Rolling Stones - One More Shot ... Old Devils Not Yet Dead, part 2

“One More Shot” is the other new song on the Rolling Stones’ most recent hits collection Grrr!

It appeared approximately one month after the October 11^th “release” of the first track leaked from Grrr!, “Doom and Gloom.” You can tell that “Doom and Gloom” was conceived of and labored over as the A-side, so to speak. I reviewed “Doom and Gloom” previously. As you can see, I liked it
(http://stevemahoot.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-rolling-stones-doom-and-gloomold.html).

But for all its comparative production modesty I’m not so sure I don’t prefer “One More Shot.” As Bryan Ferry (see: Jerry Hall, file under rock irony and heartbreak) sang “throw away lines often ring true.” Despite its constructed ambition “Doom” also exposes some of the chinks in the late Stones’ armor. The politically tinged quality of some of the lyrics sounds forced, even insincere, and lines like “sittin’ in the dirt, feelin’ kinda hurt” sound less remarkable by the day. Okay, I still dig the track - but as a Jagger initiated number it suffers slightly from his merely formal emotional engagement. And where a song like ‘Salt of the Earth’ may have been stubbornly ambivalent, “Doom and Gloom,” for all its energy can also sound facile.

 Basically a Stones pastiche, “One More Shot” by comparison sounds unlabored and direct, but oddly, convincingly desperate. The band, unencumbered by some of “Doom’s” textural ambitions, is just straight up Stones, which is to say originating from, driven by Keith and Charlie. 

The opening chords, descended from “Street Fighting Man,” grab your attention with strains of memory. Then, Charlie Watts plays that pickup into the downbeat as only he can – light, fleet, and funky fat all at the same time. The songs’ groove is also frankly reminiscent of AC/DC’s “You Rocked Me All Night Long,” which is testimony to the whole circularity of rock ‘n’ roll influence. Where Angus and company hit the ‘one’ with a certain authority, there’s a beautiful, dirty familiarity to the way the Stones ease into the same beat. 

There’s also a dash of ‘Little T & A,” as Keith recycles another of his moves. An observation like this once sent a certain kind of rock critic, one expecting the constant thrill of novelty, into paroxysms of accusation and despair. I’m over it. Rock ‘n’ roll is essentially sex. Novelty is swell, but if you have a move that satisfies repeat the motherfucker. 

One critic observed that “Doom” was Mick’s rock and “Shot” was Keith’s roll. Simplistic, but not altogether wrong. Keith’s rhythm guitar drives ‘Shot,” but with the warp and sway to liberate Charlie’s rock swing, whereas “Doom,” swell as it is, reduces Charlie to timekeeper. 

Bob Andrews - Invisible Love (rkr-cb productions)

Bob Andrews’ last release Shotgun was a simmering delight of vintage rock and various New Orleans idioms, Shotgun (http://stevemahoot.blogspot.com/2012/06/bob-andrews-shotgun-rkr-cb-productions.html... this earlier review gives you the lowdown on Mr. Andrews and his history with Brinsley Schwarz, Graham Parker and the Rumour, etc.) was a sleeper, a record whose virtues seemed modest at first, but that deepened and impressed with each listening. 


Just five months on, hot on Shotgun’s heels  Andrews and his partner Robin Hunn release the equally impressive Invisible Love.

Invisible Love is a little tougher, a little harder, and a little darker. The template established by Andrews and his co-writer (lyricist/producer Robin Hunn, aka RKR) is more familiar, making Invisible Love’s impact more immediate. The disc release is again accompanied by a corresponding book release. Hunn’s bizarre conceit (the lovers tale is also a lover’s tail, especially in the accompanying book the action is seen through the eyes of Labradors, Guzzard and Mr. Poo) remains intact. You may find it oddly compelling. You may not. In the final analysis it isn’t critical to appreciating her finely tuned lines, her characters passed out on the curbside, messy sheets vision of a relationship in turmoil and transition.

Bob Andrew’s genius is in taming these fevered words and making them so resolutely musical. I suggested in my review of Shotgun that there were moments when I wished his vocals were a bit more venomous, demonstrative or driven. Those moments are fewer here. Instead, I appreciate the cool anguish he brings to a heartbreaker like “Defleured Me.” There’s a wounded tenderness in his delivery of lines like “I broke my promise not to bend to all your insincerity again” that’s musically right and emotionally dead on. And to Hunn’s credit the lyric is a well-toned meditation on the costs of pleasure.

“Defleured Me” has an austere guitar part worthy of Lou Reed, complemented with devotional organ work from Andrews. Imagine Toussaint McCall and Reed collaborating; the song is deep soul beyond any idiomatic definitions or considerations. Not to belabor one song, but “Defleured Me” is one of the most emotionally honest and artfully rendered songs I’ve heard all year.

Much of Invisible Love is devoted to rockers bearing a line of descent from Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis, but as revved up by the Rolling Stones. The title track sounds like an Exile outtake – smoky, dark, propelled by John Mooney’s terrific slide guitar. "Invisible Love" is  followed by “Don't Stop” (a track so Stones-y that the boys from Richmond even have a song so named). Andrews is no Jagger, but there is an urgency to his well mannered delivery that evokes singers like Paul Kelly, another guy who may not project in an exaggerated way, but who sure gets his point across. The sneering basher “She Drives Me to Drink” could use an extra dash of bravado in the vocals, but hey – I am what you call a critic.

A solid rhythm guitarist, Andrews shines especially on the tracks where he shows off a little on the keys. “Where You Gonna Go” is a sly, swampy number, one lover eviscerating the other for lack of ambition. Andrews’ piano trail doesn’t lead so much to the Crescent City as to a vision of Pete Johnson meets Art Tatum. Stop for a moment, and bear in mind - when you listen to Invisible Love you are hearing one of the great keyboard players of the rock era, his comfort with a wide variety of styles and techniques is uncommon. Few musicians could have covered the ground a player like Nicky Hopkins did as a session player, but Andrews is on that short list.

Allo Darlin' - Europe (Slumberland Records)

In the Eighties a generation of kids raised on punk, stirred by its independence and spunk, turned inward, knowing they were not emotionally suited to punk’s more aggressive/transgressive qualities. Moved by its amateurs-having-a-go tendencies, by dispostion they gravitated toward kinder, gentler sounds - British folk, Merseybeat, Bacharach-ian pop craft, jingle-jangle, and girl-group sounds. 

At its worst this trend produced mewling drivel; at its best it gave us the Smiths, Orange Juice, Josef K, the better parts of NME's C86 cassette collection, and the sweeter offerings on the Sarah label. Beyond all that, it was an aesthetic that permeated much of the era, including some of the gentler moments of noise merchants like My Bloody Valentine, Stones Roses (tracks like “Sally Cinnamon”), and much of the Byrds-smitten works of bands like Go-Betweens and the Church. 

Which leads us to Allo Darlin’. Based in London, Allo Darlin’ are clearly children of this Eighties indie aesthetic.. They are also fellow travelers with contemporaries like the Lucksmiths, Camera Obscura and to a lesser extent Belle And Sebastian. On their second album Europe they sound like a band arrived. 

Australian born singer-songwriter Elizabeth Morris is breathy, but assertive. More of a rocker than Camera Obscura’s Tracey Anne Campbell, she has a similar voice and phrasing. Her lyrics are ‘dear diary’ stuff, but their sunny, sanguine qualities are sensible and sharp, while her melancholy is poignant, seldom indulgent. Combined with the band’s blithe, follow-the-bouncing-ball big beat it’s, well, just plain charming. Guitarist Paul Rains throughout is an understated master of all that makes this sort of winsome rock fetching. Bassist Bill Botting and drummer Michael Collins are driving, spare, and right there. Elizabeth Morris as singer and lyricist is the soul of the band, but these gents are its all important bones and skin.

Morris is besotted with a bittersweet nostalgia. In “Neil Armstrong” she dreams of a “simpler time.” The Dylanesque “If You Gotta Go, Go Now” chord changes cheerily undercut any possibility of the maudlin, and reinforce Morris’s meditations. The track features a lovley mix of Rains' twelve-string and Morris's rhythm ukelele. Personal nostalgia also underscores “Europe” (“haven’t felt this way since 1998”); here, Morris has some of the strong, but wistful quality of Bettie Serveert’s Carol Van Dyk, as the band reprises the Smiths gossamer guitars; the song fading over strings and hand claps. A Marr-ish sensibility also informs “Northern Lights,” a busker romance about “the sound of lines drawn in the sand.” ‘Lights” has an assertively awkward charm that evokes classic Modern Lovers. 

Melancholy married to romance abounds on Europe – on “Wonderland” Morris sings that “the world is ending, but I'm with you and I don’t care.” The band makes folk-rock gauze that spins visions of lonely overcast days, as seductive as it is sad. Rains slips a nifty quotation from the Beatles' "I Feel Fine" into his gorgeously arpeggiated rhythm work.

The Legs - Aaaa New Memphis Legs (Goner Records)

There are bands that never rise too far out of the muck of the American underground, yet they play a critical role in keeping a certain kind of rock ‘n’ roll anima alive. The Oblivians from Memphis were such a band.  Throughout the Nineties, their spontaneous, greasy mix of American garage-rock archetypes and rhythm and soul influences was most entertaining. And it was as pure a product of Memphis as anything from the heyday of Sun, Stax or Hi Records. Or Big Star, for that matter. Over the course of several albums, scattered singles, anthology tracks, and innumerable low budget tours they kept the flame for brash, bratty, soulful rock alive.

Jack (Yarber) Oblivian has gone on to a remarkably consistent, soulful solo career, fashioning a kind of bordello-barfly rock, fashioned from classic soul moves and strip club boom-boom. Greg (Cartwright) Oblivian formed the formidable Reigning Sound, combining ‘too much guitar’ thrash with Duke-Peacock heartache, bringing it all back home just-a-one-more time. Cartwright and crew also made a wonderful record, Dangerous Game, with former Shangri-La Mary Weiss.

It’s Eric (Friedl) Oblivian who’s made the least noise outside of the Oblivians. Of course he’s been busy with founding and operating the Goner label, a rocking imprint responsible for furthering the cause of artists from King Khan and BBQ Show to The Eddy Current Suppression Ring.

Around about the year 2000, Friedl hung out with a Texas guitarist named James Arthur. They did guy shit around Memphis, hung out, you know. No bass player. Eventually, they worked in the rough and ready drumming from the Neckbones’ Mr. Forrest Hewes.

Then … they spent months woodshedding, crafting a densely poetic, richly eclectic concept album about self-discovery. 

BULLSHIT!

NOPE, they bashed out a noisy blast of half-baked originals, handy Aussie garage covers from some Ugly Things compilation and a mauling of the Sir Douglas Quintet’s “Doin’ it Too Hard.”  And this short scrap of a set is called Aaaa New Memphis Legs.

 Whether creating a new mock dance craze with “(Let’s) Do the Legs,” a frat party stormer with guitar distortion as dense as freakin’ Blue Cheer, or going all down-tuned and metal dirty (“Been Kinda Lost”), or rewriting “Have Love Will Travel” (and blow-out combing their New York Dolls love) on “You Won’t Get Me,” Aaaa New Memphis Legs is an almost legless collection of Duchampian readymades, a spontaneous party of rock fuzz.

Truth is, by most orthodox standards this is a bloody, freakin' racket, It’s also pretty great, Moments of near brilliance include “Bill Dakota Knows,” a Paul Revere and the Raiders on rotgut gem that’s all deliciously excessive toggle switch use; the chorus is “you’ve been found to be bisexual, swinging, groovy, busted” – how do they know my old girlfriends?

“Wild About You” honors the night the Dolls spent in a Memphis hoosegow. It's whiskey soaked, a bit reminiscent of the Saints, and (oh yeah) the ghosts of every maniac beat monkey who ever tried to entertain shitheads at a frat party. ‘Wild man on a rampage, swingin’ through the jungle; honey, where are you?” It’s Raw Power with a side of grits, and it’s got a coda cool enough for an American International Pictures flick. Stepping down in thirds, clichéd, just right.  

Aaaa's twenty-seven minute romp goes out with The Legs' savaging of "Doin' It Too Hard." They do it pretty damn hard, that's for sure. In the Sir Douglas Quintet's hands the song sounded like some bizarre cross between Creedence and the Velvets. By the time the Legs are through with it it's been taken into the alley and beaten with a Kinks stick.

It’s all over too fast. That’s what she said, anyway.

But it sure is fun while it lasts. It’s a rock party for friends to be played at maximum volume. It’s stupid good. It’s not recommended for anyone who’s not ready, steady go for high distortion kicks. For sure not recommended to fans of Seals and Crofts or Bon Iver. And really, what’s the difference, ‘ceptin for a few decades.

Aaaa New Memphis Legs* is the sound of living for rock ‘n’ roll. You got a better idea?


* Available on digital download and Goner vinyl.

Reverberating: 8.2 

The Rolling Stones - Doom and Gloom ... Old Devils Not Yet Dead

Modern media. So fast, so shallow. I feel dirty just participating in it. Okay, not really. But for a music business veteran like myself, the hyper-accelerated rate at which new information about music, and the music itself is processed is brain rattling.

How must the Rolling Stones feel? They were young men in their Twenties emerging from the London blues scene to become teen idols in 1962-64. They cut their teeth on the blues and rhythm ‘n’ blues masters whose records moseyed their way across the Atlantic, shaking thing up over weeks, months and years, not nanoseconds. But things probably felt like they were moving fast for them. And they were, for the time. The machinery of promotion and distribution was in a horse and buggy world compared to today’s drop, drag and download environment.

Nonetheless, in American bohemian enclaves and in London, Liverpool, Newcastle and Manchester a fire was starting. A new single made its way into shops. Kids talked it up, word of mouth stimulated sales. If a band was lucky enough to crack into radio airplay it happened market by market, especially in the U.S.; of course news could travel fast once the phones lit up and some station had a hit with a song. But it was still a snail’s pace compared to now, when you post a song on YouTube on Friday morning and it has 1,771,135 on Sunday morning, as the Stones’ new song “Gloom and Doom” did. And nobody experiencing this music spent a dime! Yes, that is the head of my sound spinning. Of course “Gloom and Doom” is still a few clicks away from “Gangnam Style’s” 460,258,483 views (yes, it’s gone up since this draft was written). Eat your heart out, John Dowland.

 “Doom and Gloom” is the first of two songs the old devils have tracked to call attention to their umpteenth ‘hits’ collection Grrr. They can’t be arsed to actually record an honest to God album, I guess. After all, it’s only been six years, or whatever, since A Bigger Bang. Okay, snide tone retired.

When I hear a new song from icons like the Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan I try to hold two ideas in the mind at the same time. First, it’s impossible to place anything new outside the context of the artist’s recorded history. Second, you have to try. And accordingly I try to imagine what I would think of this music if it were made by some strange, new band (who of course sound a lot like the Rolling Stones, reinforcing the first proposition). Ah, hell. I think that were there a Rolling Stones informed vision of rock ‘n’ roll music without there having been a Rolling Stones, I would say ‘these guys rock.’ But it is sort of like Hazel Motes’ “church of truth without Christ.”

Even not talking about them, you’re talking about them. 

King Tuff - s/t (Sub Pop Records)

King Tuff’s self-titled sophomore release on Sub Pop is not what it appears to be. It appears to be some crude spoof on the stoner rock Kyle Thomas purveyed (w/ Jay Mascis on drums, no less) with the band Witch. On the cover a devil-bat wields what looks to be a Gibson SG in one claw and a five-pointed star wand in the other. Ooh – Wee – Ooh.

King Tuff’s debut record Was Dead, a mid-fi feast of sharp pop songs buried under de rigueur distortion, established an audience for Thomas’s trashed out recycling of classic rock moves. Was Dead got frequent, not unreasonable comparisons to similar works by garage like Ty Segall and Jay Reatard.

Of course with Melted and Watch Me Fall, Seagall and Reatard (respectively) made moves toward greater production clarity and songs bordering on pop-rock convention. With King Tuff, Thomas (with Magic Jake on bass and Kenny on drums) staggers past such peers, making a small rock ‘n’ roll masterpiece. This, of course, is bound to alienate some of the distortion is God crowd. Theirs’ are crocodile tears, really; this record sacrifices nothing whatsoever in energy or attitude. 

The Ramones weren’t trying to make shitty sounding records. The Clash weren’t trying to make shitty sounding records. I’m not sure when the sub-garage ethic became the currency for bratty bands, but it’s a fashion that’s run its course. 

Speaking of the Ramones, Thomas has Dee Dee Ramone’s deadpan ability to say what’s on his mind. The loser anthems on King Tuff make consistent reference to outsider status. On “Alone and Stoned” Thomas bluntly asserts that “all his friends” are just that. “Everywhere I Go I am a Stranger” laments “Stranger.” “Loser’s Wall” – okay, not a lot of explication required. For “Evergreen,” which bears more than a bit of resemblance to Deerhunter, Thomas presumes peace will find him “only when I die,” and sings with resignation that “I’m not really here.” A Bo Diddley throb is the foundation for “Unusual World’s” assertion of isolation and independence, the band sounding a little like the Sleepy Jackson. Get the picture? Yes, you see.

What prevents King Tuff from becoming a cartoon version of post-teen angst is the variety and deceptive depth of its music. At Detroit's Malcolm X Academy (nifty studio name), producer Bobby Harlow and Thomas crafted a rough, but sparkling diamond. The band is a classic rock magpie, and arrangement details abound; “Alone and Stoned” concludes with an acapella repeat of the song’s first line, capping off a satisfying T. Rex/Beach Boys hybrid. “Loser’s Wall” opens with chords borrowed from the Kinks’ “Till the End of the Day,” goes all “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” over the breaks, and Thomas’s vocal delivery is pure, laconic Thurston Moore. “Bad Thing” features close harmony vocals on the verse, transitioning to Daltrey screams on the chorus. “Loser’s” and “Bad” both have ingenious, beautifully developed guitar solos. Thomas is no slouch on the instrument he mythologizes (“when I play my Stratocaster”) on the latter song. 

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.