2pworth

Tag: punk

  • THE DEATH SET: WORLDWIDE

    THE DEATH SET: WORLDWIDE

    Eighteen songs, 26 minutes. You just know that with statistics like that, the CD that you have put into you player is going to be out of the ordinary. The longest song on this album is two minutes and 24 seconds. To be honest if the songs were any longer your head might just cease to be in a fit of pique. Listening to the Death Set’s Worldwide is the real world expression of listening to Vogon poetry. Douglas Adams surely had something like this in mind when he created a race of beings that would use their artistic endeavours to torture those that annoy them. The album reaches in through your ear and batters your brain with a gold brick wrapped in a slice of lemon until you are begging for mercy. It is a veritable assault on the senses.

    THE DEATH SET

    WORLDWIDE

    Nija Tunes

    2008-04-22

    There is absolutely no point in fighting the inevitable. The sonic attack of Worldwide will kick the fight out of you. You will love this record despite all reason and you will not be able to fully determine why. Is it the catchy punk-o-matic construction of the tunes? Perhaps, they certainly are short and spiky but they aren’t particularly memorable even after a few listens. Then it must be the school ground sing-a-long nature of the vocal delivery? Could be, but in order to sing along you need to decipher the lyrics, and that is frankly nigh impossible. On repeated listens the only chorus I could work out was to “Intermission” which appeared to comprise of “something, something, the motherf**king death set”, or something.

    If Worldwide goes half way to capture the live experience of this band then the Death Set are a must see. These songs are fed through the early 1980s UK punk scene and spat out at velocity accompanied by a biscuit tin lid, a cheap Bontempi organ and a Speak and Spell. Can you spell “It Rocks”? It may sound like it was written and performed by a bunch of spotty teenagers with more testosterone and angst than talent but it sure gets the fire stoked. To go through each track and try to describe them or even liken them to that which has gone before would be pointless in the extreme. Try to imagine Big Black singing karaoke to a 12″ Long Playing record (like your Dad has) of early Devo songs, played at 45 rpm.

    With songs no longer than two and a half minutes how do you manage to squeeze in fillers? Somehow the Death Set manage. There are five under-a-minute instrumentals that would suffice for ringtones if you were of a mind to really piss people off. My choice is the 30 second “MFDS” which is a sample of the chorus of “Intermission”. I spend each day in a Russian roulette situation praying that my mobile phone doesn’t go off in that important board meeting; it is the only thing that keeps me awake.

    Worldwide is a timely reaction to the kind of songs that you hear on the radio every single day. It screams, “tear down and rebuild” just as a good punk record should, while the music industry around it is saying, “recycle”. What’s more the musicians are clearly smiling in the process. Frank Zappa once begged the question “Does Humor Belong in Music?” The Death Set scream, “yes, yes, yes” like Meg Ryan on Pink Viagra. While for the most part it is a bloody noise, it is a welcome noise and one that I will certainly be inflicting upon myself in the future. If only I could work out what they were saying.

    This review was originally posted on popmatters.com

    https://www.popmatters.com/the-death-set-worldwide-2496128438.html
  • EASTFIELD/DESTRUCTORS 666: LABOR OMNIA VINCIT

    EASTFIELD/DESTRUCTORS 666: LABOR OMNIA VINCIT

    The title of this split EP translates from Latin into “Hard work Conquers All” and that speaks volumes for this release. It harkens back to a day when independent releases were independent of major record labels. It has a real “do it yourself” work ethic stamped through it like a stick of rock.

    EASTFIELD/DESTRUCTORS 666

    LABOR OMNIA VINCIT

    Unavailable

    Both Eastfield and Destructors 666 hail from the east of England. Destructors 666 are the latest incarnation of the Destructors, the Peterborough band that coughed up Gizz Butt (former guitarist for the Prodigy). In various forms they have been around since 1976 so in Cambridgeshire, England they are like the grandfathers of punk.

    No attempts are made my either band to break moulds or do anything innovative. What you might expect from an old school split punk single is exactly what you get. That may sound overly dismissive but these groups know their target audience, so why re invent the wheel. Of the seven songs present Destructors 666 come out sounding the more polished in a Misfits kind of way. Eastfield lose points for completely destroying the Tom Robinson Band’s gay rights standard “Glad to Be Gay”.

    This review originally poisoned popmatters.com

    https://www.popmatters.com/eastfield-destructors666-labor-omnia-vincit-2496144083.html
  • CALLING ALL MONSTERS: THE TRAPS THAT WORK BEST

    CALLING ALL MONSTERS: THE TRAPS THAT WORK BEST

    Sweaty, noisy, punk rock music has returned in the form of Calling All Monsters.

    CALLING ALL MONSTERS

    THE TRAPS THAT WORK BEST

    Turn

    These four lads from San Fransisco have stripped away a lot of the pomposity from guitar music and present it in a pure, molten form. This is how rock and roll should be played, with real (I’m searching for the right word here) “oomph”. The Traps That Work Best is by no means the most perfectly formed record that you will ever hear but it really blows away the cobwebs that have been formed by what seems like eons of listening to James Blunt. The opening line to album opener “We Are: Special Forces” say it all, “What we sez is what we sez/ What we needs is what we needs” no pretense, no messing about, just loud guitars with simple but catchy riffs and great tunes. Think 1970s British punk with splashes of the Wedding Present thrown in for good measure. It is difficult to pick a favorite from this bunch of tunes as they are pretty much all great but in addition to the above tune “Western Style Town” is a superb head bopping monster of a song that demands to be moshed to. Really, though there is not a dud on here. This is music to get all tired and sweaty to… an absolute breath of fresh air.

    Originally posted on pop matters.com

    https://www.popmatters.com/calling-all-monsters-the-traps-that-work-best-2495688640.html
  • BLACK 47: BITTERSWEET SIXTEEN

    BLACK 47: BITTERSWEET SIXTEEN

    Apparently Black 47 are recognised as the premier Irish-American rock group who “paved the way for the current Irish-American explosion” and their new album is a retrospective of their 16 years of recording. This is what you glean from their website and the accompanying press release. From that information alone you might expect the same kind of irreverence and grit that you got from the Pogues in their Shane MacGowan heyday. Black 47 have carved out a little niche for themselves as Irish-American protest singers and I guess in the USA and the republic of Ireland they are well-known, but from Bittersweet Sixteen it is a little difficult to determine exactly why.

    BLACK 47

    BITTERSWEET SIXTEEN

    Gadfly

    2006-03-21

    Larry Kirwan is the politically uncompromising Irishman that leads Black 47. The music is full of swagger and a chin-forward stance that should stir the shackles at the back of your neck. There is a certain aggression and force that lives in the songs somewhere. This force is aching to get out. However, it gets lost in the production and/or the execution. Consequently, what you get are protest songs that are somewhat limp and don’t really, well… protest. They kind of whine, but more on that later.

    Politically, Black 47’s hearts are firmly in the right place. Of this there is no doubt, but the material doesn’t seem to cut the mustard. The well meaning content of Mr Kirwan’s lyrics does not cancel that musically they are somewhere between the Alarm and “Big Music”-period Waterboys. Now, I’m willing to ride the retro peace train with the rest of you, but this is not really retro. Okay, it is a “best of” album, but even the more recently recorded tracks sound old. That is the crux of the problem here. The quality of most of the recordings is awful, really poor live demos or abandoned studio tapes fill the gaps that the old record companies have made by deleting their back catalogue.

    Not just that… this 16-track retrospective (one song for every long year of this band’s existence) shows how it is in fact possible for a group to not progress over nearly two decades. Probable exceptions to this sweeping statement are the cod-reggae disaster of “Voodoo City” and the really dreadful Glenn Miller with uilleann pipes fiasco that is “Staten Island Baby”.

    From these examples we come to “Downtown Baghdad Blues” (hmm… I wonder what that one could be about), which is a revolutionary anti-war song. One almost wants to paraphrase Bono from his famous introduction to “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, but “one” won’t. Their attempts at revolutionary rock fall flat due to lack of musical originality, but mainly as a result of Kirwan’s voice. Rather than making powerful statements it just feels like he is whining in an altogether atonal way. Sure, this was done by the Clash and the Sex Pistols but really Black 47 are no punk band.

    However, if Black 47 formed part of your musical upbringing you may have a soft spot for them in your heart. You may put them up there with the likes of the Pogues as one of the great punky Celtic rock bands. Perhaps if I had been exposed to the band in their prime then I would be able to listen to a lot of these substandard recordings with a wry smile on my face. On the strength of these recordings I am not incited to rummage through second hand stores to listen to the glory of their deleted back catalogue.

    This album was originally reviewed on pop matters.com

    https://www.popmatters.com/black-47-bittersweet-sixteen-2495679022.html
  • ANI DIFRANCO: CARNEGIE HALL – 4.6.02

    ANI DIFRANCO: CARNEGIE HALL – 4.6.02

    I’ve had a relationship with Ani DiFranco since around 1993.

    ANI DIFRANCO

    CARNEGIE HALL – 4.6.02

    Righteous Babe

    2006-04-04

    This is not a conventional relationship, shall we say. It is somewhat of a long-distance one, but no less fulfilling for that. She and I don’t always agree, and she rarely listens to what I have to say. It is like she just doesn’t hear me sometimes, and we don’t see each other as much as we used to.

    Before I get written off as some crazy stalker dude, I’ll cut to the chase – the reason I feel the way I do is that Ani is one of the few artists I’ve discovered who hasn’t later become fat and complacent on a major label (are you listening, Mr. Stipe?). Instead, she has built an empire of her own, on her terms. One of those terms is the way her music expresses an unflinching stare at American society, with all of its flaws and glory. On her records this lyrical gaze is sometimes smothered by her musical experimentation, as with her recent foray into funk. However, where she always succeeds is her live performance. The thing about Ani’s (I hope she doesn’t mind that I call her Ani) live performance is that you are left feeling that you have been really intimate with this lady. Hence the fact that I feel a connection.

    Her previous general-release live albums, Living In Clip andSo Much Shouting So Much Laughter, shows this, but not as well as this new live album Carnegie Hall – 4.6.02 does. Here Ani is stripped from her touring band, playing alone to a Carnegie Hall audience seven short months after the events of September 11, 2001. She appears totally comfortable playing to a large audience and talking to them as if they were just friends in a bar. Equipped with only an acoustic guitar, a voice, and her arsenal of words, DiFranco wholly disarms the audience, not only with the performance of her songs but also with her between-song chitchat. In both aspects she appears honest; with every new line and every new chord you feel like you just get to know her better. Her (by now) trademark percussive style of guitar-playing is on full display, with nothing to obscure it. Her voice skips and soars at the same time, matching and counter-pointing the staccato of her finger-picking. Boy, can she play the guitar.

    The selection of songs for this official bootleg CD (Note to Righteous Babe: “official” and “bootleg” are two words that rarely belong to each other) covers her career nicely. She raids the archives for older tunes “Names and Dates and Times”, and treats the audience to songs that are not quite finished, like “Serpentine” and the poem “Self Evident”. When I saw the latter two songs performed live with a full band, later on in 2002, they were more musical but by no means as emotionally executed.

    There is a certain rawness and integrity to this recording. It is a snapshot of a performer coming to terms with a world that has been changed forever. With each song her show becomes more stripped, more frantic, and in places more out of key. Refusing to make any glib remarks about the demise of the people that worked in the Twin Towers and the landmark buildings themselves, Ani covers the thorny subject in her recital of “Self Evident”. In the liner notes she covers the self-doubt that she felt before performing the poem, and you can hear the hesitation in her voice. No review will ever do this recital justice.

    For me this recording is most reminiscent of her early recordings (if you haven’t yet, check out Puddle Dive), which captured my interest so long ago. Its raw, stripped-down quality gets rid of some of her more recent funk pretensions and delivers her brand of folk/punk as she originally presented it. Ani DiFranco is always political. Whether it’s the politics of personal relationships or those of the public political sphere, she has a way of finding the raw nerve and poking it with a toothpick. Moreover, she does this with a cute smile and a giggle. She is the most dangerous sort of protest singer: an angelic figure with a large axe hidden behind her back, ready to hack away at conspiracy and political complacency. While some of her more recent recordings have been musically experimental, with Carnegie Hall – 4.6.02 she shows that despite her success she still has her feet firmly on the ground and is every bit the travelling little folk singer with a punk twist.

    The review was originally posted on popmatters.com

    https://www.popmatters.com/ani-difranco-carnegie-hall-4602-2495679025.html
  • POLYSICS: NOW IS THE TIME

    POLYSICS: NOW IS THE TIME

    To paraphrase the late John Peel, this record does not fade in rather slowly. It wakes you up to the possibility that music can be simultaneously unusual, raucous, and catchy by kicking you in the private parts.

    POLYSICS

    NOW IS THE TIME

    Tofu

    2006-02-21

    The new album from Polysics Now Is the Time contains their familiar assortment of DEVOesque “technicolor pogo punk”. For the uninitiated this means that the record is a blend of punk sensibilities and synth-pop much in the way that DEVO promised but never quite delivered. The band may look like the aforementioned DEVO with their Day-Glo boiler suits, but musically they use Mark Mothersbaugh & Co. really only as a jumping off point. They are like DEVO only in the same way that The Ramones were inspired by surf and bubble gum. That is to say that you can hear where they are coming from but they sound like their source material cranked up to eleven to the power of the first number that comes into your head.

    Polysics are Japanese, which means that it is hard for this Westerner to decipher what the songs on this album are actually about. Frankly, lead singer Hiroyuki Hayashi could be reading his shopping list. Moreover, Hayashi’s libretto jumps around all over the place; he sometimes uses English, sometimes Japanese, and sometimes their own invented “space language”. So the potential language barrier is leapt over by simply rendering language itself irrelevant. Indeed, the music does the talking here, and the music mostly wants you to mosh around and bang your head. In fact, this review took longer than anticipated because I had to leave it paused on my Mac while I did just that around my office.

    “I My Me Mine” is a prime example of this and of what Polysics have to offer. The song pogos along at furious rate until the chorus blows in, replete with recorder. This instrument adds a cutesy or sinister element depending on your perspective. The track itself is somewhat spikey and recalls some of the more punky elements of Toni Basil. (Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would write that sentence.) The opener “Teil Teil Teil” is a straight ahead punker that sounds more like the bastard child of The Damned, Big Black and (alright they do sound like them quite a bit) DEVO. Further on in running order they change tack slightly by employing a Talking Heads-style white funk on the rather first-rate “Boy’s Head”. All in all what we have here is the awkward reminder of big hair, (really) bright colours, and shoulder pads. Yep, it’s the 1980s baby!

    It might be easy, because of their quirky dress sense and quirkier still tunes, to write Polysics off as a novelty act. Do that at you peril. Sure there is humour in a lot of the tunes on Now Is the Time, perhaps more than it is possible to discern. However, this is not a comedy act. The energy of their live performance bleeds into this studio recording. Main man Hayashi owns the audience on stage and provides a raw and honest performance that you would not usually associate with electro tinged music.

    If you have never come across Polysics before, this album would be quite a good jumping on point. You should also check out Neu and the “best of” from last year Polysics or Die!!!! or better still go and see them live at some point on their current tour. I can see no reason why this album should not increase the cohort of Polysics fans outside of Japan (where they are already big news). Granted, if you are 30-something then you may have heard similar sounds before, but never played with such vim or vigour.

    this review originally pogoed onto popmatters.com

    https://www.popmatters.com/polysics_now_is_the_time-2495675417.html