#FREDDY CARTER DAMN YOU AND BLESS YOU FOR FILMING THAT AND KEEPING IT QUIET

[thosesillylittlegayghosts]

WHAT FUCKING BUSINESS BITCHES

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Vol. 3, Number 15

Telescopes

Buttercup — Battle of Flowers

Battle of Flowers by Buttercup

Buttercup is a love-of-the-game kind of band, a trio that plays smart, tight, bubbly power pop with a psychedelic sheen. Guitarist Joe Reyes won a Grammy in 2002 for his producing work on Freddy Fender’s La Música de Baldemar Huerta but otherwise he and his bandmates — Erik Sanden and the one-named bassist odie — seem to have left little internet trail. That’s a shame because Battle of Flowers is just so very enjoyable, hooky and engaging with just enough edge to make it stick. “Acting Through Music” chimes and croons and postures like a Teenage Fanclub tune struck by a temporary obsession with “Bohemian Rhapsody,” while “I Love You (You Believed in Me)” is all twitchy, spiky romantic obsession, making fun of itself, but still fundamentally sincere. The best cut, though, and maybe the most resonant right now given what happened in Virginia/New Jersey/Maine etc. last night, is “Henry B. Gonzalez,” a paean to the old school Texas progressive who fought for equality via the filibuster (“for 22 hours, he read the Bible”). It’s the hardest rocking song of the bunch, sweet and abrasive a la Big Star, and exactly what some of us need to hear,  “When did liberal become a bad word? When did liberal become a curse? On Henry B.’s tombstone, it says liberal, it says fighter, democrat, aaaaghhh!”  Ditto to all of that, especially the aaaaaghhh.

Jennifer Kelly

 Chamomile & Whiskey — Sweet Afton (County Wide) 

With a new album named Sweet Afton and a single called “Nelson County,” Chamomile and Whiskey show a commitment to their geography. Set in the band's home region in central Virginia, the music matches, a bouncing Appalachian sound that knows where its roots are. The group – the outgrowth of collaboration between guitarist/singer Koda Kerl and fiddler/vocalist Marie Borgman – pushes back further, though, playing with the Irish connection to their area's mountain music. The phrase “sweet Afton” references not only a Virginia locale but also a Robert Burns poem and Ireland's never far. Connecting modern bluegrass with Celtic roots is not uncommon, but as Chamomile & Whiskey have filled out to a quintet including an Irish-raised banjo player, they've made it a natural connection.  

The album's at its best when it keeps itself a fun romp. The best songs here are bonfire singalongs at heart, even when the musicians' skills elevate them. As you might expect from an act that moves happily between related genres, C&W aren't a one-dimensional act. If “Nelson County” requires car windows to be rolled down, “Thalia” asks its listeners to get in their cups. “Stunt Man” closes the album with an autumnal comedown, a walk outside looking in, casting a chilly feeling wherever you are.  

Justin Cober-Lake

 Elbow — Little Fictions (Concord)

If, when they first appeared, Elbow appeared already ready for middle age, that’s arguably as much because of the fact that they’d been a band for ten years already as anything to do with their actual stylistic or lyrical choices. Still, it’s not surprising at all that aging has treated them very well, albeit this time leaving them without original drummer Richard Jupp (not that tracks like “Gentle Storm” are any less percussion focused). Guy Garvey still has a keen eye for the cutting emotional detail and a voice like a warm sweater (vocally and compositionally he’s somewhere between Peter Gabriel and the National’s Matt Berninger, to take one example before his time and one after), and nothing on the compact, quietly accomplished Little Fictions suggests they’ve lost a step, personnel change or not. You pretty much already know whether you’re interested in Elbow’s music, but anyone on the wavelengths of their sometimes quiet, sometimes gnarled songs of comfort and melancholy will be pleased to find that they persist.  

Ian Mathers

 Fraufraulein—Heavy Objects (Marginal Frequency)

MFCS G | fraufraulein - heavy objects by fraufraulein

Who plays the music and who deals with the baby? New-ish parents Billy Gomberg and Anne Guthrie had to deal with that question as they made Heavy Objects, and that circumstance offers one explanation for the tape’s restraint. While a French horn, bass guitar, digital recorder and synthesizer were all hefted during the recording session, it certainly doesn’t sound like anything heavy was played, let alone dropped. Instead distant environmental recordings negotiate for space with other recordings of hushed in-home activity — the filling of a glass or papers being moved around a table. The musical instruments are heard one note at a time, almost reluctantly, as though whoever was playing them was trying hard not to wake the kid. The result is music well suited to quiet headset listening. Pop the tape in your Walkman or the files in your phone and play them almost subliminally while you shop or stroll, and savor the moment when you can’t tell if the radio or car horn you’re hearing comes from the music or the space you’re traversing. But if you’re easily frightened, you might want to audition side two once in the safety of your home first; I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but there is one sound on it that you’d much rather hear coming from a recording than the street.

Bill Meyer

  Matthew Golombisky—Cuentos Volumes 1 & 2 cassette (Eyes & Ears) 

Matthew Golombisky gets around. He’s spent time in New Orleans, Chicago, Oakland, New York, Asheville and currently lives in Buenos Aires. The bassist has scored films, taught music and held down the groove in countless jazz, pop, and singer/songwriter settings. Despite being the director of Eyes & Ears Records, he hasn’t been particularly diligent in documenting his own music until now. This tape features musicians from Oakland CA and Chicago IL. One side is labeled West Coast, the other Third Coast, but the divide isn’t that tidy, since the California combo includes former Chicagoan/current Copenhagen resident Aram Shelton on reeds. There’s little overlap in the material (over the course of twelve tracks, just one tune gets played by both groups) or line-up (reeds/vibes/cello/acoustic bass guitar on one, trumpet/guitar/contrabass/electric bass guitar on the other), but a fairly consistent chamber jazz vibe. The absence of drums ensures that melodies and interlocking structures are clearly expressed, and whoever carries the tune the most (Shelton and vibraphonist Mark Clifford on the West coast tracks, trumpeter James Davis and bassist Jeff Greene on the Chicago ones) holds the foreground. But cock an ear, and you’ll hear plenty of give and take between the musicians.

Bill Meyer 

Harry Pussy—A Real New England Fuck Up LP (Palilalia)  

You had to be there. There’s just no way to comprehend the impact of Harry Pussy without actually experiencing their volume, aggression, and brevity in real time/volume/injury. Well, not that many people got hurt, except maybe their high-end hearing. And whether you could hear the next day or not, you can say you were levitated by the air-waves radiating away from the collision of experience of Bill Orcutt and Mark Feehan’s high-speed, convoluted riffs and drummer Adris Hoyos building-toppling drumming and mic-swallowing screams. Twenty-odd minutes and it was gone, and only the terminally clueless complained about the set length; everyone else knew they’d been mauled by angels and considered themselves blessed.

 While you had to be there to know, that doesn’t mean recordings are worthless, just inadequate to the task at hand. This LP delivers two sets in glorious speaker-trashing fidelity, one classic example from 1994 and another from 1996. The former documents a night their sound when Orcutt handles the vocals. He can’t muster her scream-power, but the way they rattle and blast off the trio’s playing is still pretty exhilarating. Charalambides guitarist Tom Carter’s liner notes alone are worth the purchase price, but this is an LP, so there’s music, thank God.

Bill Meyer  

The Heliosonic Tone-tette — Heliosonic Toneways, 

Vol. 1 (ScienSonic Laboratories)

Launched in loving observance of the half-century’s worth of rotations around the sun since Sun Ra’s pivotal Heliocentric Worlds project for the ESP label, Heliosonic Toneways, Vol. 1 is a joint venture between nonagenarian Arkestral stalwart Marshall Allen and pan-reed professor Scott Robinson. Both men are known for their fervent multi-instrumentalism, though the expansive setting finds Robinson largely abandoning his voluminous reed arsenal in favor of a different armory that includes electric piano, timpani, theremin, soundsheet, dragon drum and space magnets. In addition to his signature alto, Allen also holds court on three of the eleven pieces from behind the very same bass marimba that Ra used in 1965. The ten-piece group enlisted original engineer Richard Alderson to record the session, although Robinson is careful to point out that all of the music avoids rote derivation from its source of inspiration. Ace sidemen like trombonist Frank Lacy and bass clarinetist JD Parran kick the musical caliber up a notch with an organized band sound that compellingly conveys the cosmic without carrying over into kitsch.

Derek Taylor

 Palberta / No One and the Somebodies — Chips for Dinner (Wharf Cat/Ramp Local) 

 Palberta and No One and the Somebodies share a penchant for bizarre punk that matches lighthearted goofiness and intense attacks. Their split LP Chips for Dinner blows by in 20 minutes, but each group manages to cram in a reasonable expression of they are. No One gets the first five tracks, blending freakouts and noise with classic rock sounds and even a reference — I'm guessing — to Western use of world music. Both “Nü Metal” and “Nü Jazz” are rough send-ups of their titular genres, revealing that this record, without being lazy, is largely about the fun of making it.  

Palberta, coming out of the momentum of this year's Bye Bye Berta, does their weird take on post-punk. Nobody sounds too stable in this group (though if their “Stayin' Alive” cover is fresh in your mind, you don't want stable). It's a late-night walk through a slightly surreal city. “Pharmacy” and “Take You Away” (the latter an oddly long song for the group) narrate and seek to induce psychosis. “Nana” carries a groove, but “Call Me,” while probably in Debbie Harry's city, rolls in the grime and offers little release. The playful release shows one band still energized and another discovering joy in their lack of containment.

Justin Cober-Lake

 Shooting Guns — Flavour Country (RidingEasy Records)

Saskatoon’s own interstellar, pulverizing psych/doom unit Shooting Guns have been frying synapses for over seven years now, but it’s hard not to regard their first proper full length (2013’s Brotherhood of the Ram) as a peak, not least due to a nine and a half minute behemoth called “Motherfuckers Never Learn.” They’ve put out plenty of material since, soundtracks and splits and compilations, but Flavour Country is only their second no-other-qualifications record, and it lives up to those high standards. Opening with a couple of quick, thrashy numbers Shooting Guns set the pace immediately before before blowing it out with the bluesy, low-slung “Beltwhip Snakecharmer,” showing an enviable range and pacing. But as good as the first four tracks are, it’s the two lengthier side two explorations that really lock in and get down to business, whether that’s the steady, harmonica-fulled grind of the title track or “Black Leather Jacket”’s punishing, room melting crawl. Nothing here tops “Motherfuckers Never Learn” in the aggression stakes, but there’s plenty that indicates that Shooting Guns are in it for the long haul.  

Ian Mathers

  Willie “The Lion” Smith & Don Ewell — Grand Piano Duets (Sackville/Delmark) 

Echoing the double entendre of its title, Grand Piano Duets fulfills the promise inherent to the pairing of its reputable principals. Willie “The Lion” Smith was a recognized master who along with the late James P. Johnson and Fats Waller constituted a Holy Trinity of stride pianists. Nearly nineteen years Smith’s junior, Don Ewell embodied a later generation of stride purveyors who developed in the elder’s long shadow. The scheme to team them on record came out of a string of Toronto concerts, first with Ewell solo and later with Smith as formidable foil. Material from those meetings found circulation on the Delmark label and prompted this studio date in early 1967. A danger in these sorts of friendly dust-ups is the musicians playing over each other in the service of bombastic brinksmanship. To their credit, Smith and Ewell manage a fair share of playful and vocal fisticuffs without overstepping into obfuscating bombast or derailing insularity. Piano tandems were already old hat when this encounter of aged mentor and industrious pupil was committed to studio tape. Throughout, Smith and Ewell prove themselves a decidedly separate and tastier kettle of ivory ticklers from the Ferrante & Teicher fare that commonly constituted such ventures in the pop realm of the time.

Derek Taylor