The Feelies: Jangly Pop Slowed Down and Weepy

Understanding what happened to New Jersey cum New York group the Feelies necessitates a firm understanding of its first album, Crazy Rhythms.

As implicit in its title as it might be, the Feelies were able to solder together punk’s aggression, American music’s sense of rhythm snatched from the Velvet Underground and pretty much any sixties’ rock act and the repetitive – yet simple and alluring – compositions of Rhys Chatham. This group, though, isn’t some take on no wave. And while the Feelies would ebb and flow in and out of musical oddities over the twenty years following its first album, issued in 1980, there were always hints at where the band could have gone.

Subsequent to its surprising initial embrace by the surrounding media outlets, the Feelies splintered into at least three separate ensembles. It might be worth while to investigate some, if not all of those groups (Yung Wu, the Trypes and the Willies), but that’s not what this is about. This about the odd progression of a group and an increasingly gleeful embrace of pop music.

The hallmarks of melody are splattered all over the group’s opening salvo – there’s even a Beatles’ cover. Waiting six years to issue it’s second full length, though, found the band (mostly) transformed from a nervy, overtly electric band to something that might have gone over well in an acoustic setting as was certainly capacious of hitting college markets and enthralling the R.E.M. loving masses.

Peter Buck, of the massively overrated, previously mentioned Athens, Georgia band handled production duties on The Good Earth, the Feelies second disc. What’s immediate and a sign of the times, to a certain extent, is that the band sought to maintain it’s frantic rhythms – portions of “Two Rooms” and “Slipping (Into Something)” – but incorporated a huge dose of traditional, radio ready pop song constructions leaving the energy elsewhere. We’d all like to blame Buck, but clearly the band grew up in those intervening six years and wanted to display its maturity.

Its next album, Only Life, was received favorably and attempted to ratchet up the Velvet’s thing by including a cover of “What Goes On.” But on the 1991 disc, Time for a Witness, the opening track harkens back to those days of crazy rhythms. There’s a punky flair inherent in everything about “Waiting.” The track’s guitar solo, complementing it’s revved up opening counts as the most nasty work since The Good Earth. Beyond that, though, closing out it’s career with a Stooges cover seemed like a proper conclsion.

“Real Cool Time,” this cover or the original, is so full of exceptional emotional content – the sound of joyful abandonment – that its surprising to hear a band which was obviously concerned with moving forward chose to include a track that looked so far back.

For all intents and purposes, the Feelies called it a day after that 1991 effort. There have been a few one off reunions. But the mounting appreciation for the group’s earliest effort could very well become powerful enough to warrant a proper reunion. Here’s hoping…

The Reactors: CT Punk Rendered in NYC

You ready? Here’s all the information pertaining to the Reactors, a KBD affiliated group hailing from Conneticut which relocated to New Yawk to make it big and all.

Sheperd Ginzburg plays guitar while screaming in tune, Bob Payes plies bass strings and Cathy Burke bashes drums in proper time. The band issued a self released seven inch in 1979 sporting two tracks: “I Want Sex” b/w “Seduction Center.”

There ya go. That’s it. The rest is all a venue for my pontificating on the meaning of it all – and after listening to the band’s collected works, as issued through the Italian imprint Rave Up Records, I’m not too sure that it means much of anything.

According to some commenter over at KBD Records, Ginzburg, since the band’s dissolution, has been engaged with car racing of some variety. A scurrilous source, surely. And if it were true, it wouldn’t make any more sense. Of course, someone fabricating such a story about a guy who fronted a band that no one really remembers shouldn’t be plausible.

Despite that piece of (mis)information, it’s still interesting to hear the band turn in tracks which might have come from disparate sources – that means the group had an unwieldy sound. Veering from the snot inherent in those aforementioned efforts to the psycho pop construction “Time Belongs to Us” is a shock. That track alone might not be strong enough to warrant the semblance of collector fervor surrounding the group’s work, but collectors do what they gotta. “Time Belongs to Us,” apart from Ginzburg’s sometimes in key singing really could have made a run at popularity if it were released a bit earlier. But by 1979, the shift to new wave was well underway. And even if the group sported skinny ties and such, the sneering that should be assumed to have accompanied the guitar playing here wouldn’t have gone over too well. Ahhh, they coulda been the Cars or at least produced by Ric Ocasek.

After making it though the Reactors’ collected output, though, the band’s first single, included on KBD #14, is a confounding thing. The group was certainly within the realm of punk stuffs, but the rest of its work is really more poppy than people familiar with that single would expect.

The stop and go, mod cum latter day punk of “University Eternity,” a part of a dug up outtakes collection, calls to mind a more recent Florida band. Dead End Kids are really quite horrendous – and a part from its split with the Spent Idols probably shouldn’t have been on anyone’s radar. But that group moved to combine some pop, properly sung lyrics (even if the vocals all come off as strangled) and punk.

Pop in punk music has been sullied over and over again. We might blame the radio, but that device and the industry backing it still needs (or needed) people willing to create tunes for the medium. So, who’s to blame? Maybe it’s the Reactors. Maybe it’s me, since I certainly put a few pennies in Epitaph’s coffers.

Major Accident: Skinhead Guitar Tones

Admittedly, the majority of Oi! bands past and present don’t warrant a listen. Each group probably has one anthem stashed away, ready to be wielded at gigs to awe fans who heard the composition on a compilation somewhere. But by and large skinhead music, of the street punk variety, is banal at best.

A few relatively recent groups do deserve their respect as new age foragers of true skinhead noise. The Templars are unmatched by pretty much any band. It’s musical acumen easily surpasses the majority of bands in its genre – and punk in a general sense. And even while some the group’s lyrical work isn’t worth mentioning, tracks like “Police Informer” are just this side of classic. Apart from that New York group, the now defunct Oxblood turned in a solid long player towards the end of the nineties. Both those groups find themselves being name checked in an interview with Major Accident over there at Punk and Oi! in the UK.

Seeing that the principals in Major Accident are fans of the Templars isn’t too surprising. It’s been a consistent mark of that newer band to include guitars that sound remarkably similar to the older, Clockwork obsessed band. In that it could be figured the genre hasn’t progressed to great extent over the last thirty years. And it’d be difficult to argue another view point. But the bands that figure out the simple formula and reapply time and again on each release really do tap into a visceral music that so much straight punk just plain misses.

Major Accident never achieved the acclaim the Business or whatever other skinhead band you can name. Some might like to attribute that to the band’s adherence to Clockwork styled garb, but the Adicts looked basically the same and still tour internationally to decent crowds.

Regardless of that, Major Accident was able to turn in material on a consistent basis that surpassed that of most of its peers – apart from “Mary Whitehouse,” seeing as there might not be a more succinct pop punk song in all of UK music history.

With most of Major Accident’s discography being issued and reissued, it’s difficult to distinguish between compilations and the fair that was released as a proper album. But the combo deal of Massacred Melodies/A Clockwork Legion offers up not just “Psycho,” “Schizophrenic,” “Terrorist” and “Warboots,” but the overlooked gem “Brides Of The Beast.”

Coming in at just about five minutes, there’re endless oddities about the track. Firstly, it possesses a few distinctly separate sections signaled either by a drum cadence or a chorus. As it begins with that one enormous, droning chord the effort distinguishes itself by not just the band’s unique take on chiming distortion, but how those bar chords are actually played.

It sounds as if the band’s guitarist, while sitting on one note, hammers on and off his index finger allowing for an open note to be played alternately against the rest of the chord. It’s not the quite the Velvet Underground, but there aren’t any other Oi! bands out there that possess the melodic and musical sensibilities this group does. If nothing else, the lines “Bring me your blood tonight at ten/I think I’m falling in love with myself again” won’t be surpassed by anyone donning Alex’s costume anytime soon.

TWOFR: Rhino 39 x the Carbonas

Rhino 39

Self Titled

(Nickel and Dime, 2007)

Nuggets and all of the KBD compilations have served to illustrate the point that, if your band has one really good song, it might only be part of a shitty album – that is if your band even got around to recording the ten songs it knew.

Rhino 39 can not be categorized alongside those acts though. Their various compilation appearances as well as their lone single point towards what could have been an indispensable artifact of the ‘70s LA/LBC punk scene.

Along with those released sides is an unearthed clutch of tracks recorded with original singer Dave Dacron. It’s always difficult to pin point the birth of a style, and some point to this work here as early hardcore. That point can be debated, of course, but Rhino 39 performing alongside Keith Morris era Black Flag serves as indisputable evidence.

Rhino’s songs range in theme from group think on “Xerox 12? to the suggested murder on “Small Art”. It’s in this later song that the lines “Pull the trigger/In the schoolyard/Make yourself feel bigger” appear. The eerie similarity to the words of Darby Crash can’t be more apparent – in addition to hilarious.

One aspect of this band that set it apart from its contemporaries, at least on studio recordings, is the inclusion of an electric piano. “Pack of Lies” instantly recalls past LA bands of an altogether different era and genre while still working forward to change how rock is played (i.e. fast and dumb). The self-titled compilation assuredly isn’t geared toward casual punk listeners, but it has more than just filler that only collectors could want. And if nothing else, watching the performance video included on the second disc with its dusty images and sound from another source is pretty amusing.

The Carbonas

Self Titled

(Goner Records, 2007)

There’s no reason to dissect this – there are no ulterior motives. And I would guess that if I did, the dudes in the band would think that I was some sort of ass (which I am). However, this obviously does fall into the Ramonsey category of punk. The Carbonas are what one should expect from a Goner Records band: tight (and simple) songs with hooks. Both these qualities are on display in “Journey to the End” which includes the couplet “I hear what you’re saying/You’re talking ‘bout me”. Injected with a bit of Southern-drawl, the line leaves little wanting, even if the bridge is rote punk. I do think that there’s some harmonizing on “Didn’t Tell You a Lie”, which is probably a lie about a lie, but whose keeping track. A point to be made though is that if one started this disc in the middle, the listener might not readily realize that something had been missed. Each song is roughly the same tempo and sports the same structure – that’s not a criticism, that’s a description. The one criticism (in addition to the kinda bitchy one about why there need to be five dudes to play this) put upon this quintet is that this “album” is about 20 minutes long. Maybe that’s all they could muster, but since it flies by so quickly, I suppose that’s a good sign.

Cult Ritual: How to Experiment in a Vaccum

Hearing Cult Ritual’s self titled long player only results in questions – well after you get over the fact that music appears to be more thoughtful than a huge portion of the hardcore getting attention today, or yesterday. As a disclaimer, though, my depth of knowledge in this particular strain of music doesn’t run that deep. I mean, I saw Sex Vid…once. They blew stuff up. It was rad.

But what’s a crust tempo? And what’s noisy hardcore? I suppose it’s gotta be relatively difficult commenting upon a musical genre that doesn’t really possess the ability to move forward in time and instead opts to renegotiate the same tropes being mined for the last thirty years or so. But that could be said about any music. What’s odd, though, is that over the last ten years, dudes in hardcore bands have sought to incorporate a handful of other musical styles – well, on occasion at least.

Cult Ritual, upon a cursory listen won’t come off as a band that attempts to expand the genre that it’s come to call its own. That’s just the first few tracks on this disc, though. The first two-thirds of Cult Ritual’s album finds itself concerned with songs not moving past the two minute mark. And yes, that’s a genre expectation. Without thinking too much about any of these songs, it’d be safe to figure that this is what passes for the most underground of underground hardcore acts.

Over the course of the first forty seconds of “Holiday,” though, it’s all just a hazy, feedback excursion. Shifting into what folks would expect from a group issuing work through Youth Attack Records, though, finds Cult Ritual’s singer coming off as a new age Rollins. It’s trite to invoke Black Flag while writing on the genre, admittedly, but seriously, that’s the only real vocal comparison.  

Discussing the remaineder of the first few songs here isn’t going to yield too much insight, or flowerly writing. It’s in the disc’s final three tracks where the production moves from good hardcore stuffs into an odd appreciation of space (Miles Davis?) and simplicity.

Invoking the name of a jazzbo trumpet player is gonna seem odd, but “Saturday's Blood” almost necessitates it. For nearly half the track, there’s nothing but a drum beat predicated on the floor tom taking up huge amounts of space within the composition. It might not have been conceived to reference one of the most influential American musicians in history, but that’s how it works – until, of course, the track apes its band’s natural inclinations. Surely, it becomes something of wrote representation of the genre, but introduced in such startling terms, the track’s a monsterous experiment.

The following track works in much the same way, only the guitar is utilized in lieu of that drum kit. Remarkably, the twelve minute closer “Cancer Money,” which should have inherent space to experiment doesn’t deliver. There are, however, endless layers of production here and a bit of acoustic guitar (I think). But does all of that mean Cult Ritual’s attempting to smarten up a decidedly guttural genre? It doesn’t matter, it’s all boss sounds.

Mittagspause Means Lunch(time)

Gaining entrance into Germany’s underground music scene is, for some relatively easy. But after wading through the most famous and popular (?) krautrock bands, where is there to go? With the revelation that Germany was instrumental in propelling popular forms of music into the avant garde territory, it would make sense that subsequent psychedelic and punk musics would ape a similarly bizarre mode of expression.

Bands like 39 Clocks were a bit of all the aforementioned music – and they should have been, seeing as the group was German and all. And while that ensemble didn’t sport a full line-up, using a duo set up for great portions of its career, the minimal approach to personnel seems pervasive in the country’s music history. Even Kraftwerk, for a time, was a duo.

But those better known ensembles were granted the opportunity to morph and become any number of things. Mittagspause, translating to either Lunch or Lunchtime, wasn’t around long enough to fully realize a different set up. While the ensemble was around, though, the lack of a bassist didn’t present a problem.

After the White Stripes and the Black Keys popularized the age old set up, it seems bizarre to wax all philosophical about a group that didn’t ever sport a bass player. With the inclusion of two guitarists, one given over to rhythm duties, the music retains some lows. Perhaps understanding that the entire endeavor wasn't a bit odd and knowing that blues players had worked without bass accompaniment, Mittagspause included faux applause on “Intelnet,” which for a moment devolves into a blues style groove.

The Düsseldorf based group was only able to get out a few singles and a long player prior to a line up shift, which yielded one more full length. But those early releases were a part of some bizarre and apparently incestuous, nascent punk scene in town.

Regardless, Mittagspause’s first release in 1979 included a track called “Herren Reite” and aurally explains how the group would work with two guitarists pretty succinctly. Mostly given over to chiming chords that need no supplemental backing, there’re a few brief moments of the group’s second guitarist wanking around with the bassiest sounds he was able to coax from his instrument. Interestingly enough, the melodic trickle that bridges each verse is undeniably memorable and if it was a bit longer, would be whistled by anyone getting an earful. And all of that was just from one track on the group’s first single.

Issuing a double seven inch the following year, which was basically the equivalent of a full length, comes off as closely related to the previous disc, but ratchets up the tempo on tracks like “Nordpol.” Being German, though, there’s a healthful dose of odd stop and go tracks, mimicking machinery, over the course of the disc - “X-9200” being particularly choppy.

It’s not difficult to find Mittagspause and its music endlessly entertaining. Not understanding anything the band says could prove problematic – and for some might make listening a complete was of time. It’s not, though.

Effi Briest: A Sacred Bones Misstep

Psychic Ills issued two of the better full length albums springing from the first decade of the new millennium. Dins should easily be figured as the stronger release. And where the following Mirror Eye was and expansion on some of the spacier, ambient moments from that first disc, it still counts as a stand up, if not willfully trippy, rock act by a band attempting to mine the depths of ambient music.

That album – and it’s bassist Elizabeth Hart – should rightly be considered the precussor to what Effi Briest has become. It doesn’t even matter that Hart wasn’t the impetus for the project, but her contributions as well as the back catalog she’s associated with informs Rhizomes to the fullest.

With disco, dance and post-punk all contributing to the foundation of first long player from Effi Briest – although there were a few Euro singles preceding it – lauding those Psychic Ills releases might seem out of place. But what recordings from both groups do is to create a pretty heavy handed atmosphere with relatively minimal ingredients. Effi Briest, though, counts six people in its line up. And while that’s pretty endlessly confusing after taking a listen to the album (what are all those people even doing), the approach concludes in a release that’s sure to ingratiate itself to those enamored of punk and dance music’s confluence.

 Issued through Sacred Bones, an imprint seemingly flush with quality release, Rhizomes might be the most singular disc coming from the label. That, though, doesn’t mean it’s a great album (as a side, there’s a difference between my tastes and what’s set to be embraced by the underground cognoscenti. So, while I won’t ever toss this album on again, there are legions of people who are going to be instantly taken with the band).

Creating slinky backings for keyboardist and vocalist Kelsey Barrett to sing over isn’t a task that appears to be difficult for this huge ensemble. However, it’s the moments when the band goes at it all instrumental like which listeners are going to find the most rewarding. That’s not to figure Barrett for some hackneyed crooner – she’s not. But efforts like “X” so easily surpass the vocal cuts it’s worth a mention.

That shortest track on the album begins with a combination of ringing keyboard notes, a cave(wo)man drumbeat and eventually Hart’s simple bass line. Dub gets referenced while discussing the band pretty frequently. And while that’s not a bad way to describe the some of the rhythms spread out over the disc, Robbie Shakespeare was probably not at the forefront of anyone’s mind during the recording process. “X” goes on to move around in a noisome zone that doesn’t affix itself to a specific or memorable progression, groove or otherwise. The atmosphere it creates, though, is what makes it a tremendous listen, harkening back to the best moments from the Psychic Ills’ catalog.

Filling out the album are a spate of tracks tied to some Brit conception of dancey punk workouts – mutant disco being a touchstone as well. None of that stuff, though, comes close to the heights found during the brief two minutes comprising “X.” Bummer.

The Whines: A NW

Asking what kind of band your in is probably one of the most obnoxious and difficult to answer queries on the face of the earth. For the most part, it can all be reduced to a reply including the phrase rock and roll. And while that doesn’t any longer mean too much, the response is a far sight better than saying lo-fi or downer psych or whatever other inane answer might be proffered.

But what that situation also points to is the further smearing of any genre guidelines as it seems that garage, punk and psych are increasingly being used in tandem to arrive at some final product. That’s the case, at least, for Portland’s the Whines.

As a three piece, it would be understandable if the uninitiated expected something rather drawn back or poppy. And while there’s a range of different approaches to rock in all its forms on the band’s first long player Hell to Pay, the only constant is an adherence to music of decade’s past.

In reading up on the band, there’s a pervasive mention of country music. And while everyone should be into a little bit of fifties and sixties country song writing, it’s not really translated through into song by the band. Again, though, there’s not really a through-line here, unless it’s the lack of a through line.

Just looking at the Whines' first two offerings on this disc it be easy to figure the efforts as coming from different bands – that might be said about the entirety of the album as well.

Opening with “Down The 2 Tracks” it would appear that the disc was prepared to ape the same stance as newer crummy garage bands like Austin’s Woven Bones. The dumb thump of the durms, moaned, monotone vocals and almost indecipherable guitar progression places this first track within the realm of all too many acts traversing the country in rusted out vans. That’s not to say the track isn’t all pleasure to hear, it’s just within a single, specific vernacular.

What’s interesting is that the Whines can move from that track to the following “To Be True,” which might have come from some random indie pop band springing from the K Records stable a few years back. Acoustic guitar finds itself in play, but as with studio meanderings, it’s overdubbed with some electric guitar solos working to garage up the joint. It succeeds, but leaves listeners wondering what could possibly be next.

“Here We Sit,” even with that title, combines a bit of everything that preceded it to arrive at something that sounds like an hallucinogenic jam held out in the woods. And seeing as Portland should sport apt confines for such an event, let’s pretend that that’s what it is.

Issued on MEDS, apparently a subsidiary of Exiled Records, it’d be a bit of a stretch to think that Hell to Pay is set for major press, but maybe. If the interwebs have taught us anything, its that this music thing is in part who you know, but also a great deal of dumb luck. Here’s hoping the Whines have a bit of the latter.

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