Nik Havert

Rewind Review: Gravel Drag – Sly Fox (2014)

I love a good instrumental, and Gravel Drag‘s (Chris Bowyer – bass, Ben McKinney – drums, Steve McKinney – guitar) Sly Fox EP has four of them. All are tight stoner rock tracks that each clock in under four minutes. Gravel Drag doesn’t have time for spacing out for long stretches. They’re too busy making hard-hitting swamp metal.

“War Beast” sounds like Helmet and Sleep met in a dark alley and got into a fight. Ben McKinney’s drums remind me of classic Helmet fills and Steve McKinney and Chris Bowyer supply the heavy Sleep-like riffs.

“The Legend of Sly Fox” is peppier than “War Beast,” but it’s no less heavy. I love how crisp Ben McKinney’s snare is in this. “KnockoutKing” is a knockout. Loud, squelching guitar, one-two punch combo bass, and mosh pit drums all equal a great tune.

The closer is “Radio Curse,” and I wonder if the title refers to the lack of radio play for instrumental riff rock like this. Bowyer channels his inner Peter Hook with his bass at first and then drops stuff heavier than Hook ever did in Joy Division.

It’s a shame this is only a four-song EP because it’s heavy enough to be a full album. An LP from these guys would probably have the mass of a dwarf star.

Keep your mind open.

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Vapors of Morphine – A New Low

Consisting of two members of Morphine (one of my top 5 bands of all time) – Dana Colley (saxophones, vocals) and Jerome Deupree (drums) – and their pal Jeremy Lyons (vocals, guitar, bass, banjo, and more), Vapors of Morphine are reclaiming low rock and bringing it back when we need it most in this time of 24-hour news cycle cacophony.

A New Low opens with a short instrumental and then a traditional Tuareg song, “Renoveau / Daman N’Diaye” (and a second version of it near the end of the record). The inclusion of Tuareg music on this (with vocals by Boubacar Diabate) is a great choice and shows the band’s love for low-fi world music as well.

Their new version of Morphine’s “Shiela” is great, and slightly darker than the original. “Baby’s on Fire” has some of Colley’s best electric saxophone work. I still don’t know how he gets those sounds out of those things. Their take on Morphine’s “The Other Side” turns it from a song of lament and regret to one of paranoia.

Dana Colley often plays two saxophones (one tenor, one baritone) at once, but it sounds like he’s playing four on “Sombre Reptiles.” “If” is a great example of low rock as Lyons sings, “If the ocean was whiskey or full of gin, would you lead me away or push me in?” and Deupree drums are cooly reverbed and Colley’s saxophones do a creepy crawl through your stereo.

“Red Apple Juice” is an old Appalachian standard, and the band does a great job with it, turning it into a near goth-country song with Lyons’ banjo leading the way.

Colley sings leads on “Souvenir,” another great Morphine track. He also goes blissfully bonkers with his saxophone work on it by the end. “Rowdy Blues” reminds me of Treat Her Right tracks, which is always a good thing (and a natural progression since THR’s Mark Sandman went on to form Morphine with Colley and Deupree).

The album ends with the instrumental “Interstellar Overdrive,” in which Dana Colley plays a spaceship. The track is proof that the band could go full-blown psychedelic if they wanted.

A New Low is proof that low rock has returned and is just as good as it’s always been.

Keep your mind open.

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DJ set list for September 04, 2016

Thanks to all who listened to my last WSND show of summer 2016. I should be back on the airwaves Wednesday nights for the first half of Christmas break and then Sundays in the second half. Here’s my set list from last night:

The Besnard Lakes – Golden Lion
Baby Jesus – Nice Walk
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion – Afro
The New York Dolls – Puss ‘n’ Boots
Agent Orange – No Such Thing
Clutch – Big News I
Clutch – Mercury
Clutch – The Elephant Riders
Clutch – The Incomparable Mr. Flannery
Jeff the Brotherhood – Six Pack
Robert Palmer – Addicted to Love
Dead Gaze – Constantly Happy
Big Grunt – 11 Mustachioed Daughers (live)
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – Conscience Killer
Those Poor Bastards – I Walk the Line
Band Aparte – Creatures of Culture
Maszer – California Sees You
Husker Du – In a Free Land (live)
Buzzcocks – Fast Cards (live)
Morphine – Birthday Cake (live)
The Count Basie Orchestra – Makin’ Whoopee
Wolfmother – Tales
Wolfmother – Eye of the Beholder
Devo – Subhuman Woman (live)
House of Large Sizes – Tired of Feelin’ Good
House of Large Sizes – Shovelful of Sparrows
Megafauna – Desire
The Godfathers – Birth, School, Work, Death
Maxi Wild – Wrong Side
DJ Random – Off-World Colonies
Bayonne – Spectrolite

Keep your mind open.

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Sting’s new rock album available for pre-order.

I’m a big fan of The Police. They were the first band I loved as a kid, and the first band who made me appreciate their craftsmanship. Plus, everyone forgets they were punks at the outset who played songs about their dickweed landlord, working dead-end jobs, and shagging blow-up dolls.

So I was intrigued when I learned Police frontman Sting is releasing his first rock / pop record, 57th and 9th, in a decade. Producer Martin Kierszenbaum claims Sting hasn’t “rocked like this since Synchronicity.”

The album drops on November 11th, and the deluxe editions come with three bonus tracks – one of which is a live version of the punk Police classic “Next to You.”

Keep your mind open.

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Wrecka Stow: Irvington Vinyl / Bookmama’s – Indianapolis, IN

Located in the Irvington area of Indianapolis, Irvington Vinyl / Bookmama’s (9 Johnson Avenue) is an impressive store on a winding side street that is easy to miss but worth your time to seek.

The place is two store fronts full of books and music. The books range from new fiction to classics, naturally, but they have plenty of collectibles and manager / owner Kathleen Angelone was knowledgable about new titles and what to read if you liked certain books. She and a customer were having a lively discussion on new fiction when I was in the store.

I was there for the music, and I had limited time, so I didn’t get to browse the books as much as I’d like. There was plenty of music to buy. The majority of it is on vinyl (go figure with a name like Irvington Vinyl), and includes collectible stuff from obscure Indiana bands.

As if all this stuff isn’t enough for you, just head down these stairs…

…and you’ll find a basement full of vinyl records, 8-track tapes, and cassettes.

It’s a crate digger’s dream. I scored a Nine Inch Nails EP, L7’s Smell the Magic, and an excellent double-CD compilation of early Indiana new wave and punk bands (review coming soon) there. Give yourself plenty of time to browse when you go there. You won’t regret it.

Keep your mind open.

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Gary Wilson to release Christmas album.

File this under: Best News You’ve Heard Today.

Avant-garde psych-lounge master Gary Wilson is releasing a Christmas album three days before Halloween. It features 14 tracks of Wilson’s take on the holiday season. The titles reflect a lot of Wilson’s favorite themes – love (“A Christmas Tree for Two”), breakups (“Santa Claus Is Coming to My Lonely Town”), desire (“A Date for New Year’s Eve”), the town of Endicott (“It’s Snowing in Endicott”), and the mysterious women he references on his albums (“Cindy Wants to Cry”).

This will probably be my go-to gift for many people on my Christmas list this year. Be sure to put it on yours.

Keep your mind open.

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Dizzybird Records Summer Sampler 2016

Dizzybird Records has put out a fine mix album of seven of their artists to get us through the last weeks of summer.

The Harlequins have three good, weird surf-psych tracks – “Fair Shake” opens the sampler on a good note with plenty of loud twisting sounds and trippy vocals, “Hear Me Out” is Mersey Beat garage rock with fuzzed-out vocals, and “Over a Hill” is a Kaiser Chiefs track if the Kaiser Chiefs decided to record a song after they’d just realized they’d accidentally eaten peyote jam on their morning toast.

Heaven’s Gateway Drugs, who seem to be playing everywhere all the time, also give us two tracks – the sharp “Copper Hill” with its angular guitars and echoed vocal harmonies, and “War with June” from their upcoming album Rubber Nun, which should be a fine record judging from this tune. It oozes from your sound system’s speakers. Ooooozes.

Coffin Problem reminds me of Bauhaus when they still had a punk edge to them. Their two contributions are the creepy “Child of the Sun” (dig those relentless guitars!) and the sampler’s closer – “Empty” – is so heavy that it almost becomes sludge / doom rock.

Cool Ghouls‘ offering is “Creature that I Am,” a fun classic-sounding psychedelic track with slight Americana and garage touches. They sound like a band that might’ve opened for Jefferson Airplane back in the day.

Gringo Star‘s “Long Time Gone” is full of peppy piano, what sounds like a mandolin, and reverbed, crunchy guitar. It’s an interesting mix that’s hard to describe, but please know I mean that in a good way.

Las Rosas give us an appropriately titled song as far as their name is concerned – “Sensitive Flower.” The song’s no shrinking violet, however. It’s a slightly dark track about a somewhat dysfunctional relationship.

Heaters‘ two tracks, “Lowlife” and “Solstice,” are lush and bold. “Lowlife” has room-filling guitars and a great entry by their drummer into the song. “Solstice” has great cosmic-psych guitar work throughout it that trips along a surf edge.

It’s a good compilation, and Dizzybird offers free listens on the Soundcloud page for it. Give it a spin.

Keep your mind open.

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Middle Waves festival announces full inaugural lineup

Fort Wayne, Indiana’s first ever Middle Waves festival has released its full lineup for 2016. The festival’s additions are heavy with Fort Wayne bands (go figure) that range from Americana (James and the Drifters) to rap (Andromeda and Sankofa) to electro (Metavari) to psychedelic (The Be Colony).

Added acts from outside Ft. Wayne include the Ike Reilly Assassination, Tanlines, and Oddisee.

Early bird prices on tickets are gone, so get your tickets before they’re gone or prices rise. They also plan to announce more bands and daily lineups soon.

Keep your mind open.

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Live: Seal – August 27, 2016 – New Buffalo, MI

I’ve been meaning to make it up to my wife for dragging her to see Japanese acid rockers Bo Ningen (a band she just doesn’t understand) at Levitation Austin a couple years ago, so I thought taking her to see Seal might do the trick.

He played at the Four Winds Casino Silver Creek Event Center in New Buffalo, Michigan. The “Silver Creek Event Center,” mind you, is just a big carpeted room the casino can use for everything from a Seal concert to a wedding reception. It is much smaller than the venue map on Ticketmaster’s website makes it appear. I’m happy to say that the acoustics in the place are quite good, however. The whole show sounded great.

Part of that is because Seal is a great performer. It was him, a DJ / synthesizer player, and a guitarist on stage. No drummer. No horn section. No bass player. They didn’t need any of them. Seal opened the set with “Crazy,” his biggest hit here in the U.S., and the crowd was instantly on its feet. His voice hasn’t lost any power since the song was released in 1991, and I loved the way his band turned it into a bit of a dark wave tune with the synth work. “Killer,” another early hit, followed it with even more of a dark wave feel to it with heavy synth bass.

The first track they played from Seal’s new album, 7, was “Daylight Saving,” a gorgeous love song that preceded another from the same album, “Do You Ever.” “Prayer for the Dying” was another heartbreaking cut (to the point it made my wife cry) that led into “Love’s Divine.”

A surprise was his cover of Hall & Oates‘ “Sara Smile” (with Seal on back-up guitar). “Love,” the last song on 7, led into the first verse of David Bowie‘s “Space Oddity,” and I thought my wife was going to slide off her chair.

“Deep Water” was another beautiful track, and then came another surprise – Seal’s cover of Tears for Fears‘ “Mad World,” which he dedicated to the victims of the recent earthquake in Italy. “My Vision” and “Right Life” got everyone up and moving again, and he even threw in a little bit of Chic‘s “Le Freak.” The fourth cover of the night was Prince‘s “Hot Thing,” which was one of the funkiest tunes of the night and closed out the main set to a standing ovation.

The encore consisted of “Kiss from a Rose” and then another track from 7, “Life on the Dancefloor,” which had everyone dancing and grooving and leaving on a good buzz. I saw two ladies a few rows behind us when the houselights came up, and they were dumbfounded in their chairs. They didn’t move for several minutes.

I asked my wife if the show made up for Bo Ningen.

“Almost,” she said. “Probably the Bo, but not the Ningen.”

I took that as a win. Thanks, Seal.

Keep your mind open.

Rewind Review: Baby Jesus – self-titled (2014)

Hailing from Sweden and claiming to have formed after “an intense trip to India,” Baby Jesus’ self-titled album is a wild mix of psych, garage, and surf.

“Nothing’s for Me” opens the record with a swirl of cymbals and blaring guitar before the horror movie organ kicks everything into high gear. The vocals are frantic, almost “Wooly Bully” ramblings. That means they’re a blast, by the way. “Trembling Away” continues the madness and the organ blares through everything, which is a feat considering how damn loud and bonkers the song is. “Havn’t Seen the Light” is, despite the typo in the title, sharp as a tack. The guitar is like a buzzsaw, the drums are punk, the bass is a jackhammer, and the organ is an alarm klaxon.

“Don’t Want You” could be a Stooges song if the Stooges had a keyboardist as crazy as Baby Jesus. Imagine Animal from The Muppets on a Hammond B-3 instead of a drum kit and you’ll get the idea. “Nice Walk” is a surf instrumental. Yes, after four songs of psychedelic madness, Baby Jesus drops a surf number on you that sounds like they reached through a wormhole in space-time and grabbed it from a record store in 1965.

“Cry, Cry, Cry” isn’t a cover of the Johnny Cash song (although that would be great), but it is a wild breakup song with enough cymbal crashes for an entire record. The title of “Deep Blue Delay” might refer to the delay effects pedals used on the guitars in the song, but it’s probably about something trippy that happened to the band in India. Regardless, the guitar work on it is crazy with plenty of distortion and reverb. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a Theremin mixed with it. “You Make Me Fry” is another lambasting of a bad relationship, and “Vansinne” is a swanky psychedelic lounge tune with fantastic saxophone work.

“Time’s All Gone” is a fitting title for the last song on any record, and Baby Jesus makes the most of their last track by, believe it or not, scaling back the cacophony. It’s the mellowest track on the album, with echoing vocals, groovy synths, and that surf sound they do so well.

I hope these guys are working on some new material, because this full-length debut is a good omen of what’s in store for them and us. I hope they tour with Goat. That would be a mind-melting double bill.

Keep your mind open.