I honestly don’t remember who first told me to check out IDLES, but it strikes me that several folks tried to explain their significance to me. It wasn’t really until I viewed their appearance on “Later with Jools Holland” (which I posted here) that I really sat-up and paid attention. I became so enthused by the track “Danny Nedelko” that I trooped out to Rough Trade in Brooklyn to buy m’self a copy of their sophomore long-player, Joy As An Act Of Resistance. That was a few weeks ago, and I’ve been listening to precious little else since.
IDLES are just such an enchanting rash of contradictions. I mean, I cannot pinpoint a single influence -– given their youth, they’re doubtlessly inspired by several contemporary artists I’m unfamiliar with. Sure, they hold their guitars like the Oh Sees/Coachwhips and deliberately prance about onstage in a manner not unlike Janick Gers from Iron Maiden, and they boast rousing, shout-along choruses like Sham 69 and the Cockney Rejects, but … sound like none of these bands. Lead singer Joe Talbot has emphatically stated that IDLES are not a punk band nor a post-punk band, but what do those genre signifiers even mean in 2018? IDLES certainly don’t *look* like punks, but apart from the fashion victims in bands like The Casualties and Rancid, who does still look that part?
I don’t honestly care what you care to call them. I just love that they write burly, aggressive, shouty songs loaded with chugging, clanging guitars and big fuckoff hooks and smart, funny, thought-provoking lyrics and play those songs like their bananas are on fire. Without question, Joy As An Act of Resistance is my favorite album of 2018.
If you’re like me –- and, frankly, God help you, if you are -– you live in an encroaching state of disinterest with what passes for new music. In a world giddily enthralled with idiotic piffle like Post Malone and the rinkydink retro-rock of Greta Van Fleet, it’s very hard not to be contentiously dismissive about the state of things. Obviously, that’s a myopic perspective -– there is clearly interesting music being made every day. One just has to look a llittle harder to find it. But for those of us still clinging to the fading vestiges of scenes that fostered artists like, say, NoMeansNo, Pussy Galore, SWANS, Foetus, Killing Joke, the Jesus Lizard, the Birthday Party and -– yes, wait for it -– Cop Shoot Cop, it can frequently seem like those particular sounds and sensibilities are now wholly anachronistic. Sure, there have been a handfull of bands over the last couple of years I’ve warmed to -– Pissed Jeans, Eagulls and Iceage spring immediately to mind -– but their ranks are few and far between, to my ears.
This year, however, I had numerous folks informing me that I should check out the new record by a band called Daughters, as they allegedly sound, in many instances, like my beloved Cop Shoot Cop. Suffice to say, I scoffed at the notion. Upon listening the album, however –- the endearingly titled You Won’t Get What You Want -- I did indeed start to understand a few of the comparisons. There’s certainly a common thread in the utilization of mechanized noise. The guitars don’t sound like guitars so much as frenziedly applied dentist drills. The drumming is still, stark and deliberate. While they seem to lack Cop Shoot Cop’s stubbornly pervasive sense of black humor, Daughters’ sardonic delivery does mimic our favorite Brooklyn sons to a degree. See if you agree.
While the music of Black Sabbath was largely considered to be monolithic, leaden and ponderous of rhythm -– as evidenced in hallowed classics like “Iron Man” and “War Pigs” -– there was a moment on their 1972 opus, Black Sabbath Vol 4 that belied all that oomphy heaviosity. Boasting what I’ve always considered to be Tony Iommi’s greatest riff (fight me on that one!), the rapturously cocainey “Supernaut” gives the fevered crash-cymbal-bashing, drug-espousal and fret-strangling a brief respite at 2:38 into the track, wherein sorely underpraised drummer Bill Ward is given free-reign, transforming proceedings from a headbanger’s hymn into a limbo-stick-friendly conga-breakdown. All of a sudden -– however fleetingly -– Black Sabbath felt the funk.
Here Lies Man is a band from Los Angeles whose entire musical output seems predicated on that unlikely amalgam, playing a vein of stoner metal filtered through rhythmic, funky afrobeat. Their lyrics are ultimately meh, but the grooves are unstoppable.
I can’t say that much about this band, but I first heard them this past November while I was in England to see Killing Joke. Public Service Broadcasting is an enigmatic collective of musicians that performs long works based around archival recordings, building lush, rocking orchestrations behind period-specific sonic documents. The first track of theirs I heard was “The Other Side,” a surprisingly moving capture of Apollo 8’s journey across the backside of the moon. Conceptually, it’s essentially “Space Oddity” re-constructed from the perspective of Ground Control, if you will, fleshed out with cinematic tension and expanse. Inspired by same, I picked up their 2018 e.p., White Star Liner, which shifts their nerdy focus from the space race to …. The Titanic. It shouldn’t work as well as it does, but it does…
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