Liminanas - Crystal Anis (Hozac)

French pop marvels, the Liminanas, hail not from Paris, but from a town called Perpignan, nestled between the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean (also home to the also awesome Sonic Chicken 4).

The Liminanas self-titled debut, released in the States on Chicago’s Trouble in Mind label, was a sparkling collection of garage-rock and Velvet Underground inseminated Gallic pop. The follow up, Crystal Anis (on another Chicago underground stalwart, Hozac Records) is a shorter, sharper distillation of their aesthetic. Smart, simple and seductive - you’ll listen again and again.

Since the French pop of the Sixties and early Seventies, represented by singers in the Ye-Ye style (which could be generously interpreted to include everyone from France Gall and Sylvie Vartan to Jacques Dutronc and Francoise Hardy) and the sinuous, sexy songs of Serge Gainsbourg, Gallic pop has been pretty much a wasteland for three decades. The petit renaissance that began with bands like  Sonic Chicken 4 and the Plasticines showed the French could rock out with flair. And the Liminanas add additional support to a new case for Franco-rock.

Lionel and Marie (Liminanas) use spare, simple materials. Unlike many of the V.U. influenced ensembles since the Jesus and Mary Chain or Spacemen 3, Lionel Liminana abjures slick slabs of harmonic distortion, favoring instead discreet bits of Reed/Morrison guitar framings, more redolent of the Velvet’s third, self-titled album and Loaded than the merciless wave of White Light/White Heat. The band’s music also travels well with fellow neo-retro rockers like the Raveonettes and the Dum Dum Girls, even sometimes suggesting the Euro-cool of Stereolab.

 From the tremolo guitar on “Longanisse” (a sort of sausage, hmm?), and the flanged sounds of the title track, to the blasts of fuzz guitar on the choruses of “AF3458,” the Liminanas keep the textures fresh and changing. Lionel’s guitar parts play off  his Farfisa and Vox Continental style organ lines. Championed since the heyday of the sound by guys like Jeff “Monoman” Connolly in DMZ and the Lyres, these archetypal keyboard sounds are forever identified with Sixties garage-rock, a vibe associated more with one (or two) hit wonders like the Castaways, Five Americans and Seeds than the Beatles/Stones/Kinks canon.

Lionel’s vintage guitar and organ sonorities are driven by Marie’s basic, insistent drumming, and blended with everything from ukulele (“Salvation”) and glockenspiel (“Longanisse”). It’s a palette both bone simple and subtly complex and the Liminanas know the difference between embellishment and excess. 

Nude Beach - II (Other Music/Fat Possum)

Their name stinks. 

Nude Beach?

But Nude Beach they are. And their second album (yup, II) is one damned entertaining piece of work.

They come from the Brooklyn scene; maybe they thought their name would look good on bills with Passion Pit, Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear (okay, maybe Nude Beach isn’t so bad). 

It’s for damn sure that nothing about Nude Beach fits in with the rest of the Williamsburg sound. The above bands sound like trustafarians plotting new directions in pointless obscurity. When Grizzly Bear performed recently on “The Colbert Report” the song they played was shapeless, meandering, and lacking a distinct chorus. This foolishness passes for innovation among the self-select in America’s largest post-graduate ghetto. Snore. 

Instead, Nude Beach seem to have swallowed the Seventies whole – and the good parts mostly. Among the icons pictured on their inner sleeve are Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, and Dee Dee Ramone – indicative musically, and even more in terms of affinities.

The band’s debut album is not widely available or distributed. I’ve heard bits and pieces on YouTube videos, and it smacks a bit more of post-punk and grunge leftovers than II’s trimmer, coolly classic rock approach. Nude Beach’s music demonstrates that innovation and novelty are not necessary qualities for rock pleasure. For Nude Beach it’s more about choosing inspirations judiciously, working on craft and performance, projecting energy and just enough individuality to make something familiar sound fresh again. 

To be honest, nearly every time Chuck Betz opens his mouth I find myself thinking of Tom Petty. Listen to the way he sings the line “so hard to believe” in “Walkin’ Down My Street.” Okay, it’s obvious he loves some Tom. But that’s not such a bad thing. Betz, in particular, recalls the steely, pissed off Petty that the FM rockers mistook for punk. “Street” also recalls Springsteen’s “Sherry Darling,” and a time in the Boss’s life before the mantle of sobriety was heavy upon him. There’s also a wound up quality to Betz’s delivery on a song like “Some Kinda Love” that captures David Johansen’s raw edge and the urgency of a young Paul Westerberg. 

Betz’s songs are mostly about girls - bad girls, good girls, obtainable girls, distant girls – okay, girls. When they’re not they’re about direction, identity, destiny; it’s standard rock lyric stuff. Not too many lines leap out or grab you by the poetic neck, but his sentiments are expressed intelligently and with a passion that’s believable and idiom appropriate. Musically, they’re complete songs. You know, the kind with verses, b-parts, bridges (where necessary), and hooky choruses. 

Camera - Radiate (Bureau B)

This is a review of a German instrumental rock band called Camera. 

 But allow me some set up.

First, about "electronic music." Trying to define “electronic music” as a genre is opening the door to a really messy room. And to parse it into infinities of sub-genres is only so helpful.

The origins of electronic music go back a century – to the Futurists, musique concrete, and a host of salon driven aesthetic movements, culminating in the post-WW2 flowering of the genre with composers like Stockhausen, Babbitt, Luening and Xenakis. Early experiments with tape manipulation evolved further with the introduction of the computer to composition and performance.

Of course the advent of computers in electronic music was relatively contemporary with the development of electronic amplification of the instruments central to blues, country, jazz and rock performance. This technically involved what academicians call “electromechanical sound,” a fancy way of describing what happens when you plug in guitars and keyboards. On the other hand, purely electronic sound is produced on devices like the theremin, synthesizer and computer, ‘instruments’ with less tangible acoustic predecessors.

These distinctions, while illustrative, don’t change what’s really a pretty blurry picture.

Nowhere is this more the case than with ‘Krautrock.” Once either an affectionate shorthand or dismissive epithet, Krautrock is now common language, describing a genre with origins in Germany in the very late Sixties and early Seventies. And it’s a genre that has proven durable. The core of artists who spearheaded the genre (Faust, Can, Ash Ra Tempel, Cluster, Neu, etc.) combined electric rock, electronic music, folk and classical influences, high art and pop, the atmospheric and the aggressive in fresh, influential ways.

Of course I pretty much eschewed it when it was first happening. I wasn’t wholly dismissive of the music by any means; it was just that the bits and pieces I heard by these artists didn’t grab me then. That and their hardcore fans were an annoying, proselytizing lot – that didn’t help. Sure, I got a kick out of Kraftwerk (can’t forget Kraftwerk), but not in the profound emotional or visceral way that I did from everything from Nick Drake to the New York Dolls.

I quite knowingly came to the music through the backdoor opened by David Bowie, His “Berlin Trilogy” (the albums Low, Heroes, and Lodger) from the late Seventies borrowed heavily from Teutonic inspirations. So, of course, did his productions for Iggy Pop – The Idiot and Lust for Life, especially the former. And Bowie was collaborating with Brian Eno, who recorded with Cluster and had immersed himself wholly in the idiom. Then British bands, including Wire, P.I.L., and Joy Division/New Order flew their Krautrock colors. Hell, it was everywhere and undeniable.

To be sure I’m still catching up. I Enjoyed the Neu! reissues on Astralwerks, released in 2001. Investigated Cluster a little more, dug a lot of what I heard. So, okay I’m no expert, but I’m learning.

I know enough to know that I dig Camera. 

Camera represents a new generation of Krautrock, endorsed and supported by guys like Michael Rother (Neu!, Harmonia) and Dieter Moebius (Cluster, Harmonia). They’ve developed a reputation in Germany for so-called “Krautrock Guerilla.” This means, basically, that they often show up in public spaces, unannounced and jam out. On their debut album Radiate you can hear how these compositions took root in improvisation. Their sonic approach essentially falls on one of two sides of a balance between driving, machine rock and serene, soundscapes; the latter sounding essentially like what that stuff on “Music for the Hearts of Space” would sound like if it wasn’t so soporific. 

Radiate more or less alternates the rockers and the sound scapes, but even the relative sleepers have their convulsive moments; “Rfid” breaks (at 4:45) from a soothing mix of synthesizer washes and peeling guitar into a “Venus in Furs” drone that powers the rest of the track. “Villon” evokes Talking Head’s “The Overload,” guitarist Franz Bargmann playing elegant, vaguely Arabic lines with a tone borrowed from the halcyon days of psychedelia (think: Country Joe and the Fish’s Barry Melton) while drummer Michael Drummer’s tautly tuned tom rolls and gong-like crashes offer a meditative alternative to album opener, “Ego,” with its driving rhythms, the band here as textured as Tangerine Dream, but as insistent as the Stooges. 

Redd Kross - Researching the Blues (Merge)

Red Kross.

I think I first heard them in about 1982. Guitarist Jeff McDonald and his bassist brother Steven were still in their teens. I was a fan of their early glam-trash-punk abrasions. Born Innocent, with killer tracks like “Linda Blair” – good stuff.  From 1984, Teen Babes from Monsanto was as kool as its title; purveying low culture thrills ala Sonic Youth, but the McDonald brothers offered melodic twists well beyond Sonic Youth’s sing to the chords school of songwriting. Neurotica, released in 1987 perfected their sensibility. Its glammy vision - freakbeat, drug through the gutter of the New York Dolls and put through the Back from the Crypt grinder – was Redd Kross fully realized. Even if only Jeff could buy a drink legally.

 I was even pretty thrilled through Third Eye, a chiming, pure pop distillation of their gnarlier selves, released on Atlantic in 1990. My crew played the shit out of it, turned people on to it, but then grunge came along. It was shitty timing for Redd Kross. Their sassy, suburban snarl, unafraid of androgyny, was anything but Eddie Vedder flannel. Their closest kinship by then may have been to bands like Dramarama (a fine, fine outfit indeed), who were still pretty burly by comparison. 

 Redd Kross’ other Nineties releases were fresh, melodic and rocking. But somehow their sound lost some of its distinction as the band shot for a little deeper commercial penetration. Somehow it seemed too safe, too Material Issue or something, after their Eighties stuff. Then, they disappeared.

Fifteen years disappeared.

They re-emerge on Merge Records with Researching the Blues. 

It is so good. 

It’s the kind of good – so rocking, so stacked with invention and turn of phrase – that its instantly classic songs hit you like a ton of  bricks (“Stay Away From Downtown”) first;  then give way to the subtle hooks of (at first) less arresting songs (“Winter Blues”).  

Title track, “Researching the Blues,” initially inspired by the scholarly, but gritty passions of John and Alan Lomax, is a fond, but scathing rebuke to a friend turning down every wrong street and dark alley (“You just can’t win, strung out on the devil again”).  “Researching” has a brooding, insistent edge that matches the lyric’s darkness. The devil appears again (“the devil inside your head”) in “Stay Away from Downtown.” This song is the embodiment of a power-pop performance, with no neglect in the power department. Jeff McDonald and Robert Hecker’s interlocking, riff off riff, guitar lines propel the song. Drummer Roy McDonald (no relation) holds it all together with rock-ribbed Ringo drive and occasional Moon bursts.  Jeff and Brother Steven’s harmony vocals remind how potent sibling harmonies can be (Everlys, Davies, … you get the picture)  At 2:40 the “yeah, you” vocals hit, the “sha la las” enter at 2:52. Shortly after, you knock yourself upside the head and realize – damn, this is in the same league with Cheap Trick’s “Surrender” – a kitchen sink of power moves and pop turns.

Japandroids - Post-Nothing (Polyvinyl)

I’m driving the wife’s car. There’s gas in it. That’s a plus. And it doesn’t need a timing belt. My poor old Volvo, though, has one superior feature - a fancy direct input for an iPod; her car has no such.

Accordingly, I pack up the compact disc wallet (so 90s, baby!) with classics (Ramones, Stones, Big Star) and current crap I am a) digging, b) curious to check out, or c) have told some promo dude I’d audition.

Eddie, my astute sixteen year-old son, flips through the wallet, not finding exactly what he wants. He’s used to the world at his iTunes/Spotify fingertips. At last he settles on the Japandroids, their new album Post-Nothing.

He asks me how it is. I respond that it rocks, the tunes are alright, and it seems like something of an indie-rock cause célèbre. In other words, I sorta like it, but I don't get what the fuss is about. Eddie said that some of his friends keep talking about them. Fair enough.

I keep my mouth shut and let him listen.

After three songs he’s handing me the Super Furry Animals disc Hey Venus! (exclamation pt, theirs).

“Had enough,” I inquire.

“Yeah“ he says, “it’s kinda boring.”

At which point I volunteer that I observe the following: 

1.  With aggressive rock music the farther the singer gets from any African- American influence whatsoever the more flaccid, white and suburban it sounds to me. 

2.  That, and they have too many “oh, oh, oh” lyrics, chants, background vocals, whatever (they use them a lot!) making my oi-mo (I think that covers the gamut of fist pumping ‘punk’ genres … oi to emo) tolerance quickly exhausted. 

3.  Generally, this music is vibrant. I don’t hate it. It entertains me in short blasts (like the cover of the Gun Club's "For the Love of Ivy"). But the songs are too long, too samey and the whole dude thing just isn’t very hip shakin'.

Eddie nods in assent.

‘I don’t like the drumming” Eddie adds. “Too busy,” I say. “Yeah,” Eddie responds.

Reverberating: 7. 4

Ty Segall Band - Slaughterhouse (In the Red Records)

I’ll begin by warning mature readers of REVERBERATIONS: in the event you don’t have a sense of humor and adventure about noise and excess, advance to the previous review of Bobby Womack’s The Bravest Man in the Universe.

If you do, say hello to Ty.

If Goodbye Bread was Ty Segall’s orange sunshine voyage; Slaughterhouse is his STP crash. But enough about drugs.

This young Segall chap is prolific. Slaughterhouse is his fourth release since 2008’s Lemons (excluding side projects, a disc with White Fence, etc.), and far and away his, like, heaviest. The full credit is to the Ty Segall Band. The sunny-sour Chilton-isms of Bread were also, like his second solo effort Melted, a bit on the shambolic side. Segall’s pop sensibilities were rarely obscured, yet he seemed to insist on showing that he could pull a T. Rex or John Lennon solo turn, but couldn’t be bothered to tighten up his performances. Fortunately for Segall, those records were long on melody and charm, so whether his lackadaisical qualities were laziness or aesthetic didn’t matter so much.

But causal brilliance isn't what heavy rock is about. The Segall Band on Slaughterhouse is brutally tight. They hint at the Stooges Funhouse without having that band’s primitive funk moves, but they nail the acid-rock (God, what an idiotic term, but it seems to work) of other Detroit psych merchants like the Frost and SRC, and even New York’s Autosalvage.  Other reference points, maybe Hawkwind, and Blue Oyster Cult; of course Sabbath. But enough about drugs; I mean, stoner-rock bands.

In the maelstrom of the late Sixties and early Seventies there was an element of tragedy attached to music this damaged and brutal. If, as that Karl Marx fellow suggested, history appears "first as tragedy, then as farce," it's first hard not to see Slaughterhouse as farce.

But I figure that if times have changed that doesn't mean they've gotten any prettier, and besides, when made with such vigor music like this is even idiomatically compelling.

I don’t always, but in this case I’ll go track by track, partly because the pop to plunder quotient shifts consistently throughout Slaughterhouse. Things start with “Death.”  The song begins with pizzicato violins playing in close harmony. KIDDING. It starts with howling feedback and, uh, skronk. And it sounds pretty cool when you’re driving down the highway at midnight. “Death” sounds like the Thirteenth Floor Elevators without the jugs and theremins and with the guitars on Blue Cheer meets Sonic Youth mind meld.

“I Bought My Eyes” (even the title sounds kinda Roky-ish) has spooky harmonies, like some Left Banke from hell, or at least B.O.C.’s rehearsal space. Emily Rose Epstein’s drumming is equal parts drive and splatter, perfect for this music.  Segall and guitarist Charles Moothart go for shards and splinters, but harmonies, too.

Bobby Womack - The Bravest Man in the Universe (XL Recordings)

He’s one of the great soul men. As far back as the early Sixties he was writing and singing (w/the Valentinos) timeless songs like “Lookin’ for a Love” and “It’s All Over Now.” Yes, you students of white guys playing the rock ‘n’ roll, those tunes were further popularized by the J. Geils Band and the Rolling Stones, respectively.

He’s Bobby Womack. Dude moved in on Sam Cooke’s widow before the greatest soul singer of all was cold in the ground. Yeah, he’s bad. His songwriting skills were undiminished, but by the late Sixties Womack’s performing career had little traction. The he surfaced in the Seventies in a big way. With a string of classic releases, including Communication, Understanding, and Facts of Life, Womack solidified his place in the soul firmament. His songs from the soundtrack for the flick Across 110^th Street, featuring the era evincing title track, represented, along with Isaac Hayes’ Shaft and Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly, the transcendent musical statements of the Blaxploitation genre of the Seventies.

Womack also made some fine records in the Eighties, chiefly The Poet and The Poet II for the short lived Beverly Glen label. The man has staying power. Nonetheless, a recurring combination of drug issues, personal problems and career cul de sacs kept his profile low. Now 68, and on the rebound from his demons, Womack is back with The Bravest man in the Universe on XL Records, home to bands like The XX, Sigur Ros, Jack White, and Adele. The label’s one effort at soul resuscitation was the late Gil Scott-Heron’s We’re New Here (not a bad start). Bravest is stone, classic soul in composition and spirit, utterly contemporary in arrangement and production. And the synthesis of classic and current elements is successful in ways that make Bravest Womack’s best record in forty years. 

 Bravest is co-produced by Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz, etc. – for those of you who have spent the last twenty years under a rock) and XL label honcho, Richard Russell. Albarn’s eclecticism and openness to adventures in sound is well documented. Russell, now sole proprietor of XL, was one of the label’s three original founders. XL initially emphasized music associated with dance and rave culture. All of these histories impact Bravery. This is not your father’s rhythm ‘n’ blues record. The kind of electronic rhythms and programming associated with acts like Massive Attack, XX and the trip-hop genre generally are consistent throughout Bravery. The contrast between these rhythm tracks and Womack’s gravelly, gospel derived singing is stark, but the synthesis is seamless.

Intermission

 Golly ...

I quite appreciate that it has been too long between entries here at 'Reverberations.' I have been listening to music, of course. Frankly, I hear plenty that entertains me, but little that inspires sufficiently to devote critical time. 

While I don't say much about it here I am also a musician and songwriter my own self. And recently my own work has been preoccupying me. Not that I'm working so damned hard on it, more like I'm distracted by it, and trying to use work time and dream time effectively.

I have two or three review ideas germinating, however, so look for those in the next week to ten days. I am also considering 'Reverberations' version of the sort of approach typified by R. Christgau's "Consumer Guide" or Creem magazine's "Short Takes" -  mini-reviews intended to plug and dismiss, inspire and discourage. My general disposition, as those of you who read this blog know, has been to delve into records in some depth, usually in appreciation and support for the artist. My nasty digs are few and far between. The "short takes" approach would almost certainly invite more negative reviews. First, the wider the net is cast the more driftwood one catches. Second, it's more time efficient to dispatch crap in fifty words than seven-hundred. So, I would ask you gentle readers ... is the capsule review approach one I should on occasion pursue? After all, I do this all for you. Oh, and the free shit. 

Love,

Steve W. / REVERBERATIONS

Bob Andrews - Shotgun (RKR-CB Productions)

Rock ‘n’ roll is a brazen enterprise. Ever since Little Richard those who provoke attention seem to get it. Would we have it any other way? After all, the music blasted out of a repressed post-war America with its Willie out and a gap-toothed grin on its mug. Still, the music has always allowed room for those talented individuals who weren’t quite so flamboyant, who perhaps had a measure of reserve superficially uncharacteristic of the music.

Take Bob Andrews - he is a more modest sort. In his storied if under-sung past, Andrews has contributed to some wonderful bands and recordings, chiefly as keyboardist for Brinsley Schwarz and Graham Parker and the Rumour. For the past twenty years he’s been living in New Orleans. Playing local clubs, marinating in the sounds he loves, living life. 

Shotgun, Andrews’ new album, demonstrates that restraint has its place, even in the world of rock ‘n’ roll. And, for that matter, restraint and the ribald needn’t be strangers. Andrews’s smart, idiomatic tunes accompany the words of lyricist Robin Hunn. She knows her partner’s needs well, delivering smart, blues-drenched lyrics that shift sexual personae and demonstrate a wide range of emotion, from the violated to the volatile, from the plaintive to the passionate. Their collaboration extends beyond Hunn providing words to Andrews’ music. The pair worked together envisioning these songs, discussing feel, context, and approach. It’s a partnership that works.

Shotgun is a bracing roots-rock recital that crackles with energy. It brims with Andrews’ astute musicianship and makes virtue of his vocal modesty. Restraint, combined with musicality, can be quite insinuating. Occasionally, with these performances I’ll strain to hear the ghosts of more robust rhythm and blues archetypes. Frankly, the title track might sound, well, dirtier if his pal Graham Parker had sung it; it has a bit of that “Hotel Chambermaid” salaciousness. But more often than not Andrews’ simmering, slyly expressive singing is unerringly right for these performances. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than on “I Knew It Was Wrong but I Did It Anyway.” Sung in the overtly emotive style of a Percy Sledge acolyte it would lose its shamed, but defiant steel. Here, Andrews combines the rock-ribbed reserve of Richard Thompson (“For Shame of Doing Wrong”) with the determined, dogged drawl of Arthur Alexander. On “Doghouse” there’s a bruised, conversational dignity to Andrews’ delivery that suggests the songs of Dan Penn, and Andrews plays a beautiful solo that shows his debt to Garth Hudson. 

Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires - There is a Bomb in Gilead (Alive Records)

Lee Bains III is the prodigal son, raised on the Good Book Jesus, corrupted by punk-rock and working out his own adult reconciliations between the two. It’s the blessing and curse of being Southern. From Jerry Lee Lewis to Tyler Keith (Preacher’s Kids), and all the way back to Robert Johnson, artists, black and white alike, have been torn between Saturday night and Sunday morning; ever since moonshine and lusty women first presented a challenge to the Christian life. Crap - that was probably in the fifth Century; in southern … France, or somewhere.  Hell, I’d have to get out my History books. Like I say, it’s nothing’ new. Bains and his Alabama boys, the Glory Fires, aren’t reinventing the wheel, just grinding the sucker. And it yields a great ride.

Even if there’s nothing new under the sun, each generation and every new artist has the opportunity to put its and his or her own spin on the eternal conflicts. On There is a Bomb in Gilead, the Glory Fires debut, Bains brings the sensibilities of a literary education to his talks with Jesus and his hallelujahs to Joey Ramone. I don’t say this just because he makes literary references, like the one to Walker Percy (“go ahead take my Walker Percy, go ahead and take the t-shirt by brother got when he saw the Ramones”), but because his melancholy and moral musings are offspring of Faulkner and O’Connor’s world. “Everything You Took,” the ditty with the Percy/Ramones lyric, establishes the artist’s lifestyle essentials: rock ‘n’ roll t-shirts and books. And essential they may as well be since he’s losing his gal. He’s clearly hanging on to a thread, clinging to “every little hope that you give me.” But the lady sounds to me like she’s moved on.

The singer’s wrestling with virtue resounds in “Ain’t No Stranger,” rhyming contrition and perdition, by God – and reminding the almighty that he may be prodigal, but he’ s “no stranger.” Bains and lead guitarist Matt Wurtele slash through the Willie Mitchell groove with guitars that are more Keith Richards and Ron Asheton than anything Memphis or Muscle Shoals. “Centreville” sustains the rocking pace. It’s Skynyrd after the Pistols (and Some Girls), Bains spitting out lyrics about guys who are “over educated and under-employed.” Perfect, it captures the new Birmingham, or hell – Boston, as the United States becomes the new Spain. Imagine Tony Joe White amped up and all pissed off. That’s what Bains sounds like on “Centreville.”