True Widow: "Creeper"

Remember how - back in the 80's - Enuff Z'Nuff always got lumped in with the hair metal crowd even though they might as well have been a dayglo Beatles cover band? That kind of incredulous marketing strategy surrounds Dallas band True Widow, who are signed to Relapse and - yes - have a slight doom sound about them, but effectively they're more of a shoegaze group with space rock tendencies than anything resembling metal proper.

Hey, at least the Metal Archives aren't fooled.

Dirty Beaches: "Casino Lisboa"

Alex Zhang Huntai, a.k.a. Dirty Beaches, is through fucking around. The 75 minutes of his new double LP Drifters/Love Is the Devil, leave the listener scrambling for footholds in its dense mire of scattershot noise. In spite of Pitchfork's overly ebullient score the collection has a patchwork (read: directionless) quality to it but I guess if you're going to get your feet wet "Casino Lisboa" is the place to do it. Just keep in mind this is probably the poppiest song on the record.

Tomahawk: "Oddfellows"

I can't say that Oddfellows is my favorite Tomahawk record - based on the limited number of times I've had pause to ingest it - but it's got the basic elements that I want out of my Mike Patton showcase: a mix of quirky, short pastiche experiments that don't quite cling together but don't last long enough to matter coupled with more conventional (yet still slightly "off" somehow) tunes like this title track. It's got a central riff like an old Kim Thayil throwaway groove, but the rhythm is deliberately obtuse and Patton seems to be improvising his vocals as he goes along. Sounds about right, then.

Ahleuchatistas: "Wisp"

Been hearing good things about Ashville, NC for awhile now. With Williamsburg, Austin and Portland having overstayed their welcome at the apex of the hipster hierarchy - and LA seeming to fizzle out fairly early on in their once promising renaissance - the internet has been looking for a new town to dub Next Big Thing for awhile now. I've heard the likes of Baltimore, Pittsburgh (???) and Fayetteville, AR (?????) bandied about, but Ashville seems to be simmering up beneath the surface as well. To hear tell, it's got the mountains and natural beauty of Portland along with the youth-oriented college vibe of Austin and... nothing at all to do with Brooklyn, as near as I can make out. Ahleuchatistas sport a pretty advanced set of avant-garde musical chops, so I'd definitely be interested in checking out a scene capable of nurturing this kind of talent.

Heads Full of Poison is out now on Cuneiform.

Scott Walker: "Epizootics!"

That does it. Tom Waits and Scott Walker need to collaborate. Walker in later years has taken on a lot of similar Tin Pan Alley-meets-junkyard influences, and holy shit is "Epizootics!" a fantastic example of what I'm talking about. Here we have a 10-minute suite of schizophrenic, percussive vignettes with Walker's Brechtian  warble chewing scenery over top. Why can't the Stones age this gracefully? If you're unfortunate enough to be hearing Scott Walker's name for the first time, do yourself a favor and dig up his backstory: one of the great anti-sellouts in R&R history.

Tom Waits: "Hell Broke Luce"

Ever wonder what Lulu would have been like if either Lou or Metallica had anything left in the tank? "Hell Broke Luce" presents a more interesting concept: what if Tom Waits replaced Nick Cave in the Bad Seeds, if only for one song? Waits is the anti-Reed, still full of piss and vinegar, never full of himself.

Black Moth Super Rainbow: "Windshield Smasher"

I have mixed feelings about Kickstarter - when Bret Easton Ellis and Paul Schrader want the public to fund their next movie they can kiss my ass - but the intent is well meaning: what it's intended for is to help leftfield artists put out the work they want everyone to hear without having to rely on the corrupting influence of the corporate teat. Apparently there are enough Black Moth Super Rainbow fans out there that the band was able to double down on the recording budget for their new album, Cobra Juicy (out October 9). "Windshield Smasher" is the first taste of what your money has bought you. Or, let's be honest, what other people's money has bought the rest of us.

[UPDATE 8/7/12: added music video]:

St. Vincent: "Krokodil" / "Grot"

Well this is a bit of a departure. Annie Clark steps out from her usual baroque Kate Bush steelo and gets down with an electro-punk, almost NIN-evoking hardcore sound. These two songs represent both sides of a 7" released for - what else? - Record Store Day, so there seems to be a dearth of information on who produced and played on these two cuts, but the no bullshit brutality here isn't entirely unprecedented: "Northern Lights" off of last year's Strange Mercy showed a darker, more guitar-oriented side of St. Vincent, and if you want to go all the way back to 2007, "Your Lips Are Red" - while lacking in bludgeoning guitar - certainly had a more sinister, Siouxsie Sioux kinda thing going on; but "Krokodil" and "Grot" at the very least take those rare glimpses into Clark's psyche to an entirely different level. Side project?

Zun Zun Egui: "Fandango Fresh"

I missed this the first time around when the Fandango Fresh EP came out a few months back, but with Zun Zun Egui's new full length Katang dropping today it's a good time to play catch up.  With a spastic, energetic cross between world beat and island jazz, ZZE would make ideal tour mates with Mutemath.

The Soft Moon: "Total Decay"

Musically, San Francisco is more akin to Austin than it is to Brooklyn or Portland:  there isn't the flood of breaking talent that comes out of the latter two areas, but what does emerge into the nationwide indie consciousness from the likes of SF and Austin are a small handful of forward thinking bands diverse in nature, with geography the only common selling point.  Try, for instance, comparing The Soft Moon to Girls and let me know how many wpm you've rattled off before coming to a standstill.


The Soft Moon - "Total Decay" from Life or Death PR on Vimeo.

The Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble: "Pretend"

That's a heady name for a band.  I guess when you're talking a band that combines chamber pop with dance rock a little pretense isn't entirely out of line.  The incongruous imagery in this video was lensed by band member Daniel Brandt, presumably in a well-financed id douche.  Let's hope the experience was purifying for him, because I'm pretty sure his manager is horrified.

The Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble - "Pretend" from Cluster 1 on Vimeo.

HTRK: "Synthetik"

HTRK - as in Hate Rock - returns with an icier, more ethereal slant on their disembodied synth rock.  Now without deceased bassist/programmer Sean Stewart, the remaining duo of Jonnine Standish and Nigel Yang make up for the missing instrumentation Stewart provided with additional layers of distant plinks and multitracked droning.  The visuals accompanying "Synthetik" remind me of a punk rock version of THX-1138.

Asva: "Birds"

Already sang my praises for this album recently so I'll make this brief.  This is a much more minimal video than 2009's masterfully animated "A Game in Hell, Hard Work in Heaven" but the ethereal vocals and sparse backing track sells it.

Colin Stetson: "Those Who Didn't Run"

Colin Stetson is best known as the touring sax player for Arcade Fire, but earlier this year he dropped his second solo album, New History Warfare Part 2: Judges (three guesses what the first one was called).  That album was shortlisted (top ten candidate) for Canada's 2011 Polaris Prize, which inevitably went to Arcade Fire's Suburbs album.  There's really no reason for me to be posting this this late, but in all frankness I just got hip to it.  I do like when a solo project has an individualistic tinge to it, and isn't just a minor derivation of the mother band.  In those cases I always get the impression that someone is going for a bigger payday by hiring low paid scab musicians, oblivious to the chemistry that made their main band a player in the music scene to begin with.

[EDIT 1/6/12: updating with offiial video.  Apparently I wasn't so late on the ball after all.  Shit, that just rhymed, didn't it?]
Colin Stetson "Those Who Didn't Run" from Isaac Gale on Vimeo.

Zambri: "On Call"

Now this is some trippy shit.  Sounds like a cross between Siouxsie and the Banshees, MIA and an electroclash lawnmower. Zambri is the surname of sisters Cristi Jo and Jessica, and their cat-raping aural aesthetic will either tie your room together or split your chromosomes, depending on your tolerance for Glossolalia... which is the name of their upcoming EP as well as an apt description for their shattered psych pop.

Zambri- On Call from Johnny Woods on Vimeo.

Tom Waits: "Bad As Me"

Well, look who's back?  Excluding the odds & ends collection Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards it's been nearly seven years since Waits' last studio album of newly written material.  I don't know quite what I think of "Bad As Me" after a couple of cursory listens:  it's got a good sound to it and the hammy singing style I've long since gotten used to, but that's kind of just it... this doesn't really distinguish itself much from the same style he's been milking for over ten years now.  Maybe it will be one of those slow gestating songs that end up being one of my favorites, but in the meantime my gut tells me that I hope he chose this as the first single off the new album because it was the most accessible, and not the most adventurous.

  Tom Waits - Bad As Me by antirecords

THROWBACK 1999 || Tom Waits: "Hold On"

Alright, July being a month filled with vapid summertime releases that I have no interest in covering here - to wit, new LPs by 311, Incubus, 3 Doors Down and Sublime - it seems as good a time as any to kick off the Throwback series. Since the aforementioned new releases might already lead one to believe we're still living at the turn of the millennium, let's go with something from 1999.

1999 was kind of a transitional year. Nearly all the commercially successful grunge and alt rock bands that ruled the decade had either imploded - Soundgarden, Faith No More, Gin Blossoms, White Zombie - or had taken a nose dive in album sales... Stone Temple Pilots, Collective Soul, Bush, Third Eye Blind, etc.

On the other hand, 1999 was the Year of Napster; many youth who would ordinarily have been fussing over the Next Big Thing were instead fleshing out their existing discographies, downloading old stuff that they'd never got around to buying and just generally catching up on the classics. Yep, it was the era of compilations and greatest hits records, the remix collection and the covers album... a period in flux that the record business never really recovered from.