most of his discography. I must have played “Make a Deal With the City” two-dozen times over three years over three different shows. I just couldn’t stay away from how great that song was. It was on one of those songs I played the hell out of because I never knew when the right person would be listening. There’s something so uplifting about it, something triumphant and just plain fucking winning and it makes me want to cheer. I don’t remember if anyone ever called in, but someone had to have heard it and at least didn’t change the dial. That is my hope.

So I found this 7” and it satisfied two dreams: Owning something East River Pipe on vinyl and owning something Sarah Records on vinyl. It helps that all three songs are real gems. “Helmet On” and “Axl or Iggy” comprised the first 7” East River Pipe released on Hell Gate Records, and it’s amazing how well they fit in with the rest of the Sarah Records roster (considering East River Pipe is one of maybe two American bands on that label). The guitars shimmer and chime, the vocal delivery is flat but tuneful as hell, and the lyrics from the fucked up world Cornog never really left. “Axl or Iggy” is my favorite. Something about that song sounds like a flower pushing through the dirt into the sunshine. It’s bright and kind of grim and again, it sounds like a fucking triumph.

I’m grateful I only had to spend $6 on this, considering it was the first time I’d ever seen a Sarah Records single for sale (the second time came seconds after that where I found this much more appropriately priced Brighter single right behind this one) after looking for about three years. By that time I practically knew the order of the singles the way people know books of the bible (eg. Sea Urchins – “Pristine Christine,” Orchids – “I’ve Got a Habit,” Another Sunny Day – “Anorak City” w/ fanzine I will never ever find, 14 Iced Bears – “Come Get Me,” etc. Once every few months I look online to see if my absolute favorite Sarah single, St. Christoper’s “You Deserve More Than a Maybe” is still selling between $15-$20 and wonder why the hell I don’t just buy it already. And God forbid I ever find a copy of the Field Mice’s “Emma’s House.” That’s on my list of records that would take so much star-aligning to come across, my budget is basically the sideways 8). I keep an eye out for them at Half Price Books, but when it comes to 45s we only get old garbage, Elvis, and Punk 7”s. Soon enough, when we move back to Kansas I’ll be able to troll Love Garden and someday, when I make my millions, I’ll scoop up the entire run and then I guess I’ll FINALLY be happy. Strange, the things we choose to obsess over and collect. 

This interview Fred Cornog did with the Quietus back in 2011 to promote his excellent most-recent release We Live in Rented Rooms is a great read if you're interested in the guy and want to become a true believer (if the tremendous strength of the songs isn't enough).

Kurt Vile - Childish Prodigy

Kurt Vile – Childish Prodigy

Matador, 2009

Acquired: Half Price Books, Used, 2013
Price: $7.50

 

Childish Prodigy is far and away my favorite thing Kurt Vile has released. It’s also my favorite fall record. There’s something here that just feels unfuckwithably autumnal. I think it’s the way the finger picking sounds on “Blackberries” that really does it for me. Somehow that song sounds like sitting around a campfire when it's fifty degrees. Every fall, I burn off a new copy of Childish Prodigy and it takes up residence in my car stereo’s rotation for three months. Honestly, it probably just has to do with the fact that I listened to this album non-stop in Fall 2009. It was obsessive. My assistant music director at KJHK was a big Vile fan and had pushed his first couple records (Constant Hitmaker and God is Saying This to You) into KJ’s rotation but I paid them little mind with the exception of “Freeway” from Constant Hitmaker because holy shit what a jam. I was all over Childish Prodigy though. From the title to the cover art to the free MP3 of “Overnite Religion” Matador release in advance of the album, I was pretty much already sold. And then to be so thoroughly sold, I embraced it like true love. And still, I didn’t buy it. It was shortly after the prices of new vinyl had jumped from $14 to $17 (I think Matador led the way on this, and really it’s no fault to them, the economy had just tanked and times was tough) and as much as I wanted it, I was fucking broke and fresh out of college and working 12 hours a week at a shitty property management company (in my review of Vile’s latest album—Wakin on a Pretty Daze—I went into great detail about the role Childish Prodigy lead-off track “Hunchback” in my getting pumped up to get fired from said shitty property management company. For some reason I find that story particularly joyful and that song is the soundtrack). 

Finally, after years of waiting, it waltzed into HPB and I jumped on it like a mad dog. The reviews seem to imply that Childish Prodigy was a bit uneven but the rough edges were smoothed out on his follow up Smoke Ring for My Halo and further refined on Wakin on a Pretty Daze, but I think Childish Prodigy has more spark and energy than both of those records combined. It’s the rawness, I’m sure. The unrestrained qualities of “Freak Train” that cause Vile to stretch the thing out for seven minutes of repetition but to make that repetition sound totally fresh all the way through via saxophone skronks, guitar meltdown hysterics, and shouted expletives. It’s like a meditation in gritty slacker rock and it’s fucking magnificent.

Outside of the grooving and vital “Freak Train” and the ass-kicking “Hunchback” (there are at least like 12 version of “Hunchback” scattered over Vile’s myriad early releases but this one is clearly the version that song was always meant to be) most of the album is relatively quiet. A place for Vile to let his songs spread out, sing his weird lyrics, and show off his distinctive guitar stylings. “Blackberry Song” is so beautiful and hypnotic I get lost in it every time. His cover of Dim Stars “Monkey” is joyful and bright, the brightest spot on the album, and the track that really won me over (it didn’t take much). The thing practically shimmers. The quiet and/or mysterious tunes like “Dead Alive,” “Overnite Religion,” “Blackberry Song,” “Heart Attack” and “Inside Lookin Out” (which, with it’s out of control effect-laden harmonica, isn’t so much quiet as it is the psychopath at the bar who seems calm enough but might unleash and fuck your shit up at a moment’s notice) that paint Childish Prodigy’s landscape and the big, majestic jams fill the landscape with fucked up characters and sounds. After almost four years I still can’t find any flaws and while that’s probably just because I’m too emotionally attached to the album, I’ll take emotional attachment over critical prowess any day.

"Freak  Train"

"Blackberry Song" 

"Monkey" ("I swear I held my own hand pretending it was yours" is a lyric that gets me every time)

*Note: I just realized that I already featured a write-up of Childish Prodigy on this blog! Way back in 2009 when the album came out. It's amazing how my brain keeps track of my opinions on music, which is to say I've written pretty much the same details about my relationship with this album word for word. However, my opinion has shifted (for instance, I no longer find the "Freak Train" boring) a bit. 

End of D - 7"

I’m wondering how much it would cost to insure my record collection. After logging the A, B, and C portions of my LPs, I’ve become convinced that most of my records are selling at roughly what I paid or have appreciated in value. It makes me feel a whole lot better at blowing what is now over $3000 in records. Plus as I stated in the write-up for Village Green, this is basically my the inheritance of my future children, which, considering my wife is pregnant, is something I need to seriously think about (amongst a million other things!) Regular Monday-thru-Friday posts until I run out of records to write about (and considering I’ll be taking over the LPs at HPB in a couple weeks, I don’t know when the hell I’ll ever run out of records to write about).

Running Total: $2972.75

New Total: $3083.25

Here are this week's jams:

Mount Eerie - "Stone's Ode" 
In which Burzum has never sounded so beautiful, as a small chunk of the lyrics at the end are from Burzum's "Dunkelheit."

Baroness - "Take My Bones Away" 

In which I dip my toes into the shallow end of the dark pools of metal. Not that Baroness are shallow, but they're "safe." (I listened to that Burzum song lyric-checked in the Mount Eerie song and got really creeped out because I am a weakling and feel like metal dudes would know I spent a year and a half making fun of black t-shirts and long greasy hair every time I wrote about a metal band for the Pitch Music Newsletter). 

Mixtapes - "Like Glass"

In which I might as well just give up on finding music for myself and keep reading Nick Spacek's blog. Though my tastes changed, my heart cannot deny smart pop-punk with some of the most satisfyingly hooky choruses I've heard all year. 

Serengeti - "Directions" 

In which Kenny Dennis drops some knowledge.

Dura-Delinquent - Light Sound Motion 7"

Dura-Delinquent – Light Sound Motion 7”

K, 1999

Acquired: Love Garden, Used, 2008

Price: $1

 

This 7” sounds a bit like a precursor to that whole dirty rock n’ roll period that swamped alternative rock radio in the early 00s. But it’s better than that garbage. “Head Over High Heels” is a murky, saxophone-laced late-night slowburner. It’s not terribly thrilling or original, but it is serviceable. I feel like they’re trying to do gritty but they sound too clean. They’re just not gritty enough! The sax adds some wonderful sleaziness to the songs though is the best thing Dura-Delinquent have going for them. Both “Head Over High Heels” and b-side “Hitman’s Lament” sound like a million songs you’ve heard before and are pretty forgettable, but they are still better than Jet and the Vines and all of those awful bands that took that dirty rock n’ roll mantle to new lows. Not that I am comparing Dura-Delinquent to Jet and the Vines, because no one deserves that. That would just be cruel.

Here's a tune from their 1995 debut. They mostly just sound like this all the way through (although I think I like this one more than either of the tracks on the 7").