As soon as I heard “Shoo-In,” I knew this was going to be one of my favorite records of the year. These Austin, Texans play fuzzy garage rock that covers such subjects as drinking, sex, partying, break-ups, jerks, and weirdos. In other words, everything.
Cosmic rock keeps expanding, which is great news for people like me who love psychedelic sounds that are fit for exploring the desert or other planets. King Buffalo’s newest album fits the bill and sends you into orbit into the surprisingly warm void of space.
This is the best dance-rock record I heard all year. It’s a groove-filled EP with scathing lyrics about politicians, consumerism, the internet, celebrity, toxic masculinity, and sex.
And here’s the best punk record I heard all year. The Chats came back with a new guitarist and a renewed anger (and sense of humor) after the pandemic and gave us this wickedly sharp and funny album of barn-burners about the price of cigarettes, hot rods, and, of course, getting drunk.
#15: Primus – Clyde Theatre / Ft. Wayne – May 10th
It’s a bit baffling that it had taken me this long to see Primus. I’ve been listening to them since 1991. I caught them on their “A Tribute to Kings” tour, in which they played Rush‘s entire “A Farewell to Kings” album as the second set. It was a mind-altering show that mixed Rush’s material with Primus’ own stuff.
#14: Gary Numan – Park West / Chicago – March 21st
This was a loud, powerful set in a smaller venue than the last place I saw Gary Numan (Chicago’s Thalia Hall), so it felt more visceral. It was a jam-packed crowd, too, with everyone anxious to finally be out of the house and seeing live music again. Numan played a great mix of new and old material that had everyone buzzing.
The Black Angels never disappoint, and this hometown / home festival set was another solid one. Coming on stage in matching “Black Angels” jackets, they got down to business and killed it with a lot of excellent material from their new album, Wilderness of Mirrors, and classic material.
#12: Frankie and the Witch Fingers – Levitation Austin / Stubb’s – October 30th
One of the bands opening for The Black Angels that night was Frankie and The Witch Fingers, who were dressed for the Halloween weekend in zombie makeup and ready to tear into us like a pack of ghouls. They had the crowd moshing, throwing stuff, and crowd-surfing before the set was halfway done.
#11: Earthless – Pierre’s / Ft. Wayne – September 13th
Shame on you if you missed this show because it was practically a private concert. A small crowd had gathered to see Earthless unload their cosmic rock in a small space. It was the last show of this leg of their tour, and they held nothing back for the enthusiastic fans who were there.
Who’s in the top ten? Come back tomorrow to learn!
This year’s lineup for Levitation was stacked. Osees playing all four nights, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizardplaying twice, Slift coming in from France, The Jesus and Mary Chain coming in from the UK? Sign me up.
Day One (Thursday) started, as usual with a stop at Pelon’s for some Tex-Mex and then over to Stubb’s for the first three-band set we’d see over the weekend. Opening the festival for us were the post-punk trio Automatic, who had only improved since we’d seen them at Levitation France four months earlier. They also had some of the best sound mixing of the entire weekend.
Automatic
A lot of people loved Automatic’s set. We saw plenty of people carrying new Automatic tote bags and wearing new band shirts afterwards. Up next was Detroit’s Protomartyr delivering a powerful set of urgent post-punk. Afterwards, they announced a surprise show at the 13th Floor bar down the street the following night.
Protomartyr
The Stubb’s show ended with shoegaze giants The Jesus and Mary Chain, who, despite having problems with a distortion pedal, put on a good set of classics and new material to a loving crowd who thought they sounded great without the faulty pedal.
The Jesus and Mary Chain
That didn’t end our night, however. We walked over to Elysium for the sold-out show featuring Slift – the cosmic metal band from Toulouse, France. Anticipation was high for the set, and they did not disappoint. The raw power coming from them in the small venue was almost overpowering at some points. They were drenched with sweat by the end of the first song, as was most of the audience. It was the end of their U.S. tour and their first time in Austin, so they poured out all the gas in the tank they had left for the crowd. Theirs was the best set of the night.
Slift
It was a great way to open what would be a fun four days. Up next would be a return to Hotel Vegas for the first time in years, the sexiest set of the weekend, and a band I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to see live.
For the last 9 years, Porto-based band Solar Corona have been carving their name in the psychedelic rock scene of Southern Europe. Now, they turn their minimal rock into an expansive, ever-churning psychedelic voyage with their newest offering, ‘PACE’, set for release on November 11th on Porto-based record label Lovers and Lollypops.
Along with the announcement today, the band share six-minute juggernaut ‘Parker SP’, where bouncing bass mingles with propelling drums and meandering spaced-out guitars. A relentlessly grooving trip of a track. The band comment: “A satellite lost grooving amidst light sparks and space debris. Parker S.P. is our take on a fly-by boogie and the first glimpse into the world of psychedelia that makes up PACE, our new album.”
The band’s fifth release, ‘PACE’, shifts gears with Lorr No (Nuno Loureiro) hitching a ride as a dubmechanic, pulling in the sound of Solar Corona’s core trio—Rodrigo Carvalho (Guitar/synths), Peter Carvalho (drums) and José Roberto Gomes (bass)—into an off-road expanse. The stripped-back songwriting reaches a new directness and power through its simplicity.
The raw ideas of each track were jammed out in Alpendurada, a town deep in the Douro Valley. After a two-year distillation process the riffs and sonic materials have reached a concentration not unlike the alchemical moonshine native to Solar Corona’s Portuguese North. Simple principles and steadfast mechanics become channeled into perennial journeys where speed & pace remain distinct.
Each track celebrates a specific element in its own way. The introductory ‘Heavy Metal Salts’ establishes the pulsing impulse of ‘PACE’, with sparkling electroacoustic details bringing a lysergic dose to the climactic structure. The title-track ‘Pace’ mellows out Solar Corona’s soundscape, and stands out as a space-mantra without riffs, solos, or the need to headbang. Guitar-led tracks such as ‘Thrust’ and ‘AU’ return to the in-the-red rock-n-roll that is a constant pulse in the veins of the band, before being injected by their new, more ethereal, sonic. ‘Alpendurada’ closes the album in epic proportions as the band weaves in and out of knob-twisting psychedelia and instantly earwormed guitar melodies anchored by a propulsive bass.
Solar Corona’s last two releases, ‘Lightning One’ & ‘Saint-Jean-De-Luz’ (released together in 2019), were as a four-piece with Julius Gabriel’s electroacoustic sax brought along for the journey. Gabriel’s departure from the band in 2020, left a seat open for Lorr No (Fugly, Favela Discos) to bring his own patterned twist to the band’s progressive stonerism. Solar Corona’s ‘PACE’ takes its listener on different and ambitious journey.
‘PACE’ track list: 1. HEAVY METAL SALTS 2. PACE 3. THRUST 4. AU 5. PARKER SP 6. ALPENDURADA
It was the end of the first leg of Earthless‘ U.S. tour, and it turned out to be guitarist Isaiah Mitchell‘s birthday. It also turned out to be another stunning performance by them.
My friend and I go to the venue too late to see the first opening band, Ancient Days, but we did catch The Heavy Company (otherwise known as THC) play a blues-infused rock set that impressed the enthusiastic crowd.
The Heavy Company
Earthless played for a little over an hour, and that set was three songs. If you’re new to Earthless, you need to know that two of those songs were over twenty minutes long, and the third was nearly fifteen minutes long. They don’t skimp anything during a show. They give all every time. I yelled, “I can’t feel my face.” after the end of the second track.
L-R: Isaiah Mitchell, Mario Rubalcaba, Mike Eginton
It’s difficult to describe how much heavy power they unleash. I was reminded during their performance of an analogy my wife heard once about a full jar. Take a large, earthenware jar and fill it with rocks. Is the jar full? No. It may seem like it is, but you could fill the space between the rocks with water. Full now? No, because you could slowly add sand to the jar to absorb the water and take up all the remaining space. Now the jar is so heavy you’d need Hulk-like strength to lift it.
Now change the venue to a music venue that holds about 200 people and change the rocks to Isaiah Mitchell’s bass riffs, the water to Mario Rubalcaba’s drum fills, and the sand to Mike Eginton’s heavy bass riffs and you’ll get the idea.
Out now from Third Man Books, Monolithic Undertowalights a crooked path across musical, religious and subcultural frontiers. It traces the line from ancient traditions to the modern underground, navigating archaeoacoustics, ringing feedback, chest plate sub-bass, avant-garde eccentricity, sound weaponry and fervent spiritualism.
From Neolithic beginnings to bawdy medieval troubadours, Sufi mystics to Indian raga masters, cone-shattering dubwise bass, Hawkwind‘s Ladbroke Grove to the outer reaches of Faust and Ash Ra Temple; the hash-fueled fug of The Theatre of Eternal Music to the cough syrup reverse hardcore of Melvins, seedy VHS hinterland of Electric Wizard, ritual amp worship of Earth and Sunn O))) and the many touch points in between, Monolithic Undertow explores the power of the drone – an audio carrier vessel capable of evoking womb like warmth or cavernous dread alike.
In 1977, Sniffin’ Glue verbalized the musical zeitgeist with their infamous ‘this is a chord; this is another; now form a band’ illustration. The drone requires neither chord nor band, representing – via its infinite pliability and accessibility – the ultimate folk music: a potent audio tool of personal liberation.
Immersion in hypnotic and repetitive sounds allows us to step outside of ourselves, be it chant, a 120dB beasting from Sunn O))), standing front of the system as Jah Shaka drops a fresh dub or going full headphone immersion with Hawkwind. These experiences are akin to an audio portal – a sound Tardis to silence the hum and fizz of the unceasing inner voice. The drone exists outside of us, but also – paradoxically – within us all; an aural expression of a universal hum we can only hope to fleetingly channel…
Monolithic Undertow: In Search of Sonic Oblivion is out now and is available for purchase here. The North American edition of the book features an exclusive cover and a new foreword by author Harry Sword.
Distributed Exclusively in North America by Consortium Books/Ingram Content Group.
Third Man Books | 05.17.2022 | 341 Pages Paperback | $19.95 | ISBN: 9781737382935 | 6”x 8” | B/W Photos | Music History
Recorded in 2019, Live at Freak Valleyby King Buffalo is a well-mastered and engineered document of a powerful set at that year’s Freak Valley Festival. It’s a great introduction to King Buffalo’s live sound if you’ve never heard it before and will make you want to seek them out at the nearest venue as soon as possible.
“Sun Shivers” sets off the show by launching us away from Earth’s gravity and into the endless sea of stars leading to the sun and beyond. They waste no time and get right to the cosmic riffs. “Longing to Be the Mountain” is a reference to a Chinese story about a stonecutter working on a mountain who desires to become the grand mountain that seems to be above all people, things, and concerns. He’s granted his wish but soon feels a tapping at his base. He looks down to see another stonecutter there chipping away at him. The stonecutter was caught by his own ego and delusions The song is a powerful as the lesson.
“Every day is the same,” they sing on “Repeater,” a fourteen-minute mind-melting experience that covers both existential ennui and Zen presence. By the time you get to “Orion” (“Can you hear me through the smoke and the haze?”), it feels like you’re drifting past his belt of stars. It’s a stunning track that must’ve been quite an experience for the lucky Freak Valley attendees.
“Kerosene” twists and turns around itself like some kind of heavy metal Escher drawing. They mention that A Place to Bury Strangers is up after them (which you can see here) before they get to the closer, “Eye of the Storm.” It’s a great closer that bridges the gap between stoner rock and desert rock for over ten glorious minutes. They encourage us to embrace the void without fear, for the eye of the storm is often the safest place.
If you’re looking for a good way to start off your trippy, heavy space rock record, why not do it with a song called “Blast Off?” That’s what Psychlona does on their cool Venus Skytripalbum.
The opening track builds with guitar notes sounding like a countdown clock that blend into actual rocket launch countdown recordings and rocket fuel-hot riffs and drum hits. The band’s love of Black Sabbathis evident from the opening riffs of “10,000 Volts,” which hits as hard as its namesake one moment and lulls you into a dreamy headspace the next as they sing about voices in their heads confusing their souls. “Blow” adds stadium rock riffs to the mix.
“Star” punches the accelerator the band’s starship to the floor and plunges us straight toward a red dwarf about to go nova. “Edge of the Universe” practically takes you there. You can probably guess the inspiration behind “Resin,” and it’s as trippy as you hope it will be. The reverb-laden vocals, the echoing guitars, and the cool yet heavy drums all combine to make a satisfying blend.
“Tijuana” seems to be a story about the band encountering dangerous women, dangerous drinks, and other dangerous substances and people while on a trip south of the U.S. border. The whole thing sizzles like an annoyed rattlesnake on a hot rock. The album closes with “The Owl,” a grand, thundering piece that casts a bird of prey’s shadow over you and almost makes you quiver like a mouse in an open field.
This is a cool record, and I hope Psychlona gets us more new music soon. I’d happily go on another sky trip with them. How about Saturn next time, lads?
Keep your mind open.
[Blast over to the subscription box while you’re here.]
Los Angeles based unsung guitar hero Randy Holden announces the sequel to his legendary 1970 album Population II, set to arrive 52 years later, titled Population III via RidingEasy Records. The ex-Blue Cheer guitarist’s new album was recorded as a trio with members of Cactus and Black Sabbath. Hear and share the first single “Swamp Stomp” via Brooklyn Vegan HERE. (And direct via Bandcamp and YouTube.) How do you follow up one of the most legendary, yet rarest albums said to signal the birth of doom metal?
If you’re Randy Holden, you give everyone about 50 years to catch up, then casually drop a tastefully modernized reinterpretation of that sound. Population III picks up where Holden’s 1969 solo debut left off, updated with several decades worth of technological advances and personal hindsight.
Following his tenure in proto-metal pioneers Blue Cheer in 1969, the guitarist aimed for more control over his next project. Thus, Randy Holden – Population II was born, the duo naming itself after the astronomical term for a particular star cluster with heavy metals present. Along with drummer/keyboardist Chris Lockheed, Holden created what many say is one of the earliest forms of doom metal.
“Godzilla just walked into the room. People just stood there with their eyes and mouths wide open,” Holden says of the audience’s reaction to their live debut performing with a teeth-rattling phalanx of 16 (sixteen!) 200 watt Sunn amps. Likewise, their 6-song debut album Population II delves into leaden sludge, lumbering doom and epic soaring riffs that sound free from all constraints of the era. It’s incredibly heavy, but infused with a melodic, albeit mechanistic sensibility. However, troubles with the album’s original 1970 release bankrupted Holden, who subsequently left music for over two decades. For good reason, it’s widely hailed as a masterpiece, and until finally getting a proper formal release in 2020 on RidingEasy Records, was a longtime Holy Grail for record collectors.
Flash forward 40 years to 2010, we find the guitarist/vocalist quietly coaxed into recording a followup album by Holden superfan and Cactus member Randy Pratt. Joined by drummer Bobby Rondinelli (who has played with Black Sabbath, Blue Öyster Cult, Rainbow), the trio cut the 6-song collection of leaden future blues, Population III. “Randy Pratt had written the basic song structures, he understood my music and where I come from quite well,” Holden says. “He nailed it.”
But the recording was ultimately shelved for over a decade. “A year ago, in 2021 I listened to the songs and was delightfully surprised,” Holden says. “I think it’s the best album I’ve ever done.”
Throughout Population III, Holden effortlessly dishes out squealing, soaring leads and skull-thwacking riffs with his signature low end grit and penchant for Middle Eastern scales. Coupled with Pratt’s pocket-locked bass, the slight flanging effect on Rondinelli’s drums and his pugilistic beats, the album occasionally brings to mind Presence-era Led Zeppelin, particularly on the 22-minute epic “Land of The Sun.” Elsewhere, “Swamp Stomp” echoes more the troglodyte blues of Holden’s older work, with his evermore searing solos showing hints of early Clapton/Hendrix era guitar prowess to drive home the stomp of the song’s namesake. At times, Holden sounds reminiscent of Neil Young leading Crazy Horse’s ruptured grunge as his lilting falsetto vocals push and pull his guitar’s siren’s call. Taken as a whole, there’s a very distinct difference between the way these veterans of hard rock’s formative years carry the songs compared to the more lugubrious riffing of today’s young doom purveyors. Population III is the real deal — a powerful continuation of a sound forged 50 years ago, that almost didn’t happen. Somehow, Randy Holden’s music always finds a way to stand the tests of time.
Population III will be available on LP, CD and download on July 1st, 2022 via RidingEasy Records. Pre-orders are available at ridingeasyrecs.com
This is a haunting live album from the lead singer of The Black Angels, and a performance of Maas’ first solo album – Luca. His backing band is top-notch and it’s like listening to a dream.
Chock-full of post-punk bangers and piercing lyrics about life during and after the pandemic that hit harder now than all of last year, Parquet Courts’ Sympathy for Life is one of those records that reveals more of itself with each listen.
I’m so glad I heard these guys on BBC 6 Music and tracked down Uppers, because I knew it was going to be one of my favorite records of 2021 within thirty seconds on the opening track. Fun lyrics, ripping riffs, and killer beats make it a go-to record for high energy.
A live recording that sounds good enough to be a studio album, Stöner’s Live in the Mojave Desert session is like having a desert rock concert in your house. Play at maximum volume.
One of the smoothest and grooviest records of 2021 came from these guys who embraced their love of disco and mixed it with their reverence for soul. There isn’t a weak track on the whole album.
