Author: monstershark

I’ve been waiting for an excuse to set this before the Club for some time, and also to have a stab at writing about it. I’m intermittently fascinated by Sunn O))) and some of their ilk but the more I listen the farther I get from understanding anything about them.

It’s a pretty simple equation. There are two of them, Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley, and they chug away at weirdly down-tuned guitars at ferocious volume and glacial pace creating a noise which pretty much suits the drone/doom pigeonhole they’ve materialised in. They have progenitors, particularly Dylan Carson’s Earth, who they credit as major influences and partly in tribute to whom they are named. On this their fifth album, they are joined by guest vocalists Wrest and Malefic from US Black Metal one-man-bands Leviathan and Xasthur, representing the overlap with another genre I find hopelessly fascinating and almost completely ludicrous.

The result is, perhaps in all senses of the words, diabolical and dreadful. The guitars seem to collapse in on themselves, giving fleeting visions of sub-sonic caverns that threaten to swallow the listener like some Lovecraftian behemoth. It really is quite something, demonstrating directly the almost physical effect that noise can inflict.

Or are they just mucking about? I know they aren’t, but I also know i’d be incapable of persuading the average passer-by that they weren’t. There’s a dark thrill in letting Sunn O)))s black waves suck away at your soul and, for me, it’s given an extra frisson by the clear sense that this is, in any reasonable assessment, a bit ridiculous. Like the best schlock horror flicks, it only works if one suspends disbelief.

Then there’s the vocals and lyrics. My feelings about US Black Metal (USBM) and its Scandinavian older cousin are for another post, or better, for a comic novel, but i’ll encapsulate a couple of them here.

What makes the whole genre so delicious is the contrast between how seriously the young men churning the music out are about it and how completely laughable it is in almost all its detail. The music can be bracing, face-melting at times, and I’m compelled by the vocal technique (again the end result is silly, but impressive). I’m enough of a horror fan to find the blighted lands that USBM tries to conjure up attractive, but jeez, was there ever a scene more up itself, more convinced of its own righteousness (or should that be wrongeousness)?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ve all read ‘The Call Of Cthulhu’ and imagined we could destroy the world and bring forth a frosty new dimension of pain and general unpleasantness. Now go and ring your Mum and tell her what time you’ll be home for tea.

Don’t misunderstand me. This territory is great for a brief escape, but the idea that a chap could live there permanently seems childish. Put another way, I think it’s pretty cool that they apparently locked the claustrophobic Malefic in a coffin to record his vocals for ‘Black One’s closing track ‘Báthory Erzsébet’, but how can anyone read a wikipedia entry for the same vocalist that goes like this without chuckling: “musically and lyrically Xasthur’s focus is usually not on paganism, Satanism or anti-Christian blasphemy – as is common in the genre – but rather on astral projection, darkness, despair, suicide, hate, and death”.

That’s enough for now. I intend to chip away at Sunn O))) for years to come. I have no idea whether when I finally break through i’ll find a blackened, blasted wasteland presided over by a blind gibbering god, or two dorkish schoolboys who never learned which way round to hold their guitars.

Tom Listened:  I’m beginning to go off Rob. First he makes me cycle from one end of the country to the other. Then he makes me listen to this! I very rarely have trouble getting to sleep, but this album (plus The Drift, plus Frankie Teardrop) ensured that I had my worst night’s sleep in decades!

This was uncomfortable, oppressive, terrifying, exhausting, scary, bleak, unpleasant, horrific….and strangely captivating. Put it this way, I didn’t feel compelled to play Guided by Voices or The Unicorns to my tutor group the next day after they were brought to DRC! So, I have to begrudgingly concede that Sunn o))) must be pretty damn good at what they do, it’s just that what they do and myself are incompatible. A bit like Pan’s Labyrinth (images from which Black One continuously summoned up during the interminable 56 minutes playing time) this was an experience that I am kind of glad I have had, but never want to repeat.

Nick listened: Sunn o))) are a group I’ve heard of plenty over the years, but never listened to. I’m aware of their critical acclaim, but not so much of their specific niche – I didn’t know they were quite so related to modern metal in terms of collaborations, for instance, though I had them filed away in my brain as unholy guitar abusers.

Strip away the comedy death metal grunting (which adds a layer of artifice to proceedings that seriously hampers my ability to suspend disbelief and invest fully), and what Sunn o))) produce isn’t a million miles away from Fennesz, just going down a different, almost illbient, road. I find quite a lot to… perhaps not ‘enjoy’, but certainly appreciate, in Sunn o))), especially when you factor the candles, graveyard view, and cowled host into proceedings. They create a genuinely oppressive atmosphere (especially sans grunting comedy metal vocalists) which could easily, if one weren’t in good company, make your skin crawl and your mind play tricks on you. I don’t know if I’d ever want to listen to them on any other night of the year, but I’d gladly revisit them next all hallows eve. I certainly didn’t have Tom’s unsettled night’s sleep; but then again, I’ve watched Pan’s Labyrinth half a dozen times or more, and consider it beautiful, rather than scary…

Graham Listened: Rob’s black cape and the view over the graveyard was the icing on the cake when it came to this offering. Glad I listened, glad I now understand the subtle differences between death/black metal etc. Genuinely disturbing listening for mature adults. I must be getting old as I started to worry about the impact of listening to this sort of stuff in your teens. Would probably never listen to this again but would be tempted to go to a live show, just to see what sort of people turned up (I’m sure they would be reserved parking for all those bringing sacraficial goats).

Feel free to argue that ‘Sister’ is not Sonic Youth’s real triumph preceding, as it does, their accepted masterpiece ‘Daydream Nation’. Whilst we’re at it, feel free to contend that it’s not even their real fourth album. The band themselves argue that their eponymous debut EP, which was later collected with some live bits and bobs, was their first full length, which would make ‘Sister’ their fifth. What do they know?

‘Sister’ is an unabashed triumph, even set alongside its big brother. In fact, to extend and possibly pervert the sibling analogy beyond decency, ‘Sister’ contains in its DNA almost everything that would make ‘Daydream Nation’ such a wonder, but in half the time.

Here is Thurston Moore slouching about the place sounding effortlessly, shamblingly cool, the gawky kid in class who knew all the coolest bands, on ‘Schizophrenia’ and ‘Catholic Block’. Here is Lee Ranaldo buzzing into ‘Pipeline/Killtime’, his voice skipping across the surface of his guitar as well as it ever would on ‘Eric’s Trip’, here is Kim Gordon, hooting blankly and lovably away through the hilariously unhinged ‘Pacific Coast Highway’. Here is Steve Shelley, his clattering sticks almost as distinctive as the rest of the squall around him.

Throughout the record’s 40 minutes, here is a group coalescing a sound by training their free-noise roots through lattices of discipline and control. No-one else ever made guitars, drums, voices, music sound like this and no-one has since. ‘Sister’ is Sonic Youth at their peak.

Tom Listened: I would argue, except I think I agree with you Rob. I have never owned a real copy of Daydream Nation but I did listen to it a lot whilst at university and have had periods of playing it pretty intensely since then until my car no longer had the capacity to play TDK C90s. I liked about a half of it a lot….Teenage Riot (obviously), Silver Rocket (possibly even better), Eric’s Trip, Rain King and a couple of others. But so much of DN is indulgent guitar noodling to my ears that it lessens the impact of the best songs. Sister sounded (on second listen for me, the first being about 15 years ago!) much more succinct and direct and all the better for it. It is unmistakably Sonic Youth (as Rob states their sound is totally their own) and it seemed to me to be Sonic Youth at their best.

Nick listened: Yet another record I own but have never listened to… I bought this, Daydream Nation, and Goo for a fiver each about three or four years ago and added them to my Retirement Stockpile (i.e. all the books I’ll read, DVDs I’ll watch, and records I’ll listen to when I’ve got all the time in the world). I really like Sonic Youth’s 00s material with Jim O’Rourke, plus Dirty which I remember from adolescence, but I’ve never been in love with them, and Daydream Nation (which I did listen to when I bought it) struck me, too, as being a little bloated. This was thoroughly enjoyable; it sounded like Sonic Youth, which is a sound I like!

Of course, just as we did with REM, we’ve destroyed them by choosing them for DRC. Feel free to recommend any other 80s/90s alt.rock icons you’d like to see split up or get divorced, and we’ll play them next time.

Graham Listened: Repeat after me, “I should like Sonic Youth”, “I should like Sonic Youth”,”I should like Sonic Youth”,”I should like Sonic Youth”,”I should like Sonic Youth”…..

…..but I’ve never really got it. Given the range of other things I was listening to when they emerged, they should have been right up my street. I thought another listen might help, but the problem remains. I don’t know why, I don’t find them annoying, I still don’t get anything much from them. Clearly my problem!

So, we were challenged with bringing ‘Underappreciated albums of the 1990s’.

Way below ‘underappreciated’, Dart’s ’36 Cents An Hour’ was practically invisible. I was sent it to review in 1995, left it on the shelf for a few months, gave it a cursory listen and found it seeping slowly into my musical memory.

I can’t tell you too much about it. Nor can anyone. There’s barely anything online about Dart. Google the album title and you’ll find four blog posts (five now), three of which are empty. It’s mentioned just 4 times on I Love Music, 3 times by the same guy who used to know the band. I know there’s nothing out there about Dart because I’ve looked quite often over the last decades and even sent an email to lead singer Rick Stone 8 or 9 years ago praising the album and asking whether there was more music to come. He never emailed back and that remains the only time i’ve ever written to a band or singer. Some time later I did manage to track down a subsequent solo album by Stone, ‘Turn Me On, Turn Me Out’ which offered some sort of coda.

Dart were a four piece from San Francisco, or thereabouts. ’36 Cents An Hour’ is a rich, warm album that blends the careful craft of fuzzy alt-country with the pedal-driven oomph of prime shoe gaze. The apparently effortless combination is one of the things that that make it sound so timeless, one of those records that by the second time you hear it feels like it’s always been with you, but which is never wrung dry. The others are down to Stone. Without knowing the background I can’t be sure, but he sounds like kith and kin with David Gedge and Mark Eitzel, carving a complete body of work from one relationship gone bad. It’s mopey, pretty much, but fine with it. Then there’s his phrasing. Just as his band know precisely when to hit the effects pedal for maximum effect without losing subtlety, Stone knows just when to add an extra rasp and push to his voice to grab a line by the scruff of it’s neck. Together it’s a quietly powerful package.

It’s unusual for such a perfectly formed record, complete with lovely cover art, to arrive unbidden as if from nowhere, and a real shame that the band who produced it then disappeared into obscurity once more. If you get the chance, track them down and let them in.

Newsflash: I found a review on allmusic.com. Bless you Ned Raggett. He reckons they were based in London. Who knows where they are now? They could be just around the corner.

Tom Listened:I heard little of American Music Club in the music of Dart but I am minded to draw a comparison between listening to Engine (my first AMC purchase) and 36 Cents An Hour. At the previous meeting (I think it was when Meadowlands by The Wrens was playing) Nick posited that with enough plays almost any record can, through familiarity, become pleasurable to listen to …at least, I think that was what he was saying. Not sure how this applies to Barbie Girl, but I suppose there is an exception to every rule. I got the impression this would happen if I listened to 36 Cents An Hour, in much the same way as it did when I used to listen to, say, Buffalo Tom or Bright Eyes or The Lemonheads. All pretty unremarkable artists who have a habit of producing records crammed with pleasant enough songs that, over time, come to assume a disproportionate place in my affections.  I dare say The Wrens may yet pull off this trick, if I ever get round to listening to it again!

American Music Club, however, I pretty much hated on first listen. In fact, if it wasn’t for Melody Maker’s Allan Jones’ championing of them (and the song Nightwatchman), we would probably have never got past first base. I couldn’t stand Mark Eitzel’s foghorn of a voice and the arrangements of the songs on Engine seemed far too rocky, too bombastic to my ears. To say it jarred is an understatement.  But, with countless repeated listens, they came to be my favourite band for a while and I treasure my AMC collection (for all its flaws) as much as any other artist in my collection. Dart sounded to me to have come out of the Buffalo Tom stable, I liked it well enough, but there was nothing there that said, ‘you’re going to have to work hard to really appreciate me, now come on and rise to the challenge’ and, for me, that part of the process is the bit I like best.

Nick listened: I’m always surprised when Rob brings records like this – pleasant, tuneful, crafted but unremarkable indie rock – to Devon Record Club, which he’s now done a few times, as one of the first questions he asked me when we started talking about music two or so years ago was “what’s the most extreme music you listen to?”, which prompted in me a vague sense of inadequacy that my tastes weren’t ever going to be savage and abrasive enough to cut the mustard. So it’s always puzzling when he brings something that strikes me as being a little middle of the road.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that (I wrote the liner notes to Embrace’s b-sides compilation, for god’s sake), I just expect extreme noise terror more often! Likewise there’s nothing wrong with Dart (who won the prize for most unheard-of choice this week), but, as Tom suggested, it felt very much like the kind of record that would need time to soak in and reveal itself. It reminded me of many things – a little REM, a little shoegaze, a little alt.country, a little Pearl Jam, a little Embrace b-side, even – most of which I like. Had I stumbled across 36 Cents and Hour 16 years ago I might have loved it; today I’ve probably not got time to, sadly.

Graham listened: A very accomplished and mature debut offering. The style of sound ticked loads of boxes for me about things I would be listening to around late 80’s/early 90’s. There were some anthemic moments that would seem to be killer tracks for live performance. No sense that the vocalist was trying to sound like Michael Stipe but there were some moments when he sounded incredibly similar.  Wonder if timing played a part here and maybe there was just not the apetite for this sort of sound by 1995? Clearly hugely underappreciated.

‘Guilty Displeasures’ is a great theme and once i’d set aside The Microphones ‘The Glow Pt 2’ and ‘Led Zep III’ (listened to them again, turned out they were pretty good after all) I settled on ‘Return to Cookie Mountain’ quickly.

It seemed to be lauded from all sides when released, it came 2nd in Pitchfork’s end of year list for 2006 and seemed, by all accounts, to be redefining rock music. I expected to have my head blown off when I heard it. I didn’t get it at the time and have been trying ever since. The symphonic/electronic swoosh of ‘I Was A Lover’ promises much, but the rest of the record is just so… damned… boring…

I don’t know why, but I just don’t hear anything revolutionary in here, and with the added irritation of some of the most drained, lifeless singing i’ve ever heard, I find it bland verging on unbearable. ‘Wolf Like Me’, for many the standout track, chugs along nicely, but what the hell is that playground chant-along we get in place of vocals with some passion, some life. Reading back, it makes sense that TV On The Radio apparently came to music from visual art. This record, to me, sounds like a conceptual, academic exercise. No fire, no danger, no jeopardy. No thanks.

I’ve listened to it dozens of times, each one expecting the switch to flick. Never happens. I mustered up the same optimism this evening, hoping one of my fellow listeners would articulate what i’d been missing and open the lock for me. I’ll let them speak for themselves, but the rest of DRC seemed to share my view as we listened again this evening, to the shocking extent that this became the first, and I hope the last, record we have ever taken off before it finished. I wonder now whether this is a hipster band, one that lots of people hope to like, but really, deep down, find their relationship with them is pretty cold and sterile.

Still, at least it’s not as boring as ‘Dear Science’.

Tom Listened: I think Return To Cookie Mountain is MORE boring than Dear Science. In fact, I quite like Dear Science; it has an lightness of touch and a bit of character…but I wholeheartedly agree with Rob in his assertion that RTCM is one of the most overrated albums of recent times. He’s right, it is mainly the singing that’s the problem. Although technically accomplished enough, both Kyp Malone and Tunde Adebimpe sound as though they are going through the motions on RTCM and this, coupled with pretty annoying production and some bland songs, suggest to me that this is, perhaps, one displeasure none of us have to feel too guilty about.

Nick listened: Total and utter agreement with Rob about this record. Like him I’ve been trying for five years to see what it is that other people, including plenty of whom that I respect in terms of musical choices, have seen in this record. At one point, many moons ago, I thought I’d had an epiphany with the piano strikes in Province, but it soon passed. RTCM is, to my ears, a mess of a record; loud, muffled, confused, aimless, passionless. A couple of times, including Wolf Like Me, it gathers some momentum and some life, but generally it sounds like a machine grinding confusingly for the sake of grinding, producing nothing, doing nothing, no end product. The melodies sound forced to me, the rhythms awkward and unphysical, unpleasurable, the drones and chaos atop neither exhilarating or beautiful. This was the first TVOTR release I bought, and had I not been determined to understand what their USP was it would have been the last; I’ve subsequently found that I actually really enjoy their debut EP and quite like their album previous to this, too; both employ a much lighter touch, a sense of freedom and fun that seems absent here for some reason. I hate to use words like dull and boring as pejoratives when writing about music because they’re so lifeless and meaningless and in the ear of the beholder, but RTCM, quite simply, bores the crap out of me. I thoroughly encouraged us to turn it off, and was delighted when we did.

Graham Listened: All I can really add to the comments above is “ditto”. Really lost on me how this could attract such critical acclaim. Nothing to feel guilty about in my opinion.

The Unicorns were from Montreal, Quebec and they made this terrific album when they were in their early 20s. I mention their age as one of the many remarkable things they manage to accomplish here is to channel the spirits of two nine year-old boys. Nine year-old boys who are in a touring rock band, to be more precise. If that sounds odd, well it is, but it’s also hilarious and moving and it opens up a whole musical toy box which The Unicorns rifle through with demented gusto.

Nick Thorburn and Alden Penner essentially duet across the album’s 13 songs. The vocals go back and forth like a conversation between two cub scouts sharing a tent in a spooky forest. They’re obsessed with premature death and its avoidance (the album opens with ‘I Don’t Wanna Die’, closes with ‘Ready to Die’ and inbetween comes a run of three tracks all of which have the word ‘Ghost’ in the title), they bicker and whine, about being in a band and often about the other’s performance (“I write the songs/I WRITE THE SONGS!/ You say i’m doing it wrong/ YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG!”) and still have time to sing about being unicorns.

Meanwhile their songs, scratchy home-made punk pop in spirit, are incredible, gleeful experiments in smashing together incongruous sounds, instruments and styles. They can’t stand still for more than about 20 seconds and most tracks move through contrasting styles, time signatures, melodies and arrangements like a quick-change artist swaps hats.

None of this should work, but the alchemical miracle of ‘Who Will Cut Our Hair…’ is that it does. The whole thing hangs together, studded with irresistible hooks, great jokes, amazing noises all bound up by the threesome’s overwhelming energy, commitment and sheer sense of fun. It’s easily one of my favourite records of the last 10 years.

Nick Thorburn went on to lead Islands, another great band, forging records using subtly unconventional arrangements and approaches. My wife and I played one of their songs at our wedding ceremony. As if you care.

Nick listened: I enjoyed this record too, and quite a lot; sadly it seemed to suffer from going first, as Tom’s reaction to Caribou and my reaction to The Slits overwhelmed our reactions to this. The Unicorns are a band I’d heard of but not really registered, back in the days when I wrote for Stylus; looking at the timelines, this was released in late 2003, when I was at my most disenfranchised with indie, and costuming techno, hip hop, and chart pop pretty ravenously . Something as winsome and twee as two men, of about my age, singing like kids, would probably have raised my ire a bit, so it’s just as well that I ignored them at the time. Now, though, I can take it in sans the context and mood of the moment, and appreciate that, as Rob says, though the songs are topographically messy, the constituent parts are pretty uniformly excellent. Have a strong feeling that Em would like this, too. Must remember to borrow it off Rob.

Tom Listened: I had previously been lent this album by Rob and had returned it having given it a couple of half-hearted semi-listens; you know…washing machine on, in and out of the back door, kids screaming, that sort of thing. So I was intrigued and pleased to have been given the chance to hear Who Will Cut Our Hair properly and let the rarified DRC listening conditions work its magic (although Rob and I still need to learn to wave our hands frantically and ssh the chatter when we are getting to a good bit on our record).

So it was more than a little annoying that I spent the first two thirds of the record trying (possibly without resolution) to identify the soundalike voice. It could have been Jason Lyttle from Grandaddy, possibly Phil Elvrum (The Microphones/Mt Eerie) but whoever it was, trying to nail it in my head certainly got in the way of enjoying the record. And then, around track 9 or 10 I realised that the song I was listening to was pretty astounding, which made me wish I had been able to pay closer attention to the rest of the album, rather than having to listen to the sound of my mental filing system rifling through its ever more inaccessible information. Must remember to borrow this one from Nick!

This was one of my Christmas albums in 2000 (I assume). I certainly remember sitting down at my parents house to listen to this alongside my other choice, A Silver Mount Zion’s ‘He Has Left Us Alone but Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corner of Our Rooms’ – which makes me wonder just how much more downbeat festive listening could possibly get. I listened on headphones and vividly recall waiting for something to happen. When, over the course of the album, nothing did, I remember thinking ‘well, that was a waste’. Turns out I wasn’t listening closely enough. Everything was happening.

Perhaps listening to A Silver Mount Zion next made ‘Secret Name’ sound like the Supremes, but one way or another Low felt like a band worth sticking with. I liked ‘Things We Lost in the Fire’ a deal more – although now I prefer this – and we’ve been together ever since. Only a few years later did I go back to ‘Secret Name’, now attuned, and discover the real treasure.

Low get some lazy stick for being just a slow band, but think for a moment about just how much more difficult it is to make low-tempo music hang together. Surely most idiots can paw and bang away frantically at guitars and drums and create some energy. It takes incredible craft, genius almost, to create such power from space, from restraint, from a gentle two-step.

Listen to Alan Sparhawk’s singing. Every word has to be perfectly phrased and delivered or else the entire song would be punctured. He can’t just roar his way through his performance and as a result each vocal line is a string of pearls slowly, carefully, magically being pulled from his mouth.

And then there’s the other voice. The sequencing may be accidental or very deliberate, but holding back Mimi Parker until part way through the third track ‘Two Step’ is a killer move. When she finally fills her lungs and starts to sing, not only is it a gorgeous moment, it lifts the whole record onto another level and it never looks back.

The sound of ‘Secret Name’ is not distant or removed, it’s warm, intimate, close. But beneath the surface there are strange sounds scratching, on ‘Don’t Understand’ and ‘I Remember’. This initially seems like exceptional care for a record-maker like Steve Albini to take but his stated aim is capture a band’s aesthetic, and here he does so perfectly. With hindsight this seems like their first step away from their stripped down roots towards a (marginally) more dynamic sound. I think it’s Low at their beautiful, devotional, heartbreaking best.

I talked a lot about this record whilst playing it for the Club. Too much, but talking’s pretty much what we do. Only latterly did I explain that Low are a trio from Duluth, Minnesota who play guitar, bass and drum (usually singular). Whether you know them or not, you should be spending time with them.

Tom Listened: I am really grateful to Rob for bringing this album to the record club, not just because I thought it was majestic, beautiful, delicate, quietly stunning etc,etc but also because I have since gone back to Things We Lost In The Fire, yet another great album that has wrongly been gathering dust on my shelves for quite a while.

Secret Name sounded less accessible than TWLITF and listening to it has helped me appreciate the slower, denser songs on the latter album. I find it difficult to predict the effect of listening to a new album by an already cherished band on the albums I already own by them. Sometimes the new album comes to overshadow the previous work to such an extent that I rarely go back to the older albums (for example, since getting Noble Beast by Andrew Bird, I rarely go back to The Mysterious Production of Eggs, even though it was one of my favourite albums of the last decade). Sometimes new work sits alongside the older albums to form part of an equal whole (I would count the American Music Club albums in this category, all are pretty much equally brilliant and equally flawed). And occasionally, as has been the case with Secret Name, a new album makes me appreciate what I already had more than I ever did.  To my mind, the fact that Secret Name was so slow, so measured has helped me look beyond the ‘pop classics’ of Dinosaur Act, Sunflowers, Like a Forest and In Metal (you know, the ones that actually have a beat!), to see the true beauty in all those ‘dirges’ that I had always dismissed in less enlightened times.

Nick Listened: Low are a band that, for some reason, I’ve always shied away from. It’s perhaps too easy to dismiss them as “slow and miserable” and decide not to investigate, and, frankly, sometimes one needs a reason not to investigate a band / artist because if one investigated every one you had a soupçon of interest in, you’d be skint and overloaded and bored of music in no time at all. My dismissal of Low in particular has infuriated my wife, who likes them a lot; I think in part her affection for them also fueld my dismissal, not because I don’t like my wife’s taste in music (we have huge crossovers), but because I’ve already stolen enough of her interests and tastes and feel I should leave some things alone so they can be hers. Also, I heard bad things regarding the use of dynamic range compression on Drums and Guns…

Over the last couple of years I have listened to Low’s Christmas album quite a lot (when seasonably appropriate), and I’ve grown to appreciate, and, well, really quite like it. I also really quite liked Secret Name; I’m a fan of Albini’s engineering, especially when it’s partnered with less aggressive music (Electrelane and Nina Nastasia, for example) where the juxtaposition of his stark, live-in-a-room approach (and awesome drum sound) juxtaposes intriguingly with songs, melodies, and playing that you wouldn’t expect. It suits Low’s delicate, measured, geological tempos beautifully.

I shall be getting out my wife’s Low CDs and giving them a spin. They may be slow, but they’re not miserable.

Graham Listened:

Well then, so far nothing has caught my attention at DRC in the way this album has. I had some preconceptions about what Low were all about, but one listen blew them all away. The space/drama/intensity all made a huge impact and I will be in search of more. I was surprised that Low don’t seem to have featured in any film soundtracks and can only assume they must have declined offers in the past.

Melt Banana are one of those bands. I find myself frequently invoking false archetypes when introducing records at our meetings. It’s lazy and reductive, but sometimes it helps. Melt Banana are one of those bands who sound like a joke the first time you hear them. They’re also one of those bands it would be easy to bracket with poorly considered national stereotypes. Once more, these can be illustrative in some instances, so i’ll trot a couple out. They sound like hyper-accellerated electro-death-thrash from the year 2050. They’re from Tokyo.

The joke bit comes when you first get to hear them in full flight. Their songs often last no more than 30 seconds, and in that space of time pack in four shifts in signature, half and dozen stop-starts and enough tinitus-replicating vocals to send you to check either your turntable or your inner ears. Much as Ichirou Agata’s guitar playing is both exhilarating and blistering, it’s Yasuko Onuki’s vocals which get me every time. She sounds like a pixie being squeezed to death and fighting hard to get free. She sounds like a particularly deranged DJ scratching a Pinky and Perky record. She sounds amazing. The whole band sounds amazing. It’s… sort of hard to explain.

I came across them when their third album ‘Scratch or Stitch’ came to me as a reviewer. I had no idea what to make of them so I filed them away until a couple of years later when, inevitably, I heard John Peel playing them. They’re one of those bands too. The ones Peel would throw on just because they sounded nothing like anything he’d ever heard before. The trouble with those bands, the ones John Peel used to play, the ones that sound like the soundtrack to a particularly bent Chris Morris sketch, the ones for whom you have no frame of reference, is that they often turn out to be doing something genuinely original, something that worms (or blasts) its way into your body and refuses to leave. Melt Banana are one of those bands.

I had no idea what the Club would make of them, but it was important to bring this record along. It’s their most accessible, if not their most typical, and sooner or later, I had to play it. There’s little point me trying to describe it any further, but you really ought to try to hear it if you can. Suffice to say that as the first track proper, ‘Shield For Your Eyes A Beast In The Well On Your Hand’ kicked into it’s full fury, Nick started to laugh uncontrollably. Like I said, laughter is a frequent reaction, but then it’s the giddy rush that gets you. One of those bands.

Tom Listened: Hmmmmmmmm………like sticking your head in a food mixer full of bees. Beguiling yet painful. Cell-scape certainly conjured up the ghost of John Peel, and you can definitely imagine Him giggling away to himself off air as he inflicted Melt Banana on his loyal listeners waiting eagerly for the next Wedding Present re-issue or something. And whilst it was a tough listen I sort of liked it, a bit like I like pulling off scabs or watching England lose at cricket or cycling up a 25% gradient Devonian lane. Much like Cell-scape, those other (dubious) pleasures are not something I actively seek out but if I happen upon them I am kind of glad they were there. Another intriguing offering from the Monstershark.

Nick listened: This was great fun; bonkers, head-shredding millenial cyberpunk tempos and juxtapositions (those guitars! those drums! that tiny squeaking girl’s voice atop the maelstrom!) made either no sense, or else perfect sense, after the really rather beatific, minimal electro opening that could almost, sans the squals, have been something from Kompakt. The Japanese music that people like I come across, for the most part (stuff mediated by Pitchfork essentially), is stuff like this, and Boredoms, and Acid Mothers Temple, and less crazy stuff like Cornelius and Susumu Yokota, and it paints a very strange picture of what contemporary Japanese culture must be like. Especially when you consider other cultural objects from Akira to Audition to Battle Royale to Tetsuo: The Iron Man. I’ve never given J-Pop any listening time, but things I’ve read suggest that it’s just as mental compared to our pop music as this kidn of stuff is when compared to our… alternative? experimental? I have no idea of when or where I would ever listen to this again, but I’m glad I have.

Graham Listened: Yikes !!! I can’t recall ever describing an album in such a way, but this was certainly out there. Saying that, I was getting in to the complexity/mania/tightness of the playing but the vocals just kept getting in the way for me. Good listen to know what Japanese counter-culture can produce, but can’t say I would try it again. Should I find myself in a neighbourly noise dispute, it’s good to have this as an option to deploy.

There are two reasons why I think ‘Bend Sinister’, the Fall’s tenth album, is their best.

Firstly, it finds them at a rare, almost unique point of balance. By the time of its release in 1986 they had already reached more career peaks than most bands manage. The satanic Lovecraftian skiffle of ‘Dragnet’, the sheer clattering energy, confidence and scale of ‘Hex Enduction Hour’ and the bombed out garage rock of ‘This Nation’s Saving Grace’ took British post-punk to places where no-one could follow, carving out a place in the nation’s alternative canon that would forever be theirs, guarded by the snaggletooth attack dog himself.

On ‘Bend Sinister’ The Fall were exploring ways out of this territory. It’s a much more understated record than almost anything they recorded before or since, with a subtle sound where, for once, Mark E. Smith does not dominate proceedings. This is the first record with Simon Woolstencroft behind the drums, the infamous double-drummers Paul Hanley and Karl Burns having finally both departed. However its rare sense of balance between the five band members must surely be largely due to Brix Smith’s ongoing presence as a leavening agent for her husband’s bile and bombast. For me Brix is the person who teased The Fall out of what could have become a musical cul-de-sac in the early 80s and, arguably, showed them how to introduce the wider influences which ultimately they (or at least MES) would work into a career which has lasted 30 years.

So, it’s a more restrained, more intriguing, cleaner, at times poppier record in which Mark’s vocals and lyrics form just a part of a beguiling sound. Plus, y’know, ‘Dktr Faustus’, ‘U.S. 80’s-90’s’, ‘Terry Waite Sez’, ‘Bournemouth Runner’… I could go on.

Anyway, the second good reason why ‘Bend Sinister’ is the best Fall album is that it’s the first I ever heard. I have a lad called Gareth Evans to thank for that. In a 4th year English lesson in 1986 he asked me if i’d heard “the Fall album” after i’d bored my classmates with tales of my first ever live concert, Public Image Limited at the Manchester Apollo. Unwilling to be unseated as the class hipster, a role I had only gained five minutes earlier and which I would would not hold on to for much longer, I said “yes” and told him how much I liked it. So then I had to go out and buy it. It sounded nothing like I expected, I had no idea what to make of it, it was mysterious and opaque. Within 12 months I had all their albums and they were ensconced as my favourite band. Despite our relationship cooling over the last decade or so, no-one has yet been able to usurp their place in my heart, and at the centre of that most special place, is the sound of ‘Bend Sinister’.

Tom Listened: Another revelation. So much easier than I was expecting and, despite having the indie disco standard ‘Mr Pharmacist’ getting in the way (as far as I’m concerned), the rest of the album sounded wonderful.

My experience of The Fall before this meeting was limited to the singles – none of which I have really liked – and Hex Enduction Hour, which I borrowed from a mate a long time ago and had a half-hearted attempt at getting to know. I dare say that if I had actually bought HEH, I would have put in the necessary hours and no doubt grown to love it…it’s illogical but owning the record (as opposed to borrowing it) really does make a difference to me. I do remember HEH being an awkward customer, perhaps too tangential and monotone for my young ears that were, at the time, immersed in the psychedelic sounds of the 60s, the poppy side of 70s alternative and the Madchester/US Indie scenes of the late 80s. I think Bend Sinister would have been a better record for a first date with ME Smith as I found it hook laden, bright and relatively conventional in terms of song structures. My guess would be that these days I would probably like the more challenging offerings from The Fall’s back catalogue just as much, if not more, but I would also be keen to spend considerably more time with Bend Sinister.

Nick listened: About seven years ago either my girlfriend (now wife) or I bought 50,000 Fall fans can’t be wrong – 39 Golden Greats, the double-CD, career-spanning Fall ‘best of’ that co-opted an Elvis Presley compilation’s title and cover artwork, and subverted it to the will of Mark E Smith. It remains the only Fall CD in our collection, which must contain somewhere in the region of 1,800 albums, not because neither of us liked it (we’ve liked it enough to not get rid of it in any of the periodic mini purges we make via eBay or Amazon Marketplace), but because, well, where the hell does one start with The Fall? And, f one does start with The Fall, where the hell does one stop? With over 30 albums and little or no consensus over which period is their best (although there does seem to be some consensus on which period is their worst – recent years – even if the last decade contains a number of albums seemingly received as the dreaded “returns to form” [as if that meant anything]), one needs a way in, and if one gets hooked it’s going to be an expensive catching-up session. I suspect this is part of the reason behind my reticence – I like what Mark E Smith makes his band do, the aesthetic, the sound, but I don’t want to have to spend £100 on (just) a third of their discography and be left missing out on the no doubt essential songs strewn across the other 2/3s.

So Bend Sinister is where the hell I started, when it was thrust upon one. It’s not one of the album titles I recognised (not that I recognise many) and Rob suggested it was sonically and aesthetically atypical; this may be so, but it’s the politics of small differences, I suspect – it sounded like The Fall, as I understand them to sound, to me. It didn’t sound like Beyonce or Dave Brubeck or The Orb, is what I mean. I enjoyed Bend Sinister, and I borrowed a copy on CD; Hex Enduction Hour (which is one of the album titles I do recognise) too. But I’ve not got round to listening to either of them yet (partly because I’ve been busy); it feels like, even diced up into chunks and spoon-fed to me, I still don’t know where to start with The Fall.

Perhaps this would have been better chosen for the ‘decade of progression’ round, as it captures a band at precisely the moment when they dropped what they were doing and grasped their destiny. By the time they called it a day the Afghan Whigs had established themselves as fine alchemists of 90s guitar rock and bleeding 60s/70s soul. The route to their ‘Black Love’ and ‘1965’ albums begins in ‘Uptown Avondale’, the 1992 EP comprising four cover versions of Motown-era classics – ‘Band of Gold’, ‘True Love Travels on a Gravel Road’, ‘Come See About Me’ and ‘Beware’.

Listening back, and knowing where they went next with ‘Gentlemen’, you can almost hear the band cutting loose and declaring ‘THIS is who we are and THIS is what we want to do’ They forge new ways to meld the blank stare of grunge and the subtextual bleakness of soul, nowhere better than on a desolate version of ‘Band of Gold’. Hear the wheelspin as they power off towards the future they’d been waiting for.

Nomeansno are a group of contradictions. The brothers Wright grew up in British Columbia apparently listening to jazz and prog rock, but by the time they came to form the band punk had detonated like a dayglo nuke up and down the West coast of America. Starting out with just bass, drums and vocals they developed a style that was as progressive and arresting as it was influential. By the time they recorded ‘Wrong’, their fourth album, they had it absolutely nailed.

It’s a killer. By turns fiendishly complex and frenziedly heads-down it’s nonetheless never less than a gripping, white-knuckle ride. By this point the band were a three piece, with guitarist and co-singer Andy Kerr, credited here as ‘None of your fucking business’, helping to hone the slashing edge of their chainsaw punk. The playing, through the twists and turns and switching signatures, is exhilaratingly tight.

Their success is in resolving so many polar opposites within their music and lyrics to such an irresistible synthesis. Their sound is bass-driven and spiky yet shackles both jazz-crazed changes in tempo and operatic high drama within its blistering body blows. Conceptually Nomeansno are both too smart for their own metaphysical good and as dumb as a bag of hammers (or a bunch of teenage hockey hooligans – see their alter egos The Hanson Brothers). They simultaneously lay bare the human condition in all its bleakness whilst driving home a clear conviction that the only way to deal with the inevitability of our own annihilation is to blow a raspberry in its face and laugh. The gleeful wordplay and controlled goofiness that would characterise them from this point on begins to come to the fore on ‘Wrong’, but it is never overplayed, taking a back seat to the sheer, joyful rush of the band’s giddy, whirling, jabbering, slam-dancing noise.

Tom Listened: I was surprised by how much I liked this. When I first met Rob, back in the late 80s, he was very much the hardcore king (musically at least…not sure about his other interests) and I must admit that I had assumed Nomeansno were just another one of Rob’s ‘bleak shouty bands’ that were prevalent at that time. The reality was much more melodic, humourous and interesting than I was expecting suggesting that either Nomeansno are not one of Rob’s ‘bleak shouty bands’ or that Rob’s ‘bleak shouty bands’ are not actually all that bleak or shouty. The vocals very much reminded me of D Boon from The Minutemen (ie not shouty at all), and whilst the guitars do sound driving there are enough variations in texture and tone to make them a riveting listen, at times reminding me of X at their most exuberant, elsewhere reminiscent of the Stooges at their Dirtiest. I’m not sure whether it is down to the fact that Wrong reminded me of the Minutemen or not but I expected the songs to be much shorter than they were, and maybe I would have preferred it if some of them had been a little punchier, but that small criticism aside, this earned a sizeable (and unexpected) ‘thumbs up’ from me.

Nick listened: I was surprised too, especially as Rob seemed to think, mischievously, that I’d hate it! In fact I liked it so much that I bought it online before we’d even got quite to the end of it. I heard pre-echoes of Kyuss, of Dismemberment Plan, and post-echoes of some of Miles Davis’ more rampantly aggressive 70s electric material (bits of Dark Magus, Live:Evil). I’ve listened to it once since it arrived, in the car, and enjoyed it again.