The Hot Melts - "Shrink" 7"

The Hot Melts – “Shrink” 7”

Epitaph, 2009

Acquired: SXSW, New, 2009

Price: $0

 

You end up with a lot of free shit when you go to SXSW day parties. Usually grab bags full of stickers, compilations in cardboard sleeves you will never listen to, SWEET CADET HATS!, and the occasional 7” shrewdly cobbled together by a band that thinks they have a better shot at getting your attention if they give you a piece of vinyl. For the Hot Melts, it worked. Five years later, I’m finally listening to this 7”. It sounds dated, or maybe ageless I suppose. Though it was released on the ‘Taph, the Hot Melts play a brand of Weezer-esque power-pop that is both ubiquitous and better than anything Weezer has done since Pinkerton (Note: Epitaph will release just about anything these days, apparently*). “Shrink” has a throwback pop vibe. Like thrown way back to the 1950s. Like malt shop throwback. It’s absolutely nothing special, but it is absolutely pleasant. B-side “The Alcohole” time travels forward to the 1970s and delivers a Bowiesque song about getting drunk and incapable of falling in love and possessing “lecherous ways.” There’s a little farfisa running through the verses, and for some reason, farfisa means fun in my book. It’s fun. The group is from England, which now makes so much sense as the English tend to be much more forgiving of run-of-the-mill rock and roll music (see the skyrocketing success of Arctic Monkeys). Or at least it seems that way, considering every five seconds NME or whoever is heralding some young new band as the saviors of rock and roll music. Or maybe that’s just a caricature of English music consumers that for some reason resides in my brain.

"Shrink"

*I couldn't remember the band or the douchebag singer, so in order to find that Falling in Reverse video I just googled "Epitaph Records Douche." First hit: That Vice article that took the piss out of Ronnie Radke. 

Fucked Up - "No Epiphany" 7"

Fucked Up – “No Epiphany” 7”

Matador, 2009

Acquired: KJHK Music Staff, New, 2009
Price: $0

 

I’ve been jamming Fucked Up’s 2008 release The Chemistry of Common Life a lot lately when I do the closing count at work. It’s summer, so it’s super fucking busy and by 9 o’clock I’m at wit’s end for one reason or another. I slump up to the office with the drawers, put this on and the pure release of Fucked Up’s sound triggers a sort of emotional escape valve that, combined with the meditative nature of counting money, prepares me for my reentrance to the world. I never listened to this album much when it actually came out, but I listened to their follow-up David Comes to Life a whole hell of a lot (although not as much as I would have liked, the album was long and 2011 was long on other great albums that needed listening).

Despite the lack of time I’ve spent with any particular Fucked Up release, I always actively went to their live shows whenever they came through Lawrence. When Fucked Up came to town, there was an understanding that this was as close as you were going to get to seeing an actual punk band. I’m talking the way people saw Black Flag in the 80s. Connecting that thought, when I was at SXSW in 08 I saw Keith Morris join them on stage for a cover of “Nervous Breakdown” and that pretty much made my year. While I was in Austin I also saw them play Beerland with J fucking Mascis standing directly behind me. Pink Eyes bled a lot that night and it was A.) the first time I’d ever even heard the band and B.) one of those really fundamentally grounding moments you experience as a music lover where you take a flyer on a band and get your brain totally blown out of the back of your skull. Fucked Up trigger this part of me that never quit loving punk rock and always loves punk as much as I loved punk when I was 16. When it was what I lived and breathed and where I drove to my shitty job at AMC listening to the cassette copy of the Nervous Breakdown EP for a year straight. Though I let that piss and vinegar subside, Fucked Up always causes it to boil back up to form my lips into a big “fuck yes.”

The Nervous Breakdown EP is just over five-minutes long. Both sides of the cassette had identical versions of the EP so that it effectively played on a loop forever in my Saturn's tape deck. 

Every time. Right now it’s 11 o’clock and I’ve gotta get up at 7 and I’m tired and “No Epiphany” still gets me pumped up for its four minute duration. Fucked Up are so sneaky. They trick you into thinking you’re gonna get some average hardcore with their abhorrent name and loud guitars and instead you get something that is actually tuneful. Sure, Damian Abraham is barking at you, but he’s barking with melody. That’s the thing that always threw me about Fucked Up. They’re a pop band in a punk band’s body. That much was evidenced by their covers of indie pop groups the Shop Assistants, Dolly Mixture, and Another Sunny Day. It’s all so fucking smart, but not too smart for its own good. This track just keep rolling and rolling and grooving and grooving and then you think it’s getting ready to run right back into some more verses and DRUM FILL/PRIMAL SCREAM/DINKY GUITAR SOLO/BITCHIN OUTRO. This song kills every time. Did I mention how fucking good the drums are on this song? It’s like every time through something different pokes its little head up and I just sit here overjoyed to be listening to such a vital, pulsing jam with so much energy and potency. The b-side features a pretty forgettable remix by No Age which bugs me because surely Fucked Up had some gnarly b-side sitting around. 

When I saw Fucked up play the Jackpot a few years ago, despite having already seen them at SXSW, my immediate thought was: “These people are fucking crazy, they’re playing dinky ol’ Lawrence, Kansas like they’re playing their last show ever.” When I went to buy a t-shirt after the show (one without the band’s name on it because of my peculiar respect for common decency when it comes to vulgarity in public places despite my rampant sailor mouth) I was stunned that they were not only friendly, but also the friendliest band I’d ever met after a show. Friendliness will go a long way to sell me on a band, and it totally worked that night.

"No Epiphany"

Nonsequiter Note: I tried to find a video of Fucked Up playing in Lawrence and this was one of the first hits: 

A couple of skater bros getting high and driving around Lawrence. It is truly terrifying that today's youth are oblivious to the fact that putting videos of oneself in incriminating circumstances is not a terribly bright idea. I literally watched the whole thing, jaw hanging on the floor. At first I was like, "Ok, you can't prove they're smoking weed," and then there's a glass pipe, and then at one point one of the bros holds a nug directly in front of the camera. Not to mention they're driving in an impaired state like they never saw that infomercial about the stoned guys at the drive through running over a kid on a bike.

Fever Ray - "If I Had a Heart" 7"

Fever Ray – “If I Had a Heart” 7”

Rabid, 2009

Acquired: KJHK Music Staff, New, 2009
Price: $0

 

I had never heard this song until I watched A&E’s terrific new show “Vikings,” for which “If I Had a Heart” serves as the theme song. It’s sort of perfect. It has the sort of brooding you’d expect people with Viking blood. It’s dark and spooky and deeply satisfying. It’s like a pop single designated for 45 RPM and played at 33 1/3 instead. Which is about what you would expect from The Knife singer Karin Andersson. The Knife make the sort of dark, tuneful electronica that even I—a safe, boring, indie-rock nerd—can get down on. Fever Ray takes the darkness to a new level though. “If I Had a Heart” throbs. The deep organs, the hypnotic orchestral synth loop, the disembodied vocals, and the lyrics meditating on greed and power blend into a truly haunting final product. The sort of thing the music supervisor on “Breaking Bad” might hear and assign to one of the show's morally conflicted characters. The Fuck Buttons remix on the b-side brightens things up with some glossy synthesizers and turns the mournful wailing into an ethereal, almost angelic chorus. An insistent drum machine beat stabs at you the whole time pushing the hypnotic qualities of the original into more deliberate territory and the vocals are pitch shifted back to a more human register. And yet they manage to maintain the sense of impending doom. Which makes sense because this song is basically just slowed-down black metal of the Norwegian tradition.

The stunning and perfectly apt video for "If I Had a Heart"

And the Fuck Buttons remix.

Eprhyme - "Shomer Salaam" 7"

Eprhyme – “Shomer Salaam” 7”

K, 2009

Acquired: KJHK Music Staff, New, 2009

Price: $0

 

Eprhyme makes "Iconoclastic Neo-Hassidic Hip-Hop." I’m not sure if he wants that to be his defining quality, but when you’re a Hassidic Jewish rapper it kind of has to be (and it's the headline on his website so, you know). Unless you’re rapping about bitches and money, but even then you’re gimmicking. You’re that Hassidic Jewish rapper who raps about bitches and money and ISN’T THIS IRONIC AND FUNNY. So on. Etcetera. Eprhyme presents transparent messages of faith, peace, love and tolerance over beats heavily incorporate traditional middle eastern instrumentation. It’s all pretty hokey and plays like God rock. That said, I’m clearly not the target audience, and despite my own personal beliefs I do appreciate an artist who can articulate his or her faith in a way that is not heavy handed. The point of God rock is to beat you over the head with The Message, whereas it is much more interesting for an artist to approach faith on a personal level. Eprhyme has a Message, but there is little meaning to it because it’s all surface level stuff. It is obvious that these things are important to him. The dude very clearly cares about his faith and his community and has the best intentions, but good intentions can’t make up for lackluster emcee skills and surface level raps.