Reviews

Celluloid Lunch

Da Slyme If There’s No Rubble, You Haven’t Played: Collected Recordings 1977–1989 LP

This is one for the collector nerds. DA SLYME was Newfoundland, Canada’s first punk band, and it’s one of those deals where biker hippie-ish outcasts heard the SEX PISTOLS and decided to drop any RUSH aspirations to stick safety pins in each other’s body parts. I’d compare them to the CHILD MOLESTERS or even the FUGS. They appeared on a Smash the State comp and copies of their original double album goes for mega bux, causing many nocturnal omissions for the Graham Booths of the world (love you, Graham). They did the homemade spray-painted thrifted record cover thing that San Francisco’s BLACK HUMOR did so well, and they repeated the art for a limited number of this new collection. I do appreciate the existence of such a historic artifact, but It’s honestly really hard for me to get through. There’s definitely moments, like “Violence, Anarchy, Baby, Mother, Daddy-o, Dig,” but it’s pretty dated and a lot of the jokes fall flat. It’s a nicely put-together “labor of love”-type package that’s definitely worth looking at, but it’s already sold out everywhere, of course!

Gemstones Novel of Nothing EP

Sludgy pop hooks mastered up so lo-fi the drums just fuzz and blend into one long thunderous white sound. There’s early JAWBREAKER-esque vocals where you can only make out every third or fourth word, but you can figure out that they’re talking about something like what you wanted to hear. Four songs on black vinyl with a hand stamped center label and xeroxed sleeve in a poly bag—a little authentic DIY hope in an otherwise overproduced landscape.

Hélène Barbier Regulus LP

Second solo LP from HÉLÈNE BARBIER, formerly of Québecoise trio MOSS LIME and joined here by a cast of collaborators from the Celluloid Lunch family. MOSS LIME’s version of spartan, spectral art-punk wandered through labyrinths similar to the ones constructed by YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS and the RAINCOATS forty years prior, and Regulus largely follows suit—sing-song vocals (in both English and French) with a touch of languid chilliness, stripped-down and unhurried beats, angular single-note guitar twang, pop songs run through post-punk machinery. BARBIER’s lyrical delivery serves the skittish rhythms of tracks like “Get a Grip” and “Regulus” just as much as the bass and drums, with words and phrases drawn out and repeated until the distinctions between language and sound start to break down, while muted swells of keyboard add to the otherworldly fever dream vibe of “Jersey Swap” and “Lightly,” and her gauzy take on “You Little Nothing” by the GORIES is somehow even more bare-bones than the original, with only some brief mangled guitar racket keeping it from completely drifting into the ether. Lovely.

Itchy Self Here’s the Rub 12″

ITCHY SELF is the new group from Joe Chamandy of Canadian art-scuzz ensemble PROTRUDERS, who were avowed and proud card-carrying members of the joint Hearthan Records/Cleveland Confidential Appreciation Society. Here’s the Rub definitely draws its own inspiration from the damaged brilliance of Ohio’s subterranean sounds, but ITCHY SELF dispenses with most of PROTRUDERS’ skronkier tendencies in favor of smart, smudged-up garage blasts that bring to mind some fantasy Ron House project that could have existed between GREAT PLAINS and THOMAS JEFFERSON SLAVE APARTMENTS. Throw in a little scrappy ALEX CHILTON/CHRIS STAMEY-schooled pop charm on “Reprobate” and “God Bless the Ego,” the loose MODERN LOVERS-via-VELVET UNDERGROUND rock’n’drone of “Playing MTV,” and the shambolic rush of those first couple of HOME BLITZ records (for at least one slightly more contemporary reference point), and you’ve got a pretty solid take on what the concept of “proto-punk” could be almost fifty years removed from its origins.

Night Lunch Wall of Love LP

On their debut album, Montreal new wave quartet NIGHT LUNCH serves up something closer to a midnight snack. It’s all too slight—the keyboards, the vocals, the guitar, the cover art. I’m hungry, so angry and NIGHT LUNCH could probably use a second helping of something spicier (MEDIUM MEDIUM-hot salsa?). Wall of Love is finger food when a burrito as big as your head is needed. Sorry, you don’t like these food metaphors? Sorry, I don’t like this record.

Rose Mercie ¿Kieres Agua? LP

Four years after their debut LP, Parisian quartet ROSE MERCIE returns with their latest conjugation ¿Kieres Agua?, drifting through the winding paths of their own self-created world as illuminated by the faint glow of the RAINCOATS’ tangled rhythms, ELECTRELANE’s warm keyboard drones, and GRASS WIDOW’s spectral harmonies. From an era where the dominant form of post-punk expression has been one of paranoia and detachment (generally amplified by the effects of technology), ROSE MERCIE’s sparse, haunting slow burn seems to exist out of (or outside of?) time, a flickering flame as opposed to a blinking cursor. In the midst of the tranced-out, tom-driven hypnotic tumble of “Dinosaur,” multiple intertwining voices chant the line “let no man steal your thyme” (lifted from a traditional British Isles folk ballad warning young women of the dangers of taking false lovers), a thoroughly unmodern reference that suits them just as well as the TABLE SUGAR-y off-kilter pop lilt and sharp art-punk angles of “Chais Pas” and “Des Pierres.” The four members of the band are cast as witches circling a ritualistic pyre on the LP’s cover (one of the oldest and strongest archetypes of sisterhood), and it’s echoed over the motorik, polyrhythmic percussive clatter of closing track “Witching,” with a Spanish incantation that roughly translates to “Loving us / Looking for us / Taking care of us / Between good and evil”—a testament in sound to the bonds of female friendship; a document of four women making music with each other, but more importantly, for each other.

Strange Attractor Good Boy Bad Boy LP

Drunken Sailor’s track record of killer material continues to burn the forward path. STRANGE ATTRACTOR brings the snotty fringe from the far-flung corners of Sadbury, hard rock (mining) capital of the world. Admittedly, Good Boy Bad Boy took a few listens for me to glom onto, but after letting this one settle in, I’m a believer. The whole record skips through eighteen tracks in under seventeen minutes of jaded and despondent garage punk. These people are devotees of the school of ANGRY SAMOANS, with a bit of Finish Your Popcorn-era F.Y.P. Call me crazy, but I am picking up on a little PERE UBU? Now go on tour.

The D-Vices Adequate / Modern Boy 7″

Brought to you by the fine folks at Celluloid Lunch in Montreal, Canada, this D-VICES single straddles the line between artiness and rocking in a cool, swaggering way, like wearing sunglasses after dark, stumbling through back alleys. On both sides of this, the rhythm section solidly drives a grooving fencepost of a bassline, nailed into place with a tough street beat. Foundation cemented, the guitar and vocals have space to chew up the songs. On “Adequate,” the guitar snakes through the rhythm section, scratching and sparking, riding and riffing on a single chord before exploding into an echo-drenched anti-solo, and on “Modern Boy,” the chords are tense and minimal but lend so much action to the music. Speaking of being modern, if I didn’t already know this was an archival recording from ’79, I could be easily convinced this was one of the current stable of bands Celluloid Lunch has been putting out as of late. Instead, we get a Canadian KBD classic that hasn’t been overlooked by history or made overpriced by collector scum.

The Pink Noise Economy of Love LP

Album number eight from Montréal’s long-running art-punk sleaze merchants the PINK NOISE, squarely positioned in the most recent stretch of a timeline that extends through the RED KRAYOLA’s late ’70s Rough Trade cusp, ’80s major label-era PERE UBU (in my head, this LP is what Cloudland could have sounded like if it hadn’t been so blatantly mersh), and the FALL’s discovery of club beats in the early ’90s. Woozy UBU’d synths collide with cut-up Madchester rhythms, while Mark Sauner draws his vocals out in a half-speed Mark E. Smith cadence, pulling Economy of Love‘s nine tracks through a series of seedy and dimly-lit musical back alleys. Top marks go to “Opportunist,” which cruises down the glitter Autobahn with a glammed-up motorik pulse, the layering of some Andy Gill-worthy serrated guitar on top of rattling percussion and swells of acid-psych keyboard on “Wall of Ice,” and “Out of Step,” the grimy benzos-not-coke early ’00s dance punk banger that never was (but should have been).

The Stonemen Faded Colors / In the Evening 7″ reissue

This is heavy, heady stuff, the way unearthed garage should be. What really stands out on these tracks from this woefully obscure Canadian quartet is what a downer they are. This is heavy not just for its fuzz or its four-on-the-floor stomp, but also for its doom-laden atmosphere. I love an unholy racket, and this satisfies that while also bringing the melody. Not as bluesy as the GROUNDHOGS and more straightforward than the MONKS, this carves its own space in history of the bummer side of stonerdom. Crucial listening.