So I’ve seen these dudes plastered all over the front page of myspace for the past few days…and pretty much they have one of the worst band names of all time.  So today I broke down and checked out the video they probably paid myspace more to frontpage than it cost to make. 

I was kinda hoping they would be as bad as their name so I could crap on them real good, but damn these fuckers are tough as shit.  I could do without the blastbeats, but that’s what the kids want…check these dudes out…I’m not sure where they rank on the “evil” scale…maybe they are one of these new fangled religious death bands…I don’t know…but what I do know is that I liked what I heard and saw.

Job For A Cowboy “Unfurling A Darkened Gospel”

It used to be that old bands sucked.  They’d reach an artistic pinnacle (usually years before you got into them) then fade away, break up or just plain out continue sucking.  This is pretty much the way it plays in the mainstream.  If your 20-year-old self that liked Matchbox 20′s first album in 1995 could hear the awful shit those dudes are responsible for now then you’d probably kill yourself.  Frat dudes, did you ever think Hootie would go country?  Uh huh. 

Then step over to the indie rock world where aging college rock snobs age like fine wine and oak.  Sonic Youth continue to release vital albums nearly 30 years into their career; Mission of Burma left the scene in 1985 only to come back with a vengeance in 2002 and two subsequent badass albums.  In 2005 Dinosaur Jr. shocked the Freak Scene by announcing a tour with the original lineup.  What, Murph’s been playing drums with DJ all along, it’s only Lou Barlow that left and he’s just the bass player, right?  Wrong.  Most Dinosaur albums since 1990′s Green Mind have been solo albums in essence, with a little help at times from Murph and tour bassist Mike Johnson.  When Lou went his own way in 1990 with Sebadoh (who have had nearly as profound an impact on indie rock as Lou’s former band) it got nasty between J and Lou, firing off bitter songs-as-screeds against each other.  That the two could ever share the same stage again without boxing gloves and a ring announcer was a small coup.

Then two years later an even odder thing happened: DJ made a new album Beyond.  I interviewed Lou Barlow around the time of Beyond’s release and he excused the new album as an excuse to keep touring.  My expectations were low.  Beyond blew my shit away completely.  It was like a Dinosaur Jr. greatest hits CD, representing all eras of Dinosaur Jr.  The Neil Young punk/metal/pop hybrid of the original three albums, the countryish pop of the latter albums…all tied together with J’s the gonzo agitprop guitar histrionics, Murph’s propulsive drumming and Lou’s sub-Lemmy bass chords.  It was better than I had any right expecting it to be.  Live, the songs stand up right next to the old stuff.

And now we have Farm, officially available tomorrow.  Expectations were high for me, considering the excellence of Beyond.  Farm picks up where the previous leaves off, with 12 songs that continue the tour down Dinosaur memory lane, but what is surprising to me are the songs that veer completely from the typical DJ formula.  There’s some sensitive 6/8 balladry on this album (like “Said the People”) that is really uncharacteristic of DJ, more like the stuff J did with The Fog.  Lou’s two songs continue to have maximum impact and opener “Pieces” takes it right back to 1987.  Yet another awesome indie rock band trading on former glory that somehow lights the fire one more time, but is able to add something different to the mix without diminishing or extinguishing the flame.  That’s a pretty darn good achievement.

Early Man are seriously fucking rad. Old School thrash like Kill Em All era Metallica with over the top Judas Priest style vocals.
Their first full length Closing In is one of my favorite records of the past few years so I was stoked to finally hear this EP. Thanks to Cliff @ Arsenal Tattoo for burning me a copy!
First off, the cover art is awesome. Yellow and black sharks. Sharks rule!
2nd, this thing is only 4 songs long. Total Sinkhole Texas style!
3rd, It totally delivers with the thrash and over the top vocals.  What set these dudes apart from other thrash bands is the totally fucking catchiness.  I’m not sure those two words have ever been used in the same sentence until today…but that’s what Early Man is, catchy thrash, and it totally rules. 
They have a new full length coming out soon called Death Potion that will hopefully rock my world and a supporting tour soon after that will double hopefully include a stop at The Stafford…if I can work some Atarimatt Booking Magic!

The fine Houston indie music blog Space City Rock has published a review of the Atarimatt/great unwashed luminaries split EP I Was a Teenage Metalhead.  Direct link is http://www.spacecityrock.com/reviews/rev-0509.shtml#A and the review is below.  Enjoy!

It’s not really a secret to most of my friends that right now I’m going through a very challenging set of circumstances that I have no control over.  About all I can do is hope for the best and try not to let my inner rage about these circumstances surface.  When in times of turmoil I turn to a handful of albums that are very much like a security blanket for my soul.  One such album is Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love.

I have my big brother to thank for hearing this album.  During the Christmas of 1992 I spent most of that season in Nashville hanging out with my brother in his apartment downtown.  We listened to this album and I’m not sure why he thought I would take to it but I did.  I took to it hard.  Upon returning home the first thing I did was pedal my bike over to Waxworks and buy their lone copy on CD.  I even cut up the long box it came in (remember those) and pinned it to the wall of what passed for my bedroom (the dining room curtained off with leftover bed sheets) in the apartment I shared with some other dudes.  I spent countless hours listening to this CD that winter freezing my balls off, watching the glow of my kerosene heater in the night whilst Miss Bush carried me away.  There’s just something about this album and winter for me, or the night time that isn’t accounted for simply by the first manner in which I came to love it.  Whilst in a college writing class I submitted a piece about how Hounds of Love seems made for winter-time and it always gets me through the symbolic and the literal winters of my life.  Another woman in the class familiar with the album agreed with me, though she’d never thought of it that way before.

If it’s not the proximity of winter to when I first heard it, then what conjurs up that headspace?  I think it has to do with the space in this album.  It is very minimal for the most part.  The Linndrums are heavy and programmed with very simple and unrelenting programming.  If Kate’s not on piano she’s making ambience with the Fairlight (a very expensive digital sampling workstation that costed six figures in 1984 but can be done now with the cheapest of laptops and freeware).  Guest bassist Eberhard Weber weaves ghostly lines in the spaces, the gentlest of reverbs hangs over the scenario like blankets of snow hushing the night.  “Running Up That Hill” eases you into that atmosphere, with jackhammer tom-toms at the end nearly disturbing you out of that revery.  A little levity ensues with “Hounds of Love”, leading into a one-two punch that is still easily one of my five favorite moments in music.  Period.  “Mother Stands for Comfort” is certainly a misnomer, as there is so much latent unrest in this song.  “And how the cat it takes the bird clutching the worm” is not a comforting thought.  Add to that rhythmic samples of breaking glass, Fairlight whistling and the sinuous fretless bass and afterimages of previous vocals that flicker just outside your periphery like ghosts…unsettling indeed.  Then the Fairlight strings kick in for “Cloudbusting” and then you are lifted away.  Again, a very simple Linndrum, the strings and at times a marching snare drum and that’s pretty much.  It’s all uplift, with Kate singing “Everytime it rains you’re here in my head/It’s like the sun coming out/ooh, I just know that something good is gonna happen/I don’t know when/but just saying it could even make it happen” and instantly I am emboldened.  This song is the one I turn to in times of trouble.  It is easy to see why.  Blind optimism following a dark, unsettling night.

The b-side of the album (a loose song suite called “The Ninth Wave”) follows the same battle between the soothing and unsettling.  The tension builds with “Across the Ice” and “Waking the Witch” but winds down with “Watching Me Without You”, then builds into a frenzy with “Jig of Life” then to come down with “Hello Earth”.  It is a fascinating listen.  And one that you will find me listening to quite a bit until the storms of life abate.

I leave you with the video for “Cloudbusting” which features a very rare video appearance for Donald Sutherland, who was still pretty hot in his middle years (this video was filmed in 1985) as opposed to the real slimy aristocrat look he leant most recently to ABC’s Dirty Sexy Money which is sadly no longer on the air.

But that also reminds me of another album that is starting to finally make sense to me.  That would be the Fleet Foxes’ self-titled debut album.

I had been told by many that this album was gonna be a big crossover smash.  I was very eager to hear it when it came out early last year and was so totally disappointed in it on first listen.  I thought it was like a pale imitation of Band of Horses, another reverb-obsessed band with southern gothic pretentions.  While Band of Horses has some alt-rock kick to their kudzu Fleet Foxes went more for the traditional The Band route of American music.  I wasn’t impressed and put that album away.  Last month I decided that I should probably give it another chance, knowing that have this problem when listening to music for the first time.  I am very quick to embrace or dismiss an album on the first listen and often miss a lot of gems this way.  I blame it on the years of music directing for commercial FM radio.  Those ears betrayed me with Fleet Foxes.

I have come back specifically to “Your Protector” (though it’s obvious the chorus melody is “borrowed” from Wilco’s “On and On and On”) and especially “Quiet Houses” with its yards-thick reverb, ghostly harmonies, pretty chicken pickin’ and that Zappa-cum-Brian Wilson coda.  It just all of a sudden clicked with me.  Now, do I think it was the Album of 2008 like so many other critics?  No.  But I am beginning to see what all the fuss is about.

Here’s a clip of “Quiet Houses” live. It’s misses the power that all that reverb and studio sheen adds to it but youyou can still get the idea.