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").

The Kinks - Are the Village Green Preservation Society

The Kinks – Are the Village Green Preservation Society

Reprise, 1968

Acquired: Half Price Books, Used, 2013

Price: $12.50

 

The Kinks are waiting for me. At some point—once Dadhood finally sets in—there will be weeks and months and years of digging up and internalizing the intricacies of British pop and rock music from the 1960s and 1970s. At this point, all I can do is keep dangling my toes in the water and collecting the accepted masterpieces. I really like the Kinks, but do I really like the Kinks? I can’t talk about their line-up changes, their cultural impact, or Ray Davies’ solo career but I sure do love Lola vs. The Powermanat the Money-Go-Round. The only other album of there’s I’ve listened to is the US version of their debut. There are six albums between Kinks and Lola, and the only one I’ve listened to of those six is Village Green. And really, I’d only listened to it once all the way through up until this afternoon. “Someday,” I said to myself when the deluxe edition of Village Green came into the store. “Someday I’ll read the Kinks entire Wikipedia page and dive into their discography album by album and be able to appreciate the b-sides and rarities.” I like having background information. Sometimes it becomes prohibitively necessary for me to fully enjoy an album. I’ve listened to Village Green three times this morning and I’m over the moon about it. It’s one of the most inventive pop albums I’ve ever heard. It’s fun and funny and the composition, orchestration, and songwriting is out-of-this-world great. But I know I could appreciate it more.

But none of that matters because I can just put on Village Green and go about my morning routine and enjoy the pleasant, inventive, and eccentric tunes, which practically ooze nostalgia. There are all sorts of thematic mourning for England’s bygone days that feel universal now, then, and forever. Plus there’s just pure pop majesty in the melodies. The way that chorus for “All My FriendsWere There” sneaks up on you is just so fucking gorgeous. The way the title track never, ever wears out. That might be a fun experiment, because of course you’ll get sick of a great song if you hear it enough times in a row. But how many listens would it take for someone to get sick of “The Village Green Preservation Society”? I bet quite a few. Plus there is so much going on sonically that you would always be picking up new little things you missed before. I love the Kinks because they never seem preoccupied with being hip or cool, which seems to be the defining trait of many a modern mainstream Britpop band. I think I should probably listen to Arthur. I find it insane that I’m running a music blog and fancy myself some kind of rock music nerd and have never listened to Arthur. But that’s half the fun, I suppose. I’m quite partial to that “How have I gone my whole life and never listened to this great record feeling?” It keeps you humble and coming back for more.

My copy of Village Green is a second US pressing from the mid-70s. It is in fantastic condition, which means that it will someday be destroyed by my future children. I can see it now, and it is terrifying. My parents never had much of a record collection when I was growing up. By the time I was old enough to know what music was, the ancient turntable had been buried in the basement with a stack of Eagles, Olivia Newton John, and greatest rock hits of the 70s LPs piled on top of it. There was one Beatles LP: a thoroughly scratched up copy of Revolver. I’m fairly certain there were two Rutles albums, which is insane. No Led Zep, no Sabbath: Just a bunch of stuff that you usually find sitting in the corners of basements, garages, and attics. Pretty much every record buy at HPB is like this (the collections have varying degrees of mold and mustiness and are quite honestly the bane of my existence). The kind of stuff that thoroughly annoys a teenager looking to experience music in a tactile form because the cassingle of “Whoomp There it Is” does not count. So the teenager is left to plug in the record player and spend an hour trying to figure out how to hook up the massive wooden speakers. And then the teenager puts on some record and proceeds to play DJ and scratch the shit out of Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” which is the only song he knows and is track one on one of the myriad best of the 70s compilations. His father gets pissed even though the records are worthless. That was me, that teenager, but unlike my father my record collection has some real gems and all I can do now is fear and dream of a locked glass cabinet and severe groundings for trying to mess with Dad’s records. And at the same time, I want my kids to inherit my record collection. It feels like an investment, but it’s not about the money (although they are sort of an emergency fund). I want them to learn to take care of nice things that have appreciating value.

Now here's one of the greatest summertime jams you will ever hear. 

The Dubrovniks - "My Coo Ca Choo" 7"

The Dubrovniks – “My Coo Ca Choo” 7”

Citadel, 1988
Acquired: Love Garden Shotgun Room, Used, 2008

Price: $.25

 

The Dubrovniks’ are surprisingly versatile! On this 7” they tackle Alvin Stardust’s 1973 glam-rock single “My Coo Ca Choo” with aplomb and sound like T-Rex in the process. The b-side “Girls Go Maniac” blends a little of the rockabilly displayed on “If I Had a Gun” with some straight up, good time, slightly trashy, and quietly rollicking rock and roll. As with the “Fireball of Love” 7” (which was also released in 1988), the production is clean and not corny, the songs are short, replayable and fun, and while these guys don’t really blow you away with their originality, they are fantastically capable at making catchy little tunes. The extensive resumes of the members of the Dubrovniks can be found on Wikipedia, which is kind of a fun read considering that Oceanic bands tend to be incestuous and prolific (it’s also a rabbit hole to go down if you want to see if you can chart the aforementioned incestuousness of Aussie rock bands). Drummer James Baker and guitarist Raj Radalj were founding members of the Hoodoo Gurus and everyone in the band has about a hundred connections to other Australian rock bands with amazing names (The Punjabbers, Love rodeo, The Smokin’ Eldorados, The Eternal Teenagers, The Beasts of Bourbon, Spectre’s Revenge, the Surfin’ Caesers, and that’s just a few from the dudes in the 1988 line-up (the Dubrovniks’ had a few personnel changes over the years and the dudes in the band also had like five side projects a piece)).

Here's Alvin Stardust's original version of "My Coo Ca Choo." Look at that LEATHER!

The Dubrovniks - "Fireball of Love" 7"

The Dubrovniks – “Fireball of Love” 7”

Citadel, 1988

Acquired: Love Garden Shotgun Room, Used, 2008

Price: $.25

 

I feel like I can’t say enough nice things about the alternative rock that came out of Australia and New Zealand in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Not all of it is great or terribly original, but almost all of it is at least good. Australian alt-rock always seems a bit more conventional than New Zealand’s (which is quirkier and has more willingness to experiment) but there’s this sort of wonderful tone to all the records that came out of Oceania at that time. The Dubrovnik’s hailed from Sydney and take their name from the Croatian town bassist Boris Sujdovic and guitarist Raj Radalj we born. “Fireball of Love” and B-side “If I Had a Gun” sound remarkably fresh for being recorded 25 years ago. Maybe I’ve been listening to too many 7”s that sound like they were recorded in basements, bedrooms, and closets, but the production on this one is very clean and manages to avoid almost all of the cheesy production maneuvers that plague mainstream late-80s rock music. “Fireball of Love” has only the slightest bit of that soft-focus feel, but it also has real pianos peppering the choruses instead of synthesizers and the vocals aren’t processed to death. “If I Had a Gun” has a rockabilly vibe that really works because the song is so short (1:40). Both songs are really short, and I’ve become sort of a lobbyist for economical pop music in recent years. Unless you are pulling out some stylistic tricks, there is really no reason to keep repeating verses and choruses until your song hits the four-minute mark. Or the three-minute mark, even. If your song repeats on itself after two minutes (give or take a bridge to make it sound like you’re not just stretching the thing out to beat the melody into the head of the listener), just cut it off at two minutes. I find that crafting a short song with replayability value is much more desirable than making a long song that is going to make someone never want to listen to it again because it’s boring. Even though the Dubrovniks break no new ground, I listened to each side at least four times and wanted to go back for more.