Chimpomatic

Pissed Jeans

King Of Jeans

Sub Pop

With the overflowing stream of DIY noise pop filling my in-tray this year I've grown accustomed to calamitous percussion and under-produced guitars drowning out distant vocals, and to be honest, I've loved nearly every minute of it. Having said that it feels pretty good to break out the third album from Pennsylvania scuzz-punks Pissed Jeans having not heard a peep from them since 2007's Hope For Men. Compared to much of the punk-de-jour we hear today this stuff has muscle. Since 2007 they've been bench pressing. Gone are the extended noise passages that gave Hope For Men the fear factor - but ultimately turned it into an abstract nightmare, and in their place are riffs so heavy they'll wrench your gut from its very foundations.

Opener False Jesli Part 2 displays this might to full effect with guitars that rumble with booming terror. It's awesome to hear a punk riff that clearly spends its down time in the gym with Metallica's front line. Matt Korvette's wrenched vocals smash this rumble with unadulterated power. The sound is a lot more focused here and as a result Korvette's irony oozing writing is way more audible. The thing that sets these guys apart from a lot in the genre is their mastery of the banal. They play with such power and Korvette's screaming can't help to make you pay attention. But as soon as you do, you realise he's singing about getting his car back from the shop only to find "there's a new noise this time," or the growled demands we get on Request For A Masseuse such as "take both thumbs and dig them in / stop my flesh from tightening." Instead of being totally throwaway the result is a piece of work that expertly and frighteningly describes the trials of the mundane human existence. The last song is called Goodbye (Hair) and sums up the M.O. of these guys. They're punks who are growing old and this is their story. They're not singing about smashing the system, but hair loss.

Request For A Masseuse and Spent are the two reprieves from the lightning pummeling the rest of the record offers, but the word reprieve is highly misleading. These two take a different path, that of slow, grinding sludge, but the result is the same: total and welcome destruction of the listener. Spent is over seven minutes long and never gets above a crawl. The guitars are drawn out and heavy as fuck. Randy Huth's bass comes into full effect here as it tunnels its way into your soul. Korvette is slow and methodical, painfully drawing out his agony for us all to experience. Displaying both boredom, sloth and general hair ripping frustration it slowly erupts into screams and guttural howls as his breakdown is made visible and he is finally "spent." It carries the weight of the album on its shoulders alone and nothing is the same after it.

It's easy to view this kind of head smashing as only that, but King Of Jeans is a focused piece of social commentary that hammers its point home without you even noticing. With the social observations heavily buried, it ends up proving it's point more cohesively than some records with more obvious direction ever manage. They might be punks who are trying to come to terms with the passage of time, but they still pose the same threat to the system by taking it down and thrusting a mirror image in its face in all its banality. 

#Music
#BC

21st Aug 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Diagonals

Valley Of The Cyclops

Monofonus Press

Austin Texas band The Diagonals have produced one of the most listened to albums of the year for me strangely enough. Throughout its brief thirty-four minute duration, its jangly indie-pop never strives towards reinvention of the genre and rarely takes a turn you didn't see coming; however, despite and because of these factors, Valley Of The Cyclops is an endlessly rewarding listen.

Borrowing a good slice of psychedelia from the likes of fellow Texans The 13th Floor Elevators this quintet, listed on their My Space page as "Steve, Todd, Nate and sometimes Michael", tick all the slacker/stoner boxes. Singing about smoking weed, pissing in sinks and eating out at Denny's, their blend of surf jangle and fast paced drumming is the driving force behind these songs. Frontman Steve Garcia was formerly the bassist/guitarist for Black Lipstick and penned some of their best songs - so it's no surprise that his latest venture would be as satisfying as this. Both bands have much in common and it's the effortless ease with which this sound is generated that really links the two. They sound like they come from a time when life was simpler and sunnier. Rosy surf jams these are not but any problems that may arise are soon treated with the "oh fuck it" mantra and the swirling guitar drive carries you off to a place where little matters. I would highly recommend this record, it's got Austin written all over it and will be soundtracking many a summer to come.

#Music
#BC

20th Aug 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Pearl Jam

O2, London

With relatively few UK gigs under their belts, it's always nice to have Pearl Jam in town. Assuming they aren't one of your most hated bands, of course.  As noted by the band, their first UK gig was at The Borderline in '92 - and they were often described as being 'full of energy'. Probably because they "only played eight songs" - a long way from tonight's three-hour-plus show in front of a packed house. So packed, that Eddie Vedder wisely hypnotized the crowd into taking a unified three steps back about four songs in, reminding everyone of why they were away from Europe for so long before.

With the band maturing gracefully, and the Ten reissue garnering such nostalgic praise, it's hard not to suspect that Pearl Jam may be winding things down somewhat. Tracks from imminent new release Backspacer didn't make much impact, while the set was packed with often overlooked tracks from the earliest (four) albums.

Surprise opener Release was a highlight, plus plenty of favourites from Vitalogy, the spine-tingling Footsteps, personal favourite Light Years - as well as obligatory singalongs Black and Betterman, plus the rousing encore of Crazy Mary.

While you might expect the enormodome proportions of the O2/Millenium Dome to make for a stale atmosphere, with the right band it makes for an exuberant party vibe. We're all here to see Pearl Jam, but with the beer stand so easy to get to you'd be foolish to pull the usual trick of backing up your toilet breaks to the end. And so evolves a new dilemma: where to take your break. With so many favourites flowing easily it's a tough descision, especially when unknown newer songs provoke a mass exodus/bigger queues. Like choosing which kid to throw out the boat first, I went with Rats, while BC chose lesser known b-side I Got ID and CJ bizarrely chose Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town. At least he was back quick.

If you hate them, you hate them, but if you love them you'll wish you had been there for a typically roof-raising performance from the definite 'grunge' (ha!) rockers.

Setlist:
Release
Animal
Corduroy
Why Go
Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town
Immortality
The Fixer
Even Flow
I Got I.D.
Rats (with a bit of Michael Jackson' Ben)
Got Some
Whipping
Light Years
Insignificance
Black
Life Wasted
Blood (with a bit of Atomic Dog)

Supersonic
Hail Hail
Footsteps
Love, Reign O'er Me
Do The Evolution
Alive

Better Man (with a bit of Save It For Later)
Crazy Mary
Leaving Here
Porch
Yellow Ledbetter

I've put the best part of the setlist into a Spotify playlist here.

#Music
#Gig
#CSF

19th Aug 2009 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Inglourious Basterds

(dir. Quentin Tarantino)

Miramax

After the pasting that Death Proof got here (we even had to get Tech Support to code us up a special Zero Stars graphic) expectations haven't exactly been riding high for Tarantino's Nazi-bashing opus. It's also had one of those long gestation periods that puts you off, with rumours flying around that he's had to cut chunks out/ add loads back in, that it was going to be split in two (again!) or was so long he was going to have to turn it into a TV series (actually, it would be kind of fun if HBO would let him loose some time); the mixed reviews at Cannes certainly didn't seem to bode well either. 

But forget all that. About five minutes into this film, you'll remember what it is you liked about Tarantino in the first place. Yes, he's a total film geek whose only frame of reference seems to be other films - but when he pulls it off, he's more than capable of turning that encyclopedic knowledge into something thrilling. Basterds is exciting, has something to say, has a great cast - and more than anything, it's surprisingly fun.

Here, we've got two main threads running in tandem through five chapters. On the one hand, the Basterds - a kind of Dirtier Dozen, with Brad Pitt leading a commando unit of Jewish avengers on a rampage through second world war Germany, scalping as many Nazis as possible and generally causing total havoc. That's the story that's featured in the early trailers, and again, the prospect of watching a bloodbath for two hours didn't really seem that promising. 

The other thread involves a Jewish woman (a brilliant Mélanie Laurent) who's running a small cinema in the heart of Nazi-occupied Paris. She's living in secret, passing herself off as a gentile, when a German war hero falls for her, and convinces Goebbels and the rest of the Third Reich (including Hitler) that her little cinema would be the perfect venue for the premiere of Nation's Pride, a propaganda film about his real-life war exploits (which he's also starring in)...

Tarantino pulls these two stories together with typical flair, but it's much more subtle than the tricksiness of Pulp Fiction. There's real drive and tension here as the pieces weave together - don't want to go into too much more plot detail here, as half the fun is not knowing how it fits together.

What's also worth noting is that Brad Pitt aside, this is a cast of relative unknowns - you may have seen Diane Kruger in Troy, but don't hold that against her - she's great here as a German movie star. Hostel director Eli Roth plays one of the Basterds, Sgt Dony Donowitz (and he also shot the footage for Nation's Pride). Michael Fassbender (Bobby Sands in Hunger) is the British spy teaming up with the Basterds. Daniel Brühl is the smooth-talking German war hero. Even Mike Myers is hilarious again in a cameo as a British army officer barking out mission instructions. But the real stand-out is Christopher Waltz as the creepy Nazi Col Hans Landa - effortlessly flipping between German, French, English and Italian (in one of the film's most hilarious/tense scenes). He's a character that lingers long after the credits have rolled. And you won't look at a glass of milk in the same way for a while.

It's heavily subtitled, which Tarantino uses to great effect. Unlike a lot of second world war films, he's not afraid to let everyone speak in their own language, which builds a sense of the war taking place across the continent; language becomes something to hide behind, or give people away. Even Pitt's Southern-drawling Lt Aldo Raine could do with some explanation at times - his accent is so hilariously OTT it should come with subtitles... 

For film buffs there's plenty to enjoy - although you may want to brush up on your war films before watching if you want to get all the references here. The title of the first chapter - "Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France" - sets the tone. This is a fantasy, a film that's not afraid to take history and play fast and loose with it; to talk about cinema's power and potential, and ideas of revenge; and also, for once, to start to examine some of the more gratuitous aspects of the QT violence in the cinema aesthetic (alright, while still giving us some more insanely gratuitous moments). It's also just really enjoyable - much more of a romp than you'd expect.

#Film
#chimp71

18th Aug 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Yim Yames

Tribute to George Harrison

Rough Trade

Well stone me! This is crazy My Morning Jacket front man Jim James. Who'd have thought it? Despite the pseudonym this short George Harrison tribute record does more in its first song than Evil Urges did in its entirety. I know it's wrong to put an artist in a cage but we've all seen what happens when Jim steps out of his, and I for one am glad to see him drenched in reverb, strumming an acoustic and displaying his vocal range in all its subtleties without a N.E.R.D. style hip hop beat in sight. Confined by Harrison's songs there's no mention of librarians or the interweb, and he more than does these songs justice. Love You To and Ballad Of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll) are instant highlights and his version of My Sweet Lord is ghostly and delicate. I wouldn't be surprised if we get a Hari Krishna line in a future MMJ song though, but until that time it sure is good to hear Jim do what he does best. It's just in time too as I haven't listened to a MMJ record for some time and now have renewed hope for the forthcoming Monsters Of Folk project.

#Music
#BC

18th Aug 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet