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2016 Favourites.
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Board index : Music Talk : Rock/Pop
Post subject: 2016 Favourites.
Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2016 12:11 pm
"Weddings, Parties, Anything…"
Wonderful year. Many lost hours searching the grubbiest corners of bandcamp.
Here is twenty of my favourites:
1-800-BAND - High Beams
Delving into the darkest corners of the rock'n'roll story, drawing from 99-cent power pop, country weepers, pub rock, and glam, with a just a lil tinge of heartland rock, 1-800-BAND play loose but well-crafted songs built on alarm-clock-radio hooks. High Beams was produced by the mighty Mitch Easter, and you can hear his sweet, sweet jangle on a couple of tunes. For fans of Blue Northern, the Jacobites, Dwight Twilley, Pretenders, late Kinks, Tom Petty, Elliott Murphy. From glass-in-the-air anthems to American heartbreakers, this record has got it all.
The Cowboys - Vol 4
The Cowboys - The Cowboys
The Bibs ‎– From The Fish Houses
Mysterious, moody, basement trio The Bibs present their debut, a 12-string electric DIY Detroit basement folk-rock statement in the crude tradition of INDEX's own confusing reality music. Which is not to suggest the jangle/folk spice of "From The Fish Houses" comes only from the group's deep Michigan weirdo forbearers, nay. These cult sounds are links from a lineage of antipodean forward/free-thinking minds like MAD NANNA, The CANNANES and TALL DWARFS. The Bibs make use of wayward melodies, muffled percussion, delirium sounds & the occasional rock-ist bombast; these songs burrow in deep like earworms in reverse.
Paul K and the Weathermen - Nashville Raw
The Cavemen - Born to Hate
The Cavemen touch on everything from lost love, murderous desires and their burning disdain for sophisticated artistic expression. Put simply: it's gonna make you wanna kill. Writing about their debut album, which was released a year to the day before this, their second, is due out, the local Six Noises website wrote that it "features plenty of greasy riffs, uncouth howling, and road-rash-raw garage punk. Think a dose of Dead Moon, with a little of the Cramps and the Stooges, and then throw on a whole heap of vintage trash punk's debauchery.
That's essentially The Cavemen. It's sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll conveyed via lo-fi, psychotic '77 era punk rock" and, according to the Irish News, "turbocharged with the attack of early '80s US hardcore and laced with the fuzz pedal-enhanced 'whoop-it-up' wildness of your favourite garage rockers from The Sonics to Mudhoney. The trio's first record is a funny, tuneful rampage of hedonistic juvenile delinquency, grave robbing fantasies and substance/self abuse-themed anarchy." Both nihilistic and hedonistic at the same time, this is a record to shake the cobwebs out of your ears. It isn't sophisticated or remotely complex. It's one of those wonderful loose-nut albums that reminds you that life is short, and when it's not being nasty as hell it's simply dull as ditch water.
The Goon Sax - Up to Anything
Up To Anything is the debut album by Brisbane trio The Goon Sax.
Louis Forster, James Harrison and Riley Jones are all 17-18 years old. They make pop music. They have refined tastes - they love the Pastels, Talking Heads, Galaxie 500, Bob Dylan and Arthur Russell. On Up To Anything they pull off the almost impossible, capturing the awkwardness, self-doubt and visceral excitement of teenage life, while still in the thick of actually living it.
The band formed around high school friends James and Louis in 2013, and some scrappy duo-era home recordings still linger on the internet. Riley joined in early 2014, after a month of drum lessons, and the band played their first show a few months later.
Chapter signed The Goon Sax in 2015 on the strength of an unsolicited demo, the first time that has ever happened in the label's history. We intro- duced the band to the world via music conference Bigsound last year, and singles Sometimes Accidentally and Boyfriend have since been featured on the likes of Stereogum, NME, BBC6 and Brooklyn Vegan.
They've gone on to play with the likes of US Girls, Twerps, Blank Realm and Crayon Fields, and have a spot on Brisbane Laneway Festival in Febru- ary.
Goon Sax songs are both immediately charming and deceptively deep - Sweaty Hands examines a point in a relationship where you're seen at your worst, while Telephone addresses the heartbreaking realisation that noth- ing you offer your crush is enough.
The Goon Sax are already masters at pairing teen microdrama with pop sophistication - but clearly, Up To Anything is just the beginning!
Private Room - Forever And Ever
Forever and Ever, the debut album from Pacific Northwest power-trio PRIVATE ROOM, is a terse and tense record. With its discordantly bent notes, shots of industrial clang, atonal noise washouts, and boneheaded punk, the album cultivates a forbidding atmosphere for the sardonic lyrics to comfortably reside. With stunning album art provided by Justin Gallego (DREAMDECAY), the stark future-vision of PRIVATE ROOM is immediately apparent. Although a charred cynicism colors Forever and Ever, the music itself elbows at the boundaries of whatever genre - punk, hardcore, noise-rock, or any micro-niche thereof -one might apply to it. It suggests that patterns, be they imposed from above or within, are binds to be broken.
Stefan Christensen - American Pastoral Again
STEFAN CHRISTENSEN has been a staple in the New Haven, CT scene for the last decade, playing in, among many others, ESTROGEN HIGHS, EHRGEIZIG, PERMANENT FEELS and MEDICATION; recording Sex, Worn Leather, Pieces of Fruit; collaborating on the C/Site label and with the venue Popeye's Garage. And while it would seem that Stefan has always lived a shark's life—I'll drown if I stop swimming—it is really only in the last year that he has entered his most prolific phase. All that other stuff has been… practice? In the prior twelve months, Stefan has released two full lengths and a pair of EPs on cassette via the esteemed labels Loki, Night People, and C/Site. American Pastoral Again is the debut vinyl outing from this eponymous artist issued by ever/never records. Channeling Gate, Jim Shepard, Crystalized Movements, and Shakey himself, the twelve minute title track consumes the entire A-side in a melancholic dirge. It is backed by four quick blasts that introduce elements of pop, noise, and more dirge. With varied approaches, Stefan's songs are written from a unique and developed voice. A unifying thread through these works is the careful craftsmanship, each song tailored perfectly—knowing when to let it breathe, when to ramp up tension—for the most impact. Had Stefan cut his teeth in a more insular scene, in a more glamorous town, he'd have been a hitmaker, but we are thankful that was not the case. As American Pastoral Again demonstrates, he is onto something much more fulfilling and unforgettable.
Stefan Christensen & Friends - Empty Plateaus
Angel - 2017
2017 is the new dispatch from Adam Stonehouse, last heard from via The Hospitals' epic Hairdryer Peace (2008), an album that served as the last chapter for the band he helmed through much of the decade. With Angel, Stonehouse takes the treated, off-center production approach of Hairdryer Peace for a far-left turn, forging a collision between spiraling new age sounds and suspiciously sleazy 1980s glam rock. Augmenting all of this with forays toward severe dub and sample splicing, Angel also recalls the UK DIY excursions of the It's War Boys orbit and roster. Disparate influences aside, Angel is a work conjured and captured entirely via Stonehouse's inimitable vision, one of the most distinct and unruly out there today. With that, 2017 is a wholly unique, righteously complex record and one of this year's most puzzling and rewarding listens.
Mike Cooper - New Guitar Old Hat Knew Blues
The origins of my music lay in finger picking North American folk music and Afro American blues which I began playing in the late 1950's. I pursued this and then songwriting into the early 70's when I then discovered Hawaiian music and the world of American free jazz and European free improvised music which altered my perception of the guitar totally, especially as a solo instrument. Apart from the first few formative years of learning guitar standard European tuning never became a part of my technique. I immersed myself in 'open tunings' once I realised their global significance. A new tuning inevitably produces new music.
From the mid 70's I almost exclusively played lap steel guitar - fretting the instrument with a steel bar and as fingers on frets became redundant another world of instruments that involved sliding something ( almost anything) up and down strings to produce glorious glissando appeared. Hawaiian, African, Greek, Thai, Chinese, Indian, Korean, Vietnamese and many other of the worlds music has instruments that involves this technique and all of them have to some extent influenced the music you hear here.
For almost all my musical life I have played a 1930's metal bodied National Tri-Plate resonator guitar, an instrument designed by Slovakian American John Dopyera, initially for Hawaiian musicians as a lap steel instrument. Recently I wanted to have an instrument to travel with on holidays and longer trips that was small, light and 'cabin-able' on aircraft (although I always carry my instruments on board whenever possible) and I purchased a wooden bodied Yamaha short scale travel guitar, the first wooden bodied guitar I have owned since the very first instrument I ever had. The experience of a new instrument (like a new tuning) always seems to uncover new music, waiting to be discovered, hidden within. This small travel instrument also seemed to invite a return to playing with fingers on frets as well a steel or bottleneck, although I wasn't about to revisit nostalgic musical territory with it. I am an improvisor and although there are 'songs' here they are all musically improvised with only the text having some pre-formed essence, and they are produced using a William Burroughs/Brion Gyson cut-up technique on a couple of Thomas Pynchon novels, which has produced a body of work of about 35 'songs' that I call Spirit Songs. Every performance of Spirit Songs is different.
In the winter of 2016 I took the new instrument and some songs out for a short european tour and in Switzerland, at Cave12 in Geneva, I was fortunate enough to have Eleonora Puzzle as my sound person who recorded my set. I thank her and Sixto and all who attended that night and made the recording and music possible. What you hear is what they heard that night in its entirety apart from the first five minutes or so while I was warming up which I have saved for another occasion.
Human Abfall - Form und Zweck
Brainbombs - Souvenirs
Ummmmmm...so I'm sure many of you heard earlier this year about a new Brainbombs LP...and it's finally here! I'm kinda flipping out over it, because they somehow are still consistently churning out some of the most haunting, filthy, and memorable tracks of any noise rock band ever, despite having been a band for a little over 30 years at this point. Granted, it's generally one riff per song, but goddamn are they great. However, this LP sees Sweden's Meanest taking a direction they haven't played with this much since their Genius And Brutality...Taste And Power LP; that's right, they're pulling out the psych.
Those familiar with Brainbombs' output shouldn't be too surprised with what they're doing on Souvenirs. They've always had heavy psych leanings, but what sets the material on this LP apart from the rest of their work is that a lot of the tracks are driven more by creating frightening moods and atmospheres rather than every riff being big and bad. That's not to say this LP doesn't have big, bad riffs, because it really does. But the feelings of emotional detachment and emptiness are more at the forefront of it all; and it feels unnerving in a way most of their output doesn't (aside from the Genius And Brutality...Taste And Power LP). It really is incredible that Brainbombs have found ways to keep their output from getting stale, while still maintaining their overall aesthetic. Plus, at least now I have this killer to listen to while I cry over not being able to see them in LA.
Blah, blah it's Brainbombs doing what they do best. You know what you're getting into.
[MORE TO FOLLOW]
Spacin'
Chook Race
Unknown Relatives
Meet Your Death
=2016=
thisotherkingdom
Post subject: Re: 2016 Favourites.
Lots to check out that I haven't heard. Cavemen, Goon Sax and Brainbombs would be on my list that I will probably never get around to making.
Go Platinum
Location: St. Louis
I always end up really digging at least one of your picks. This year, it's The Cavemen.
Indie Debut
I've heard a couple of these, but plenty new stuff to check out. Thanks.
It is traumatic to live with nutty breed of human, all in the name of family-hood.
I'm glad a few people check it out, thanks.
Gayford R. Tincture
Location: The Weapon Store
I always find things from your lists that I like, and I'm not familiar with any of these. I look forward to checking them out.
Hair Trigger of Doom
Location: Subpoenaed in Texas
Roach wrote:
I am intrigued by the 1-800-Band description you posted, and am going to give them a listen. The Goon Sax album was one of my favorites in 2016 - probably #2.
bobhasablog.com
Location: in the shatner
I'd like to put together a more comprehensive list when I have a bit more time, but I can definitively say that these were my top two albums of 2016 (although only one was released in '16):
I can't drive the bus and argue with you rubes all at the same time!
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