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Tara Jane O’Neil Makes Beautiful Desolation Look Easy

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on April 20, 2009

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tarajaneoneil Tara Jane ONeil Makes Beautiful Desolation Look Easy

There’s something about Louisville that produces adventurous female songwriters who completely eschew traditional (i.e. bland) folk leanings for massive, beautiful soundscapes and experimental song structures. Perhaps it’s the high grade weed that passes through here, who knows. Last week, you were introduced to the graceful Cheyenne Mize, who collaborated with Will Oldham on his Among the Gold EP. I suppose you could classify her and other similar artists as part of the New Weird America camp. But Tara Jane O’Neil, who recently relocated to Portland, is not new and not easy to pinpoint. She’s a longstanding freak folk luminary whose resume stretches far and wide, and she would stomp Joanna Newsome’s annoying ass and beat her with her own harp without a second thought.

A quick history lesson for the uninitiated. At 20, TJO tamed the low end in the legendary Louisville math rock collective Rodan, and played on their one and only album Rusty. After Rodan’s deterioration, she drfited between the likes of Ida, Mirah, Naysayer, Retsin, Jackie O Motherfucker, and good ol’ Dave Pajo as Papa M. Rodan enthusiasts will hate me for saying such, but her solo work, in my opinion, has left the most shattering impression. And the forthcoming A Ways Away is one of her best. It’s a scorcher.

51M8DKh8GvL._SS500_ Tara Jane ONeil Makes Beautiful Desolation Look Easy

While some of her recent work has adopted a more intimate and traditional folk approach in the vein of latter Fairport Convention or Townes Van Zandt, A Ways Away is lush, weird, and engrossing. Psych folk is the closest reference point, as the spinning textures and ambient flourishes are reminiscent of some of The Incredible String Band’s best stuff. Yet, TJO is also entirely something else.

In a way, A Ways Away is a return to form and a maturation. The crafty utilization of space and syrupy slow tempo is reminiscent of early Low and, of course, Rodan and her first effort Peregrine. At the same time, TJO is fully owning her sound – writing concise songs while letting the drones and riffs wander in myriad directions. The result is a beautiful and accessible work that relishes in desolate sounds and bucolic late night wandering. If you were intrigued by Grouper’s Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill last year, A Ways Away will floor you. Respect to Grouper, of course, but TJO was doin’ this thing first and, as such, deserving of your attention.

It’s important to note that you should stay very, very far away from alcohol whilst enjoying A Ways Away. It’s extremely somber and sorta creepy, notwithstanding that it’s absolutely gorgeous as well. Which reminds me, one of my best friends’ older brother had the pleasure of getting wasted with Tara at a Stereolab show in Louisville in 2002. I can’t even piece this scenario together. Stereolab played at one of the douchiest bars in town, Phoenix Hill Tavern (imagine “Parsec” amongst a sea of popped collars, ya know?). And here’s Sam, a total good times dude, taking whiskey shots with the distant TJO. I’ll have to ask him what they talked about next time I see him.

Ah, I follow tangents as they come, where was I? Oh yes, back to how and why A Ways Away rules. The tonality TJO employs on her clean electric guitar, with huge atmospheric reverberation added to great effect, is remarkable to listen to, and perfect for driving west during the storm. “Pearl Into Sand” is a beastly, rowdy drone instrumental that just handed my ass to me. This leads into the equally beastly “Beast, Go Along.” As beautiful as it is haunting, “Beast, Go Along” is the best representation of A Ways Away as a whole. Morricone-style riffs drift in and out, while light touches of steel guitar adds a slight cosmic American music slant – all of which ride delicately over thick, warm drones. It’s a delicious dirge that you can expect on my best of ‘09 list. While firmly cemented within the parameters of atmospheric folk, TJO’s A Ways Away reveals many facets that only get better with each listen.

Fagen-Becker Quality Rating
steelydan3 Wooden Shjips - Dos

A Ways Away is her first album on K Records, and is out May 5 (along with every other record I’ve covered recently – that’s a huge day).

For fans of: Grouper, Linda Perhacs, Belong

MP3 :::
Tara Jane O’Neil – Pearl Into Sand
Tara Jane O’Neil – Beast, Go Along
Tara Jane O’Neil – Dig In

Enter the Vaselines

Published

Kenny Bloggins

on April 20, 2009

in News and Noise Consultations

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enter_the_vaselines Enter the Vaselines

A lot of general interest has piqued again for the fascinating genre-jumping Scottish songwriting duo known as The Vaselines. They are hands-down one of my personal favorite artists of all time, so I’m certainly excited, but also a bit disappointed (due to higher expectations that are explained later) with Enter the Vaselines.

The Vaselines lay everyone to waste. From 1987 to about 1990, Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee concocted a seamless amalgamation of shoegaze, psychedelic rock, punk ethos, fuzzed-out twee pop, and folk narrative (such as following the acid trip gone wrong on “The Day I Was a Horse”). Shit, there’s even a fiddle that pops out of nowhere on “Oliver Twisted.” Their range and good sense in pop songwriting would’ve made the Vaselines the shining star of the C86 crop, that is, if they were even invited to that party – which they probably weren’t (how did you sleep on that one, Alan McGee?).

I don’t say lightly that the Vaselines were brilliant, and there’s never been a clearer case of an artist’s artist I can think of. It seems only dudes in bands like The Vaselines, which explains why the were never known during their late ’80s heyday, and not widely recognized now either. But those who do know and love the Vaselines swear by them with religious fervor (as I do). Most appealing to me (and other fans I’m sure) is how the Vaselines were one mighty contradiction – a massive sound crafted by only two people, double entendre lyrics sung with coyness, gritty production and sloppy instrumentation coupled with truly soaring, gorgeous melodies – this duo was a real gem.

Perhaps this is why Sub Pop wants to curate another Vaselines retrospective. After reforming to play some choice music festivals last summer, it seems now is a great opportunity to reintroduce the band to the masses, re-excite the fan base that has built around the Vaselines very, very slowly over the past two decades, and show everyone how lame indie rock has become in the interim when directly compared to the Vaselines.

Enter The Vaselines is a double CD/triple LP collection of the Vaselines catalog, the first issuance of any Vaselines related music since the compilation The Way of The Vaselines: A Complete History dropped in 1992 (also by Sub Pop). The first disc contains all their recorded and mastered songs, which includes their one and only album Dum-Dum and the materials on their first two EPs. The second disc features live bootlegs and demos. Of the three demos featured, “Rosary Job” and “Red Poppy” are the only two songs on the entire 2CD/3LP set that were not already part of The Way of… disc. That’s what I was talking about earlier when I mentioned being slightly disappointed. Of course, that’s not Sub Pop’s fault at all, the Vaselines didn’t stick long enough to record a lot of material. However, if you’re only vaguely familiar with the group, or if this is your first time hearing them, Enter the Vaselines is a the certainly the best and easiest to find introduction. Actually, the term “introduction” isn’t fair because this is absolutely everything that (as far as we know) they’ve laid to tape. And every one of those songs is absolutely golden.

As an aside, I’d love some reader thoughts on this – groups like The Vaselines, Flipper, Meat Puppets, Sonic Youth, The Melvins, and The Raincoats were hugely influential for Kurt Cobain. So why is it that only douchebag bands are influenced by Nirvana (as cited by the bands themselves)? What is that? Not trying to over-generalize here, but you know what I’m sayin’…

Enter the Vaselines is available May 5, courtesy of Sub Pop. The Way of the Vaselines is also available courtesy of said label, and you can grip that right now.

MP3 :::
The Vaselines – Lovecraft
The Vaselines – Oliver Twisted
The Vaselines – Slushy

Scream With Me – David Pajo Walks Among The Misfits

Published

Norwood Derr

on April 9, 2009

in Noise Consultations

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pajocover350 Scream With Me - David Pajo Walks Among The Misfits

Experimental cover albums generally tend to disappoint. Usually an artist’s motives for interpretation are sound, yet the final product is rarely impressive, often belittling the original work. Mark Kozelek (Red House Painters, Sun Kil Moon), known for his “interpretive covers,” has reconstructed a myriad of works ranging from Francis Scott Key’s “The Star Spangled Banner,” to various AC/DC tracks, to an entire collection of Modest Mouse songs (Sun Kil Moon – Tiny Cities). The problem with Kozelek’s covers, as with others who compose hyper-experimental covers, is that frankly, no one really cares. All he really did (and this is no knock on Kozelek’s earlier work like Down Colorful Hill, just his questionable later years) was write a completely unrelated song with his own trademark musical style. Then instead of writing lyrics that could tie a noose around any listener’s neck, he used the author’s original ones…obviously.

PajoSmokes-1 Scream With Me - David Pajo Walks Among The Misfits Unlike Kozelek’s frequent use of “poetic license,” David Pajo’s relatively unknown, vinyl only release, Scream With Me, finds a tolerable balance between interpretation and reiteration. As you’ve probably guessed, the record takes a rather sobering look at a collection of songs from the original Kings of the Underworld, The Misfits.

Pajo is probably the most important guitarist since the late 80s, and even though this record doesn’t really add to his impressive resumé (Slint – Spiderland & Tweez, Tortoise – Millions Now Living Will Never Die & TNT, Royal Trux – 3 Song EP), it does serve as an intriguing work backed by a semi-original idea. I’d like to note here that I have been acoustically covering “Hybrid Moments” for over two years now, leading me to believe that Pajo’s been using me as his own personal fountain of creativity. Hence, semi-original.

Anyways, if you the thought 3-chord punk couldn’t be simplified any further, then you’ve been misled. Pajo takes punk’s musical manifesto and turns it into very simple lo-fi acoustic jams. Pajo follows the chordal tonality of each song, then turning the power chords into natural chords more suitable for the tenderness of plucking and finger picking. Pajo’s feeble vocals could bother some, but I found them to be pleasantly human.

You’re not going to find a whole lot of progressive jazz riffs, piercing harmonics, spastic time signatures or anything else that made Pajo a Louisville legend, but there is a great way to enjoy this album: build a camp fire deep within your local wilderness destination, crack open a few cold ones and indulge in one of the most epic sing-a-longs courtesy of Pajo, and of course, Dr. Glenn Danzig.

You can purchase Scream With Me exclusively from the friendly ghouls over at Black Tent Press.

MP3 :::
Pajo – Where Eagles Dare

The House That Slint Built (Perhaps)

Published

Kenny Bloggins

on April 6, 2009

in Noise Consultations

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slint2 The House That Slint Built (Perhaps)

When you take the LSAT, many of the questions you answer require you to make inferences and deductions based only what’s on paper, essentially asking you to forget any outside knowledge or understanding you have. Let’s take that approach with Slint’s Spiderland. If you knew nothing else about the group or their seminal album, you wouldn’t have a lot to go by outside the strange bobbing heads staring through your soul on the front. From the music, you could glean the group had interests or training in jazz, classical, psych, punk, and noise, and had a weird thing with pirates and insects. From the imagery and album inset, all you would know about the context of Spiderland is that they had Palace Brother Will Oldham go swimming with them one day at the Utica Quarry in southern Indiana (and took pictures), the band prefers you listen to this on vinyl (as stated on the CD and cassette copies), and they were no longer interested in mumbling narratives by themselves. The latter is what seems most interesting to a lot of people. That makes sense considering the band melted down either during or shortly after Spiderland’s release and the fact that, other than the track titles, it’s the only real, tangible information included on the album cover.

interested female vocalists write
1864 douglas blvd. louisville, ky 40205

My apartment is about a seven to ten minute bike ride from this address. It was a nice Saturday afternoon, I was listening to the Slint EP, and thought, what the hell? Let’s go on a vision quest to find the Slint house! Continue reading ‘The House That Slint Built (Perhaps)’

Grateful Dead and the Merry Pranksters Fillmore Acid Test

Published

Michael Hansen

on April 3, 2009

in Noise Consultations

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Gd-0010 Grateful Dead and the Merry Pranksters Fillmore Acid Test

When I read that Gus Van Sant was rumored to direct a film adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s The Elektrik Kool-Aid Acid Test (and produce an adaptation of Ginnsberg’s Howl) I immediately reached for this bootleg. Thankfully, for all the questionable air brush t-shirts and inappropriately timed hackey-sack sessions, the Dead-heads were indeed righteous in their quest to record all of the band’s performances.

On January 8th, 1965, shortly after dropping their title as The Warlocks, Jerry Garcia and his newly christened Grateful Dead set up at the San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium for the biggest Prankster-conducted Acid Test yet. This night of surreal antics and telekinetic grooves curated by novelist/fugative/hell-raiser Ken Kesey, who referred to the Dead as his “pit orchestra,” along with his band of Merry Pranksters.

The Dead’s set takes turns being center of attention and narrating the madness around them, but even with this drifting focus, the quality is exceptional, and what makes this bootleg so exciting is the historic context that it’s given through its background noises. It’s almost more like a field recording than a concert bootleg. Throughout the songs, including what to me is the most pulsating, uncompromising take of the Anthem of the Sun classic “Caution, Do Not Step On Tracks,” ever recorded, are cameos from larger than life characters. Chesire cat mumblings from Kesey, lucid rapping from Babbs and other Prankster mainstays, even Kerouac regular Neal Cassady was present, but was probably off somewhere juggling his sledgehammer. You even get to hear when the cops bust in to try and dissuade the fiendish masses, unplugging cables as the Pranksters scurry about to plug them back in, toying with the feedback and bouncing inspired nonsense amongst the 2,400 person audience. You’re either on the bus or off the bus.

The full recording is available in streaming audio format through the Grateful Dead’s archives.

MP3 :::
Grateful Dead and the Merry Pranksters – Caution, Do Not Step on Tracks
Grateful Dead and the Merry Pranksters – Stage Chaos and More Power Rap

Monoshock – Walk to the Fire

Published

Norwood Derr

on March 30, 2009

in Noise Consultations

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333 Monoshock - Walk to the Fire

[Editor's Note: This is Norwood's first article for the Decibel Tolls. Welcome him, and let's avoid the normal flaming we have here on this fine music blog, nerds. Don't scare him off too soon, now.]

Last week, I was editing a chapter on garage rock for Piero Scaruffi’s revised rock catalog when I stumbled upon a band that begged me for my curiosity. One of the few reviews about this outhouse-rock group was written by Julian Cope (for one of his album of the month pieces). I skimmed through his review, finding the nihilistic mumbo-jumbo of rock gold more and more appetizing. The more I researched, the quicker I found out that my dear uncle Scott Derr was one of the contributing madmen. It’s a small world after all! Cope surely did a good job selling the band on paper, and now I had a blood connection. I thoroughly scanned the world wide web before finally unveiling the 24-karat cacophony that is Monoshock’s first, last and only LP, “Walk to the Fire.”

monoshock_band Monoshock - Walk to the Fire

“Walk to the Fire” shows off the raw power of the Stooges, the improvisational debauchery of the Velvet Underground, and the schizophrenic swagger of Pere Ubu; all finely minced, thrown into a blender, and garnished with a bit of apocalyptic satisfaction. There’s just something about the amateurish indecency of “Walk to the Fire” that sounds strikingly original. This feeling of sordid wonder juxtaposed with frontman Grady Runyan’s aesthetic framework makes “Walk to the Fire” one of rock music’s most fascinating “Jekyll and Hyde” records. You could enjoy it because of its “no-fi” garage-punk sound, or because of its potent expeditions into the psychedelic avant-garde.

The record as a whole will blow your sails due south; whether your heading there or not. Made up of college buddies Grady Runyan (vocals, guitar, e-bow, violin), Scott Derr (vocals, bass, guitar, brass, blender), Rubin Fiberglass (drums, percussion, vocals) and Aluminum Queen (saxophone), Monoshock mixes sloppy proto-punk with sophisticated free-form experimentation. “Walk to the Fire” is simply another example of punk rock’s “Fuck it, I’m a teenager” ethos gone horribly right. Everything seems to go wrong on this record, and that’s the provocative beauty of Monoshock’s design. The chaotic mess of guitars, drums and orchestral instruments proves to be much more prophetic than ignorant. More singular than homogenous. And more honest than fraudulent. When listening, I often forget that running saxophones through oscillators, and aimlessly howlin’ away on brass isn’t the norm in rock music, but Monoshock does it with an unwavering conviction.

The opening track “Crypto-Zoological Disaster,” begins with a head bobbin’ Pere Ubu riff that steadily marches until it abruptly decomposes into a degenerative, DNA-like, orgy of half-conscious noise. After getting lost in the masochistic crescendo, Runyan and company come full-circle, bringing back the riff in a final tour de force.

“I Took You to it Baby,” Monoshock’s destructive ballad, features the group’s most conventionally catchy instrumentation. Fortunately for us, Runyan’s apathetic wailing combined with a belligerent, yet hummable, guitar melody makes you want to turn up the volume, pound the gas with your lead foot and flip the bird to the next copper you see on the open highway.

The almost primitivist “Astral Plane” sways back and forth like a drunk seaman, soon to be hanging over the ship’s railing in a sickening stupor. This uncanny, vaguely psychedelic sound appears all over “Walk to the Fire,” contributing to the record’s subtle hallucinogenic mystique. The track’s climax is marked by Derr’s disastrously fulfilling brass solo.

Monoshock’s “Walk to the Fire” will likely grab you by the neck, and wring you for every last penny. Sometimes being wrong feels oh so right.

MP3 :::
Monoshock – Astral Plane (Take Me)
Monoshock – I Took You To It, Baby
Monoshock – Leesa

The Passion of Steverino Hayes

Published

Kenny Bloggins

on March 12, 2009

in Noise Consultations

. 0 Comments

steverinohayes The Passion of Steverino Hayes

This entry is categorized under “Noise Consultations” because that’s where all the feature-based writing tends to end up. But the story of Steverino – who he is, how I met him, and how it is that this guy actually exists, probably deserves its own category. Nevertheless, I’d like to introduce you to Steve Hayes, who performs under the name “Steverino.” As foreshadowing to this story, it might be relevant to add that I made the graphic above from a picture Steve uses as the background on his website. The file is called “steverino4u.jpg,” for what it’s worth. This tale of indescribable weirdness is 100% true.

Steverino is a stalwart gentlemen, roughly Roman in proportion, and in his plainclothes motif is conventional in fashion and appearance. He’s probably in his 50s, if I had to guess, with sandy and graying hair, spotted wrinkles and crevasses in his face. His casual wear generally consists of Hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts. Just a dude, ya know. I later found out he’s in some faction of the military. He has a flat tenor of a voice, sounding like a corn-fed laggard Midwestern boy, a product of growing up in parts of the country not intimately touched by the latest diffusion of innovations (or I have to assume). This explains a certain naivety or obliviousness that borders the pencil-thin line between endearing and obnoxious.

I first encountered Steverino in 2006. At the time, I was the promoter for The Dame in Lexington, Ky, a music venue that specialized in hosting indie rock, punk, alt country, and some hip-hop shows. On Monday nights, unless we had a national act coming in, The Dame would usually host an open mic night as a means to assuage the need to have some sort of music on a slower weeknight. Lots of white dudes playing shitty blues and acoustic covers was the usual fare.

The pervasive mood of stagnation and apathy was shattered one spring evening when Steverino came in to perform – and nothing was the same. This is not hyperbole – skies parted, food tasted differently, et al. Continue reading ‘The Passion of Steverino Hayes’