Lula Cortes and friends

“I wish I could speak Portuguese!” I blurted out the first time a friend put Os Mutantes on a mix-tape for me back in the mid-90s. That strange amalgam of Western pop and avant garde ideas taking root among South American rhythms and Brazil’s ease with assimilating different strands bewildered me in the most delightful way, and nearly every artist I’ve explored since then from that hemisphere has spent countless hours on my headphones, even as deadlines on American bands loom. Had I started studying that fateful day, I would have a good grasp today of what is being discussed in the fuzzy reproduction of explanatory text inside of Lula Cortes and Ze Ramalho’s only duo record together (with a motley crew of friends contributing), Paebiru. Alas, I was a poor pupil, and what was written back in 1975 escapes me. The scant information available online tells of Lula Cortes coming back from time spent in Morocco to play music in his home state of Pernambuco. He did some stuff with a kindred spirit by the name of Lailson in 1972-73, their duo record called Satwa, meaning ‘the sound of balance between two opposing realities,’ a perfect descriptor for their two spirits entwining effortlessly, spinning together electric guitar and sitar on a song like “Apacidonata.” (This record was reproduced in a lovely edition by the conscientious folks at Time-Lag up in Maine, and word is that they are at work on yet another archival recording from this time.) For the unauthorized reissue by Shadoks of Lula’s double album, Paebiru (long hailed as the Brazilian version of Amon D��l), Cortes teamed with a nascent songwriter named Ze Ramalho, who would go on to stardom in his home country. Drawing inspiration from Indian carvings found up in the mountain caves (here’s where I wish I could read Portuguese), each side of this album was dedicated to an element. Lore clashes somewhat in the story that the master tapes and most of the pressings were destroyed in a flood (some say fire), and of course, you could just as easily say it was lost under the dirt of history or else vanished into thin air, completely its destruction by each element, too. Burn one to the free-folk excursion of “Omm” or the Soft Machine chug of “Nas Paredes Da Padera Encantada” and see for yourself. The new weird America is old and much further south of the equator than The Wire magazine would lead you to believe.

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The Hellbillies - Lakafant

Here’s your Cultural Studies Moment of the Day. The Hellbillies are a Norwegian band, but rather than playing the garage rock that’s made it across the Atlantic, the group plays tradtional American country-rock. Listening to the music (especially on this live track), you could be in any small-town bar in the States … until you notice that none of the lyrics are in English. It’s a bit unsettling to hear the vocals, as the musicians sound so quintessentially American. The dislocation’s compounded by the fact that the band’s a city group (at least judging by the little I’ve been able to glean on them, including the album title *Urban Twang*). Now if someone can help translate some lyrics, we can really get into this.

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Doris Henson- The Power

A few days ago I wrote on The Turntable about Doris Henson’s live show. The best song from that night was this one. “The Power” doesn’t quite have the (cough) force on the debut album as it does in a live setting, but it’s still a good track. You’ve got to imagine the trombone coming about twice as loud to get the full impact it carries. The opening line — “Have you ever been called a whore” — somehow makes a perfect start to the group’s discography, and founder Matthew Dunehoo delivers it perfectly.

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System of a Down- Revenga

I’d have never given System of a Down a chance (rejecting them based on their radio play and apparent nu-metal qualities) until somone with different, but respected tastes convinced me to give them a chance. I’m still far from a SOAD flag-waver, but I’m getting more into what they’re doing. “Revenga” is an ambitious track that succeeds, shifting gears throughout the song to combine various elements fluidly. My original “nu-metal” conception’s gone now. These guys thrash, and they have chops, too. They’re political, aggressive, and fun.

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The Carter Family - Answer to Weeping Willow

I’ve listened to this track a minimum of 30 times in two days. If you’re going for listen one, increase the volume, close all other browser windows (save for Stylus… you’ll need it later), and give this the reverence it pleads for. A plaintive harmonized lament buoyed by lively strumming and strung up with heartclinching melody.

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Luxury- Mincemeat

One of the last great records of the last millennium, recorded after the band nearly bought it in a van accident outside Chicago. I picked this up on a hunch (read: the cover art was pretty), and upon a couple spins labeled this as a Radiohead straggler. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is the fallacy and all that. A devastating lil’ swim in the
sea of awe.

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Geto Boys- Leanin’ On You

John Darnielle has long since hit up “I Tried,” so I’ll give a brief nod to the other emotional landmine off last year’s The Foundation. Again, Bushwick steals the show with his nonchalant reading of an astounding text (”This ain’t no poor little me story/That’s so phony…”). Scarface puts in a great tale of scrapping with his best friend over some Austin-bought heroin, and Willie D realizes his potential (again) with a look back on himself as a rebellious high schooler. When he raises his voice, as in “To no avail I WAS SCREAMING OUT…” - well, the goosebumps multiply themselves.

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Flying Nun, Flying Nun,
Dashing through the glen.
Flying Nun, Flying Nun,
With their merry men/women/undecided individuals.
They took from the rich,
And released lots of albums of fantastic indierock with classicalist punk
influences for the poor,
Flying Nun, Flying Nun, Flying Nun.

Tall Dwarfs - Senile Dementia

Knox and Bathgate�s best album, amongst the many highlights of 3 EPs is this wistful, knowing song. While Knox could compose a song about breakfast cereal ingredients and still have fans and critics drooling, here he�s decided to leave irony at the studio door. A song about the bittersweet experience of losing one�s self to age�s unfeeling march, the narrator manages to comprehend the ultimate fiction of Descarte�s dualistic mind-brain philosophy a little late in life. Plus its got bongos. Ace.

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Bird Nest Roys - Jaffa Boy

Flying Nun had its fare share of “nearly” men. Throughout the 80s and 90s the Northern Hemisphere regularly went to DEFCON 1 awaiting the imminent arrival of The Chills, Straitjacket Fits or The John Paul Sartre Experience in their domestic charts. The Bird Nest Roys, on the other hand, weren�t even nearly “nearly” men. This didn�t stop them releasing a stratospherically good debut album, upon which “Jaffa Boy” can be found. Sounds like early Ride, but in a good way.

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The Gordons - Future Shock

“Angular” is back, apparently, and so The Gordons should fit right in. Except that they�re now called Bailterspace, and they haven�t released an album in three or four years. Oh well. Listen to the title track from their debut EP Future Shock, and grin like a loon. This is spaz-happy double-jointed rock for lovers of solvent-based fun the world over. Alvin Tofler would�ve been proud.

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In association with Stylus’ weekly article, we present three tracks from Andrew Unterberger’s Whatever: The 90s Pop Culture Box on the Stypod today.

Soho - Hippychick

One of the greatest �oh, I love this song! Wait a minute�what song is this?� jokes of the 90s, Soho lifted wholesale the immortal opening riff to The Smiths� �How Soon is Now?� for the intro and hook to their only hit, �Hippychick.� It�ll continue to trip up name that tune contestants for a long time to come, but apart from that it�s an unfortunately forgotten classic of sorts, infectious in that �Tom�s Diner� sort of way while making only about half as much sense than that song did.

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Rappin 4-Tay - I’ll Be Around

Man, talk about an inspired sample choice. There simply couldn�t be a more perfect backing for 4-Tay than The Spinners� 70s soul classic, and he manages the near-impossible by actually doing the sample justice with his absolutely brilliant verses. One of the set�s biggest lost classics.

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Shanice - I Love Your Smile

This is the second most infectious song in history, behind the theme song to I Dream of Jeanie. And that�s a very, very good thing, but I hope for your sake that your head isn�t planning on doing anything important in the week or so after you listen to this song.

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Bill Fay

Bill Fay is a name familiar to obsessive collectors of hopelessly obscure sixties singer-songwriters and Wilco trainspotters alike. Bill Fay excels in the former category, his two original Deram releases of the late sixties-early seventies, a s/t affair and one with the ominous title of Time of the Last Persecution, are gorgeous, schizophrenic affairs, and the back story that he went insane, OD’d, died, fell off of the earth’s face always make for great lost legends. (He still lives, plays, not a Syd Barrett case in any way). The latter set of folks traced him from the song that Wilco used to close their encores on their most recent tour, with a beautiful, resilient ditty “Be Not So Fearful.” Where that twain meets is in the triple digit eBay auctions for original copies of these discs, a condition recently relieved by Eclectic Discs.

I cannot pretend to be an anglophile, obsessed with Ray Davies’ minutiae, kitchen-sink dramas, Portobello Road, the socio-cultural relevance of the British garden, London free jazz (or grime, for that matter), though I can’t get enough of this. So some of the smaller details (sonic or sung) woven into Bill Fay’s songs will elude me, to where I may not appreciate the Uncut hyperbolic comparisons that he is the missing link between “Davies, Drake, and Dylan.” That boast is a tad overboard regardless, as Fay’s voice and noir-ish orchestral backing brings to mind other bleak iconoclasts, Scott Walker and Leonard Cohen (to name two), with each song seemingly sung before a straight razor. For his 1967 single, “Some Good Advice,” you can see how much fun Fay would be at a garden party, sneering at the phony hypocrisy of the proceedings and sulking in a corner, despite the propulsion of the song itself.

Scant years on, Fay is fed up with everything on Last Persecution, at the end of his mental rope. He weighs the true differences between Christ and Hitler and their cults of personality and finds it in a dead heat; he finds solace nowhere in the disintegrating world around him, which makes for some grave, ponderous, yet cathartic listening. That doesn’t mean I can’t get off on the shredding bombast of his backing band, spearheaded by guitarist Ray Russell, who plays electric guitar like John McLaughlin on some shitty speed. Listen to him take the indignation of “Time of the Last Persecution” to a higher level with his frenzied lead and hear how such ghosts can be reborn.

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Even after I�ve decided that a particular album is not going to be joining the permanent collection, that doesn�t mean I�m done with it. Even a disc that seems at first like it�s wholly without merit will be given a spin or two more to see if there are any hidden gems. And finding them is always a thrill, no matter how likely the source.

Take for example, Oasis� execrable Heathen Chemistry; my copy was not a promo, but I cannot recall buying it (nor why I would), and only hope I fished it out of the $2 pile from idle curiosity and not a little pity. Most of it is pretty much what you�d expect (more so, in places) but there are exactly two bright spots: the just-grandiose-enough ballad �Stop Crying Your Eyes Out� and the Noel-sung “Little By Little”. The lyrics are even worse than most of their famous howlers, yes (�true perfection has to be imperfect� makes me die a little inside, every time) but the melody is decent and the chorus gets me every time. There�s just something crazily affecting about the way Noel bellows �Little by little, the wheels of your life they�re slowly falling off�, and for that instant it actually makes sense (although don�t expect me to explain it now). I know I should hate it, I did at first, but I find myself humming the chorus under my breath (�My God woke up on the wrong side of his bed� and all) at the oddest times.

Caesars� Paper Tigers album isn�t nearly as bad as Oasis� last couple of efforts, but what it lacks in train-wreck fascination it unfortunately makes up for with inessentiality. Interestingly enough the song I find myself returning to isn�t �Jerk It Out� but instead opener “Spirit,” wherein Caesars background the gimmicky (albeit wonderful) organ for what sounds like fake horns and get all epically angsty for a good five minutes. Again, it shouldn�t work, but along with a few other songs it suggests that the band actually gets better as it gets more earnest. �Spirit� is one long uphill struggle dotted with surprisingly powerful crescendos, and it wouldn�t be that hard to mistake it for the work of an entirely different band than the one performing the one hit wonderrific �Jerk It Out�.

Lastly and best is Client�s City, a record I was going to review for Stylus until I noticed Derek Miller had reviewed it elsewhere. I assumed that he would then write it up here, which doesn�t make sense at all now that I think about it, and when I eventually noticed it in one of the CD piles that dot the futon in my computer room it was sufficiently out of date that nothing was to be done. Which is a bit of a pity; while it�s not consistent enough to wholeheartedly recommend is sees Clients A and B moving beyond the rather� limited emotional palette of their earlier work into some quite interesting territory, including two collaborations with erstwhile Libertines that are surprisingly successful. One of the best of the bunch and most out of character to boot is “One Day At A Time,” where Client A (or is it B? The one who was in Dubstar, in any case) sounds mysteriously like the great Debbie Harry during the chorus. But beyond even that it�s the kind of calmly reflective pop tune you�d expect from, well, latter-day Blondie (as long as they don�t mind the synth-pop touches) rather than Client. At this rate their third album may well be a keeper.

Repair - Forgive and Forget

Like any music fan, I like to have my expectations subverted and upended in a way that’s pleasing. That’s what the first track on Repair’s new album did through the inclusion of vocals. I should have known, though, as most Sub Static full-lengths tend to be incredibly pleasant surprises, no matter who the artist. This is a label that flies under the radar far too often, while creating exceptional music that ties many of the standout tracks from other labels together in mixes and such.

I unfortunately slept on their 12″ of last year under this title, which I’ll be picking up immediately, considering the imitable Richard Davis has a remix on there.

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The Gasman - Imodium

At times this track, made seemingly only out of vocal samples from opera records recorded in the late 40s overflows with an abundance of female voices nearly bowling you over with the amount of sonic information. At other times, it’s simple enough to understand exactly what’s going on. During both of those moments I’m in love with what’s going on here. The Gasman has been doing this sort of thing for his past two albums (his newest double disc set just was released on Planet Mu), and I find it to be absolutely infuriating that he can’t put together an entire album of tracks as good as this. Be grateful that he’s trying.

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Pole Folder - Waterfalls of Love feat. Sandra Ferretti

Sure, it’s not like I’m happy to be enjoying some of the tracks from Bedrock’s first CD release immensely, but they’re also not at all what I had expected from John Digweed’s label either. Epic progressive trance was what I came for and what I came away with was epic and enveloping trip-hop straight from the school of Moloko, et. al? Oddly transfixing and beautifully put together, you have every right to hate this–consider it a guilty pleasure from me to you.

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Harold Lloyd - on his next film

A shot of McCormick before changing my left turn signal. A co-worker swore by vodka and orange juice to get him to sleep, and since I’m heading to bed at 8 AM these days, I’m open to experimentation. He hugged the girls, but the girls never hugged him.

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DJ Kazimir - Dear Prudence (vocal mix)

She [seemed] impenetrable, anyway. A walking sign system for the beau monde who then happened to climb into a black Ford with standard-bearers for alt.rock accessibility pasted on: Muse, Radiohead (Pablo-era logo), the Cure. Nothing personal necessarily, but I have to train my brain not to give the vintage kids more than their due. Was I just grateful, for my own ego’s sake, that there wasn’t a haughty Books/Dead C/Faust fan getting into that pick-up? In any event, I still ended up trying to find the most indie way to make a lane-change.

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Zammuto - Plate 10

Mr. Zammuto, I owe you ten bucks. Expect a check in three weeks’ time.

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Luminfire- Sequin Ambrosia: House Music of the Ages

Tracklist
00:00: Tiefschwarz & Eric D’Clark � “Blow” (International Deejay Gigolo,
2004)
07:21: Tiefschwarz � “Issst (Dominik Eulberg Remix)” (Four, 2005)
17:05: Boris Badenough � “Hey Rocky!” (Trax, 1986)
22:58: Chicken Lips � “Do It Proper (Maurice Fulton Remix)” (Kingsize, 2002)
27:37: D:Exter � “Things Have Changed (Adjuster Remix)” (Force Tracks, 2003)
32:53: Dub Taylor (feat. Nadine) � “Sweet Awakening” (Force Tracks, 2003)
38:31: �loi Brunelle � “Bridge” (Force Inc., 2002)
42:52: Lidell Townsell � “Get the Hole” (Trax, 1988)
48:15: Barfly � “Heavy” (Rong, 2004)
53:04: Fingers Inc. � “Distant Planet” (Jack Trax, 1987)
58:04: Blackman � “Beat That Bitch With a Bat” (Trax, 1985)