I’ve been spending a lot of time cruising the used record stores as of late (a description that could basically sum up the last nine years of my life) searching for some new, abrasive, eye-gouging group to scrap the tissue off my ear drums. I’ve been pumping Steve Albini’s quintessential albums from Big Black, Rapeman and Shellac. Letting Mudhoney’s Super Fuzz Big Muff ricochet throughout the courtyard outside my door. I’ve blasted Black Flag’s Damaged and the Boredoms and Sonic Youth’s Confusion is Sex and Stiff Little Fingers looking for some sound to juxtapose with the new releases I’ve picked up.
But the best new discs I’ve found are all too melodic (Green Day, Guided By Voices, the Libertines), to timely (some great new discs off hip-hop hotspot Lex, including Prince Po and Anticon pioneer Subtle) or too Thin Lizzy (the killer new album Gold by Drag City’s composite group, the F–king Am — indie-instrumental metal messiahs, the F–king Champs and robot progs, Trans Am).
But where is the dissonant, shattering, unlistenable wreckage? It’s not popping up, or at least not in the same way as its noisy, Reagan-era predecessors. People are still making noise, but the most interesting stuff I’ve come across lately (this probably has more to do with my moods than with the climate of the underground music scene, but who knows) seems to be inward thinking and unremorsefully chilled-out.
Topping the list is Saeta, another gem revealed through the absolute enlightenment that is mp3 blogging. And of course I read more into this discover after uncovering that my main man of noise, Steve Albini himself had recorded and mixed the band’s fourth, and latest full length, We Are Waiting All For Hope at his Electrical Audio studio in Chicago. The sleepy three-piece outfit (comprised of Matt Menovcik on vocals and guitar, Lesli Wood on piano and vocals and Bob Smolenski on cello) formed in Seattle in 1998, and has since crafted a unique, due to Menovcik’s seedy growls and Smolenski’s withering strings, sound landing somewhere in between Low and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, contorting enough sneering attitude to keep punks happy while still fully capable of lulling to sleep the craftiest of post-rockers. The criminally over-looked band will be sticking to the coasts for a while, but their website (www.saetamusic.com) offers clips of every track off their latest for anyone looking for emotion without the faux-hawked whining.
In August, Secretly Canadian released Windsor for the Derby’s We Fight Til Death, the band’s fifth full length after 10 years recording together. The now Philadelphia-based band pulls out all the indie-tricks, melding together a sugar sweet and tight-as-hell mixture that winds up sounding like New Order recording plaintive indie jams in their living rooms and then released the results on Merge. The eight minute plus “Melody of a Fallen Tree” proves the albums high point, with a crushing rhythm built from clean guitar yarning and a restless drum machine. Hopefully the group’s upcoming EP for the Spanish label, Acuarela will continue kicking out slow but steady indie-rock burners.
An older gem that I recently dug up and have been wearing down is the epic compilation The World of Arthur Russell, a collection of avant-garde disco post-punk. While the collection has some bangers from Russell’s seminal electronic outfits Dinosaur L and Loose Joints, the real pleasure comes from hearing him try to balance his art school antics with his nascent drive to broaden the definitions of pop. He reaches a deranged climax on the stuttering, windswept soundscape of “Keeping Up,” playing like the Brian Eno’s musical kin, circa Before and After Science, copping some moves from Eno’s beautiful “By This River.”
The heart-popping shimmer of Graves’ latest release on Hush records entitled Yes Yes Okay Okay plays like it was meant to accompany long nights driving. An experiment in country folk that sums up love without ever dropping away into corniness, Graves plucks the hell from all nine members heartstrings, leaving stunners like “Holding Your Arms” and “Strength in ###’s” to bathe in a weird, post-Wilco stratosphere of acoustic strumming, electronic fizzling and giggles.
Where else should you look for the hottest new sounds for your next midnight mix tape? Apostle of Hustle’s (the new project from Broken Social Scene’s Andrew Whiteman) Folkloric Feel leaves its mark with its breathtaking title track sputtering toward abstract, home-recorded, genre-jumping folk jamming. Unbunny, an unholy cross between Neutral Milk Hotel and cooled-down Neil Young, drops nasal, indie rock with lyrics like, “Jets fall into the ocean in ways that look so strange/ Against the earth’s rotation, into the calming waves” on “Certain Lights.” Front man Jared del Deo leads the band through a decent debut on Snow Tires. And for those late nights studying (or doing whatever a restless college kid does at three in the morning), try a few more quiet killers on for size: from the comedown electric bombast of the Rainstick Orchestra and Hot Chip’s gangster lullaby, “Playboy” (whose light and lazy “20-inch rims” chorus flaunts a breathtakingly haunting keyboard burn) to the acoustic strut of bands like Alaska, Haywood, Love of Everything, the Bees, Soltero, Aroah and Seekonk. These are songs destined for slow-motion sequences and teary autumn goodbyes.
