April 2007 - Earache Hotel

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So this whole albums of the week schtick is about as regular as John Goodman’s bowel movements, but I guess y’all are used to that by now. I have a whole sackful of reasons and excuses but I don't wanna bore ya. Read the following, vote, and wait.

This week’s albums are:

1) for the money…

Blank Generation (1977)

Richard Hell & The Voidoids:

Blank Generation
(1977; Sire/Warner )
Blank Generation is the kind of nervous, arty punk that may be the non-movement’s true legacy. Taking Captain Beefheart’s spastic elasticity and reimagining it for the streets of New York, this is confronting more for its chaotic jazzy jitters and poetic nihilism than the expected wall of sound. It’s real catchy, groovy, ‘n’ idiosyncratic too, with Mr Hell slurring and spitting with more bitterness than rage. File next to Patti Smith and Talking Heads in your punk rock satchel.

2) for the show…

Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (2003)

Outkast:

Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
(2003; Arista)
My forays into hip-hop are brief but generally rewarding. This double album, splitting the talents of Andre 3000 and Big Boi onto individual discs, may be my favourite of all time. But I certainly ain’t no expert. Out of the two CDs, I prefer Dre’s jazzy, George-Clinton-via-Prince, nymphomaniacal soul-love weirdness. But Boi’s old school brittle 808 beats, gangsta shit, and pimpin’ smoothies are just as boundary-smashing to my lily white lobes. Collectively Outkast could conquer the universe.

3) to get ready…

Killer (1971)

Alice Cooper:
Killer
(1971; Warner Bros)
I recently scored three Alice Cooper albums for ten buckeroos. The only one I’ve gotten around to listening to yet, Killer comes after their breakthrough Love It To Death (both released in 1971) and is apparently part of Mr Cooper’s golden age of awesomeness. It’s a dandy carnival of cartoonish theatricality with some tough-ass hard rock and spooky Halloween creepers, dumb and smart in equal proportions, ‘60s garage orchestrated into proto-metal magnitudes, and a whole heap-a-fun.

Now go, cat, go!

***

IMAGES

Blank Generation*
utkast-speakerboxx-lovebelow.jpg" target="_blank">Speakerboxxx/The Love Below*
Killer*
(album covers used under fair dealing)

*images on this page were taken from the following Wikipedia pages:

Blank Generation
Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
Killer

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BORIS: PINK (REVIEW)

April 2nd 2007 14:10

BORIS
PINK
(2006; SOUTHERN LORD)

RATING:

TRACK LISTING: 1) Farewell / 2) Pink / 3) Woman On The Screen / 4) Nothing Special / 5) Blackout / 6) Electric / 7) Pseudo-Bread / 8) Afterburner / 9) Six, Three Times / 10) My Machine / 11) Just Abandoned My-Self

Pink (2006)

Taking their name from “Boris,” a tune off the Melvins' Bullhead (1991) album, you know this Japanese band’s shit’s gonna be fat and wobbly. But you can’t understand just how giant it is til you chuck on Pink (2006) and get sand-blasted and lulled with its massive marijuana grooves. And this is supposed to be their most accessible record to date! I don’t know about the others, but these guys can write a song and drain a bong like it was your daddy’s pool or ballsack.

Pink has accessibility out the yin-yang, like a garage with extra wide doors and ramps and shit for the disabled. Face it, they’re a metal band, but Boris ain’t afraid to lucky dip the hard 'n' heavy sections of the record bin. “Farewell” opens up and gives you a soaring, seven-and-a-half-minute slab of shifting shoegazer metal with sensitive reverbed vocals a bit like the Deftones, but gianter. It’s the second longest track next to the dirty, galloping epic “Just Abandoned My-Self”—a track preceded by the sumptuous and clean “My Machine” and ending on some truly fuzzed and fucked amp abuse. But these wide-open tunes of delight and decay bookend what for the most part can be described as compressed-garage-grunge-doom. “Afterburner” is a druggy jammer that could grow afros on Wolfmother’s collective chest and “Blackout” brings the doom to the forefront with downtuned destruction and ethereal feedback whistling through the skulking, hulking morass. The title track is a surging Motorhead pummeler that is equal parts amphetamine thrash and rock ‘n’ roll trash. “Woman On the Screen,” “Nothing Special,” and “Pseudo-Bread” also revel in this kind of scummy, early-‘70s proto-punk-vs-metal stomp; piling Wata’s layers of fuzzy shredding onto the primal thump of Atsuo and Takeshi, the drummer and bassist both hollering like surly, horny teenagers while they make the foundations swagger.

I’ve never been to Japan, but I bet with their massive population, if they have garages, they’re fuckin tiny, if not entirely metaphorical. Boris have managed to cram a giant irradiated lizard’s worth of hard rockin', psychedelic metal in there, that’s closer to the obstreperous prehistoric roar of Bled Zepple, Dack Purpath, and Leep Sabblin with a heapin’ helpin’ of the industrial-strength Detroit stank of MC Stooge 5, than any of metal’s more recent mathematical discoveries. You can board up the windows, but Boris’s atomic breath still leaks out the sides and lets the rising sun shine in to be faced with a grin.

***

IMAGES

Pink*
(album cover used under fair dealing)

*images on this page were taken from the following Wikipedia page:

Pink

Earache Hotel - April 2007

THE LOBBY: ALBUMS OF THE WEEK

BORIS: PINK (REVIEW)

BEDROOM PUNK: CHAPTER I (PART 2)