Without Geometry, Life Is Pointless

I'm always running into guys talking about bands they think have been unfairly ignored / overlooked, although most of the time it's some idiot talking about The Strokes (srsly I've seen this) or Flaming Lips or Tame Impala or something. If there's a band out there that I think genuinely fits that bill, though, it's Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones (you can go ahead and disagree with me, that's what reading other blogs is for). I've never seen them live -- they're from Wisconsin or something, which is a part of Canada or up by Alaska I think, wouldn't know, don't have any friends there -- but I have three of their albums, none of which I paid any more than three dollars for. I think S-S Records will give you a whole box of their second LP just for asking. Dunno why this is, though, because there stuff is endlessly rocking, like Death of Samantha / Cle-era Prisonshake with shittier production values (and less '70s hard rock moves, but whatever). You could even listen to three of their songs right now if you want, including the one that I fucked up but left the way it is because I don't give a shit, or not. Watch out when you listen to "Cynical Courtship etc etc" though, it's got a kinda screwy keyboard part that'll make you think yr smoke alarm is going off.

Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones -

"Notoriety"

"Auto Erotic Uh Fixation"

"Cynical Courtship Of The Seraphim Sister"

People Say Nothing Is Impossible But I Do Nothing Every Day

I've been on this thing lately where I try to buy every Siltbreeze LP that shows up on Discogs for $2.99 or less. I figure that it's worth the risk, and so far I've been almost close to 100% right. It took me a while to get around to listening to this Sapat album -- when you pay less than three bucks for something, it tends to sit in the back of the milk crate while you prioritize other more important things, like listening to that $25 Dick Diver record that you bought from Midheaven -- but now that I've listened to it a few times, I've pretty much fallen in love with it. Sounds kinda like if Can were an Xpressway band. Or, maybe now that I think about it, like a Siltbreeze band. Gee, I hope that Tom Lax doesn't see this because then he'll probably want to sue me.

Sapat -

"Lovely and Free"

Time Flies Like An Arrow, Fruit Flies Like A Banana

"When it came out we couldn't give the things away, but now it sells for five hundred dollars
The only records that you buy are on eBay - this box of records oughta send my kids through college
Don't put your records out 'cuz no one's gonna care, when a record's only good because it's rare"

-- "Killed By Death", Head
If you dig the awesome, super-poppy a-side -- which is a Fatal Charm cover that Kurt from the Fastbacks plays on -- you should check out a Boston band called Conmen (they've got a new single out).

Head -

"Spend The Night Alone"

"Killed By Death"

We're Pink Floyd, Bitch

My record-buying patterns tend to have peaks and valleys, sometimes leaving me with crates of records that I bought 5 or 6 years earlier without ever listening to them all that much or even paying attention to how big the pile was getting (like, I somehow managed to end up with three or four Purling Hiss LPs, what the fuck). Psychedelic Horseshit are one of those bands with multiple records in the crate, almost never to be taken out unless it's to post a picture on Tumblr or something (inside joke, ignore it). I mean, their shit's sorta cool in theory -- "Poor Fidelity Mixed With In-Jokes" was always my go-to bin at Record Town, and putting "New Wave Hippies" on an album being released by Siltbreeze is about as funny as it gets -- but in a lot of ways their shit's kinda flimsy, too. Maybe I kept buying their records because I was hoping one of 'em would stick, I dunno. I did that with Pavement back in the '90s, and look what happened: they suck now. (Actually, that's not true, I've never bought a Pavement record.) Maybe I'm holding onto them because I'm hoping for a massive lo-fi revival soon, and I'm gonna be on the ground floor of that thing, you bet, or as soon as the Youth Crew revival is over, at least. Maybe Box Elders will become cool again. Or maybe there's no point to this I'm just rambling to fill space. Hey, go read Paste or that jerk who writes reviews for Tiny Mix Tapes, why don't you? Stop bugging me. The fuck.

Psychedelic Horseshit -

"We're Pink Floyd, Bitch"

"Dreadlock Paranoia"

I Liked You Better When You Were Quiet

"The Cuss Set" by the Guinea Worms should've made my best-of 2014 list, but I chickened out and made up some sort of rule about 'physical releases only', which was total bullshit because then I snuck some Bandcamp-only releases on there, so basically I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. Actually, the only people who talk about their best-of lists after the fact are jerks like Dan Moserock when they're throwing some band overboard just for spite, and who wants to be like that? (Lots of people, apparently.) (oh, by the way, you haven't been sending me enough promos, the next thing your label sends me is getting a bad review.) (shit, Earles forgot his inhaler again.) Anyway, "The Cuss Set" starts off with a somber, single-minded piano riff called "Booze's Control", which right away sets up the notion that this isn't going to be the big-rock yuck-fest that maybe you were expecting, plus is some sort of pun on Blues Control, I'd imagine (no ending is implied, but it comes quickly enough anyway). Most of this is actually sorta Neil Young-ish in a way, especially "Lady Shrapnel", which hints of Crazy Horse big-time; elsewhere there's a line that goes, "So this is rock 'n roll autumn, in the county of heart". Old man, take a look at my life. Wait, "Sober Jerk" is a giggle-fest, I take that back. The best pun on the whole thing is the song title, "Super Willin'", which fits three purposes: 1) It's a pun on 'super villain' 2) It says he's super-willin', like, for anything, maybe even enough for Little Feat 3) His name is Will, so he's super-Willin' it. Obviously I should've ended this review a couple of sentences ago.

Buck Rogers Is All But Dead

At one point maybe five or six years ago, if you ordered a bunch of stuff from any of the record label distros they'd throw a handful of CDs into the box as they were mailing it out, just to get rid of 'em. No doubt the CD boom came crashing down so hard that they all got stuck with thousands of lame clunker CDs that were never gonna sell, so it became like that Mitch Hedberg joke about people on the sidewalk handing out flyers: "here, YOU throw this away". I don't think I ever actually listened to any of the free CDs that I got -- I mean, what the fuck do I care about Small Brown Bike -- but when I found a bunch of them in a box while I was moving a couple of months ago, it was like 2007 all over again. I couldn't tell what this one was at first; the spine just says "My Heart Is A Merciless Piece Of Metal And Fire" so I figured what the heck, any band with a name like that has got be completely hilarious, right? Then I looked it up on Amazon, and that's just the title of the album while the band's name is really Crucible. The only funny part to all of this was reading the bitchy review that some nerd left on Amazon because he apparently thought this CD was by another band named Crucible (some prog-rock/Genesis rip-off) instead. Gosh, I hope you were able to get your 9 cents (plus shipping) back, nerdy Marillion-ass-sucking guy.


Crucible -

Interest Rate of Deception"

Fear Won't Eat My Soul Because I Don't Have One

The couple-three Tight Bros singles that I own have always struck me as being pretty great, but I also've got two of their albs which I've never had the patience to listen to all the way through. I dunno, they just never struck me like the singles did, for some reason. Although I'm listening to "Runnin' Thru My Bones" now, and this one track that I ripped from "Lend You a Hand", and shit's sounding pretty alright. Pretty fuckin' keen now, hoss. Maybe I've changed my mind about this whole Tight Bros thing. But not enough to make me go back and rip any more songs from this album, besides this one that I already ripped about 5 years ago. Does that make me lame? Probably, yeah.

Tight Bros From Way Back When -

"Make It a Habit"


Usually a picture of the record goes here, but fuckit, you probably
wouldn't even have noticed if I hadn't pointed it out

Hell Used To Be A Nice Place Before The Rest Of You Showed Up

I own two Coffinberry CDs; one of them sucks, this one doesn't. At least, not if you're into something that sounds like Wilco "Being There" crossed with one of those Tommy Stinson or Paul Westerberg albums, which this sorta does (although track 9 could be a dead-ringer for a "Dirty Moons" outtake and track 2 kinda rips off that guy's "Aeroplane" record or whatever it was). Of course, some of this sounds like a shitty Pete Yorn CD, too. Still, there's enough great rock songs on here to make me wonder why this CD didn't do a lot better, although maybe the guys in the band being a bunch of dicks had something to do with it. Dunno if that's true or not, it's just something I heard.

Coffinberry -

"Packrat/Survivalist"

"Earthworms in The Sun"

"Freeway Ends"

"Write This"

God I Feel So Numb But Fuck I Sound Terrific

When What’s Your Rupture? released a solo Kevin Boyer 7" a few years back it had people popping boners everywhere, but I wasn’t able to track down a copy myself. Now there’s this CD-R, which came out on Doubles Tapes last year and includes the rest of the solo sessions, recorded over ten years ago with Fred Thomas (Saturday Looks Good To Me). Most of what you’ll find here is total power-pop with just the bare minimum of resemblance to Tyvek, and there’s 6 or 7 really stellar tracks on here, including the 7" tracks and a ghostly, scratched-up cover of the Buzzcocks’ "Love You More". Had I bought the 7" (or this CD-R) at the time it was released, it would’ve made a strong push for my record-of-the-year.

Kevin Boyer -

"Something's Gonna Come Up"

What You Fail To Understand Is What I Said Is Not What I Meant

Paul Bruno played a Real Numbers song on his latest podcast, which reminded me that I bought this single a few years ago and still hadn't listened to it yet (which is pretty typical of the way things go around here). Real Numbers are from Minnesota somewhere, but their songs can vary between UK/Aussie-sounding poppy stuff -- really great if you're into bands like Woolen Kits and the Twerps -- and then harder stuff that runs closer to Mammoth Cave/Candadian-type bands like Moby Dicks and Cold Warps. This EP is mostly faster-harder stuff, and if you dig it at all then you should maybe check out their new 12" which just came out, or their "Tear It In Two" 7" which came out on Florida's Dying a couple of years ago and is perfectly brilliant.




Real Numbers -

"Can't Find a Way"

"You're Breaking Up"

No One Cares After The First Million

In sort of a freaky co-incidence, Bruce Wingate uploaded the Bruce Wayne demo cassette (which I'd never heard before) to YooToob the same week that I threw this International Brunch Mummies CD in my glovebox to listen to on the way back and forth to work. There's even a re-recorded Bruce Wayne track ("Reinvent Yourself") on this Brunch Mummies CD, how about that. Funny how those things work out. Actually, it's not even worth a chuckle, but whatever. I actually have a few Brunch Mummies CDs hanging around that Bruce gave me once, but I'd have to try to find them, this place isn't as organized as it once was. "Location-Meal-Monster" is how they came up with the band's name, if it's not obvious then keep staring at it and eventually you'll figure it out. There's covers of the Saints, the Supremes, and the Monkees on this thing, too. I'm really not sure when this came out, I could ask Bruce but he's probably busy right now.




International Brunch Mummies -

"New Caucasian Pop Sensation"

"Reinvent Yourself"

"Here Come The Pats"

I've Been Figuring Out How To Sleep At Night

This first Home Blitz 7" is pretty fucking stellar, as is the one that came after it, plus you should already own all of these tracks anyway because they came out on a CD on Gulcher which you can still buy thru Gulcher’s web site for twelve bucks or something, which is like CD prices from back when people still wanted to buy CDs, so jump on it in 2013 feller like it's 1998. Dan DiMaggio maybe didn’t invent sloppy home-recorded lo-fi rock with Home Blitz, but he was certainly the first to bring an overt cock-rock influence to it (at least to these ears -- Speaking Canaries not withstanding, of course), perhaps most noteably displayed by his Slade and Cock Sparrer covers as well as a penchant for sounding somewhat like The Speedies (everyone remembers the Speedies, right? sure thing hoss). Not to mention all the other neat tricks throughout the Home Blitz catalog, like recording a record out on the sidewalk, or pretending to stop in the middle of a song for a piece of gum, or the phone ringing in the background, or the casually insane tempo changes just for the fuck of it. That oughta piss off the squares, right? Yeah, so don't be a square, cube.




Home Blitz -

"Apocalyptic Grades 2005 A.D."

"Hey!"

I Seem To Get That An Awful Lot

Here's a 7" that I bought a long time ago, mostly because of The Ergs, and I still haven't listened to any of the other bands on it since (except maybe Mazeffect once -- it's amazing how far Doc Hopper's influence goes). Bad bands are influenced by bad bands, good bands are influenced by good bands. When you see a band that took its name from a Groovie Ghoulies song, that's a clue for you to keep on walking. "Saturday Night Crap-O-Rama" later appeared (in a better version) on "DorkRockCorkRod", a record that I love so much I bought it twice. Here you can hear it without the back-masked outro, though. Apparently those are Paul Westerberg's shoes on the cover, which is pretty neat if it's true.




The Ergs -

"Saturday Nite Crap-O-Rama"