The Sharks - Everybody Just Rapes Me

December in Pennsylvania is a fickle and confused month.  Mother Nature goes bi-polar all over our asses and people's behavior starts to mimic.  Some days the temperature nears 60 degrees, and on those days people feel as though they've been blessed by God.  You step outside on your front porch and the sun beams and the birds (whichever ones have yet to figure out which way is south) sing a beautiful melody just for you and your sense of enchantment.  The soothing air caresses your skin and purifies your lungs.  Your asshole-neighbor (who usually bitches at you about parking your car in the properly marked space) waves to you as he merrily whistles and skips out to his car, en route to a great day at the office.  Then, once he's safely pulled away, his wife calls to you and offers you a "blow-job to end all blow-jobs" from herself and her 18-year-old daughter and her 18-year-old best-friend, in celebration of such a beautiful day.  Yes.  All is right and good in Pennsylvania when it's 60 degrees on a December morning.  But then there are the other days - maybe even the very next day - when all hope is lost. 

On those days, the sky is so dark and ugly that it seems to have been colored with charcoal and demon-blood.  The wind stabs at you like an angry prison-mate with a shiv.  The temperature can plummet so rapidly that those sweetly singing birds freeze instantly and fall from the sky all around you.  The local citizenry quickly descend into madness and barbarism.  It's enough to make you question the existence of a loving God or even any God at all, and inevitably you'll decide there clearly is not one.  So, naturally, you call all your relatives and tell them to get fucked.  You find a homeless man and beat the living shit out of him for no reason at all and steal his jacket.  As a gesture of mercy, you wrap your cat in the stolen-hobo-jacket and throw it into the fireplace to ensure that Mittens' last moments on Earth weren't spent in a miserable, shivering rage of psychotic hypothermia.  You pour a glass of scotch and just as you're sitting down to Google "how to tie a noose," there comes a heavy, loud, incessant banging at your door.  When you answer, there stands your neighbor, quivering and dejected.  He failingly tries to shout at you - something about his wife and daughter and how they were once so wholesome and pure - but the air is too thin and unforgiving so the best he can do is whisper and wheeze and swing his arms half-heartedly due to delirium, confusion, and poor blood flow.  Puzzled and annoyed, you offer to tie extra nooses for him and his family and seeing no other way out of this senseless, ass-backwards mind-fuck of a month, he'll graciously accept. 

That is a typical December in Pennsylvania:  one day you're in the middle of a fucking Disney movie starring Julie Andrews and forest animals and concubines-galore, and the next day you're burning house-cats and organizing communal suicides.

Well, it was a Friday in the beginning of December in PA and I was Googling 'how to tie a noose' when my email client sounded an infuriatingly-pleasant chime that tells me I have another message to delete.  So I deleted it.  However, before I went back to my noose-tying education I happened upon a 3-month-old email from my buddy Racer that I hadn't read, which can only mean one thing - new music for review!  Against my better judgement I put away my selfish desire to end my own life, made a cup of hot cocoa and plugged my laptop into my stereo to get a listen to The Sharks' 4-song EP, Everybody Just Rapes Me.  With a title like that, I'd expect it to sound like a bag of cats being repeatedly struck with a separate, larger bag of cats.  But nobody would be brave enough to actually put a respectable-looking cover on that album and try to sell it…would they?  Let's find out.

The EP starts with "Give It Up," which at first sounds like a lost-cut from the Reality Bites soundtrack.  It's a well-written tune with 50's rock and doo-wop sensibility fused with an alternative sound - a catchy melody, a danceable beat, some cleverly-disguised dirty lyrics.  At first I was a little turned off by the song, but soon I realized that it was actually quite refreshing to hear this kind of charm in a new rock group.  It called to some youthful, romantic side of me with a soft-spot for high-school dances - a side I've decided only exists because I actually failed to attend any dances during my high-school days.  (Although at the time I was too afraid that Kevin Bacon might appear from under the bleachers and tell Chris Penn to start chest-bumping me as endless waves of glitter fell from the ceiling. It gives me chills just thinking about it.  To this day, being in an auditorium makes me edgy and paranoid, and an unfortunate fact of my life is that I have many other irrational fears which involve Kevin Bacon, but I'll save that for when I review the Bacon Brother's latest cd.) 

The second cut is the title track and it pulls out a punk/rockabilly sound that has me dancing around my living room. Word-splicers call it punkabilly, i guess, but whatever.  Who's the vocalist?  I still don't know, because I can't find a shred of information about this band, anywhere.  A google search will turn up plenty of bands with the name "The Sharks," almost none of whom are the band I'm talking about right now.  Anyways, I'm listening to this group called The Sharks.  This song, "Everybody Just Rapes Me," is groovy.  The title is a little melodramatic but, as you can see from my opening paragraphs, I have no qualms with that.  The hook:  "Here we go / Time to say, fuck them all / Raise a glass, to your body / Won't somebody save me? Everybody just rapes me!"  makes me wonder what this song is really about.  My best guess tells me that it is about sexual exploration and confusion, and the struggle of young men to find a balance between society's expectations for them to be decent, respectful individuals, but also to be respected as sexual conquerors.  The swing/rockabilly style suits as a context for this contemplation, as swing-dancing is something like the more elaborate, energetic grandfather of daggering or the bump & grind.  But for all I know this could be a large metaphor for some political statement about the Queen or something.  The fact is that they're English, and I rarely if ever understand what an English person is trying to say.

Track 3 begins.  "Dirty, horrible Jesus."  Whoa, careful when you're tickling my heathen bones.  Don't you know it's Christmas?  Oh right, this album was released back in September.  More well-structured pop-punk-rock.  Damn these guys can write a good song without it being too commercial or too cheesy.  The vocalist has once-again changed his singing style quite a bit.  This time it's more like Paul Westerberg from The Replacements. That comparison doesn't do it justice.  Damn it, who does it remind me of?  I can't put my finger on it.  I have no idea what this song is about.  But I don't really care, and that is the best evidence of the catchiness of these songs.  I like them even without relating to them in any way.  And now I'm hooked.  This EP is definitely going on my ipod.

If "Give it Up" was a lost-cut from Reality Bites, then the final track on the EP, "Sinners Song" is more like the movie Singles.  It's more an acoustic, organic sounding song.  The lead singer has removed the strain and stress from his voice, and he's decided instead to serenade you into the finale with heart-warming lyrics which remind us that drug addicts, burglars, liars, cheaters, smut peddlers, pimps, prostitutes and politicians are people too.  It's like the British version of Green Day's "Time of Your Life."  I'm sure The Sharks would be pissed to read that comparison, but to hell with them.  As far as I know, The Sharks don't actually exist.  Prove me wrong…

All in all, I really enjoy this EP.  It may not sound like a bag of cats being repeatedly struck by another bag of cats, although I do distinctly remember hearing a few cat-shrills… OH NO!  MITTENS!   It varies in it's influences, the duo have great song-writing ability and are pretty flexible in their styles.  You can check it out (and 2 other EPs) yourself on Bandcamp where it is available via download.  The Sharks faithfully use a free or pay-what-you-want method for distributing their work, which I fully support.  I highly recommend you give them a few dollars for their work if you enjoy this EP and hope to hear from them again.  (It would also be nice if they could pay someone to put together a website for them and provide some SEO implementations.)

Until my next review, waveriders, in which I promise not to mention suicide (more than once).  Hope your holidays were merry and bright, and I'll see you in 2012.

--Slaphappy Mortician

http://thesharks.co/album/everybody-just-rapes-me

The Bloody Hollies - Yours Until the Bitter End

 

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned."

I sat uncomfortably in the confessional.  Beyond the wood and iron door, night fell about the cathedral.  No parishioners walked the pews.  A lone janitor mopped the floors in silent circles.  Candles burned in a solemn stare of remorse as the crucified form of Jesus stared down at me.  A mix of mercy and condemnation in his eyes.

I'm not Catholic, but my transgression was so great I had no other choice. To save my music-loving soul, I needed confession.

"Yes, my son," the priest's disembodied voice returned.  "Tell me your sin."

I was uncomfortable not being able to look into the eyes of my redeemer.  Unable to judge the response in his pupils as I opened up my soul and let my sins pour out.  I wanted to gauge the look of shock and horror in his gaze as I spoke.  As if it would give me a hint as to the penance I faced.  But no.  Just a gated wall separated us.  I could see his darkened, silhouetted form, like an angry apparition.  My judge.  My jury.

"I have committed the cardinal sin of a music writer," I began, my voice catching in my throat. "I have prejudged a band.  Condemned them before I even listened to them."

I heard the priest swallow hard.  "Go on."

"The band is The Bloody Hollies and for reasons I can't quite understand, I wanted to hate them.  I'd heard so much about them, I wanted to dismiss them.  I wanted to stand tall on my perch of righteous musical prejudice and reign down my disgust upon them.  I wanted it so much, I almost could taste my indignation.  I nearly deleted the album before I'd even heard it."

"I see.  But instead, you played it?"

"Yes, I did. God, yes I did!  And suddenly all my preconceived notions were flung out the door.  The world made new sense to me.  Here I thought The Bloody Hollies was another bunch of preening pretenders, another in the long line of bandwagon-jumpers following the trail set by the White Stripes.  Poseurs with a cool name, mining the same bluesy-punk vein.   Fad-flipping pop-punk wannabes with no real balls or chops."

"And they weren't?"

"Hell, no!" (maybe I shouldn't have said that to the priest). "I'm here today to tell you that The Bloody Hollies are the real deal.  Killer rock n roll!  Pure punk thrash and dirt mixed with tainted garage griminess and unadulterated rock passion.  And there's more than that.  These kids know how to play.  Sure the songs might be simple, but they're moved along with fine chops and a drummer that pounds the skins harder than I'd get pounded in the UFC ring.

"But it doesn't stop there.  Mixed in with their rough and raw garage punk are influences of pure classic rock.  Riff that the Kinks would love.  And they got massive pop smarts, and I don't mean Blink 182 or Green Day pop-punk.  Real punk energy with killer choruses, retro-bluesy swagger, and hooks fucking galore driving their punk ditties.  (perhaps I shouldn't have said fuck either.) This is one of my favorite albums of the year."

The priest said nothing.  I could hear his breathing.

"I'm serious father.  You gotta hear some of these killer cuts like "So Grey So Green."  They rage.   I mean they positively rage!  And the vocals!  Oh, my God, don't get me started on the vocals.  This is everything that I love in punkified rock.  Passion. Pure passion baby. The singer strains and reaches and lets his vocal chords groan and screech as he blasts it out.  I can't get enough of it!"

I heard the priest's breathing hasten.  His lips started smacking.  I knew he could feel the passion of The Bloody Hollies music just from my words.  I yanked the mp3 boombox out of my backpack and hit play.  "Dead Letter," raged out, its organ and marching drum intro filling the cathedral.  I saw the janitor drop his mop and look my way.  Suddenly the guitar part kicked in, charging and terrorizing like the best of the Replacements.  Then the song motored into that stuttering breakdown before the chorus.  Drums pounding like revelation.  Bass attacking like the parting of the Red Sea.   I felt the whole confessional shudder under the might of those 3-chord riffs. The priest was swept up in the passion.  I could see his silhouette bouncing in the chanber next to mine.

"Dirty Sex" blasted out next, it's simple, muted southern rock guitar intro exploding into a punkified fury of adrenaline and teenage hormones.   Like the Black Crowes amped up on a case of Red Bull after a fist-fight with the Stooges.

"And then I learned that this was their 5th album.  And still they bring this much passion to their music.  And the surprises, like the use of a violin on one song.  A slide guitar on another.  I can't stop listening . . . "

But I never finished.  The shuddering of the confessional heightened until the walls started to shake apart.  As The Bloody Hollies ripped into the nightmare-terror-cum-prog-epic punk adventure of "Good Night Sleep Tight" the whole thing fell apart.  The confessional walls shattered to the ground. The ceiling collapsed around me.  And there, standing amid the rubble was the priest.  Or pogoing amid the rubble would be a better way to describe it.  His collar ripped off, the priest leaped onto the heap of lumber and iron, his air guitar blaring away with the rumbling riff as the song transformed into the garage-metal terror of "I Dream of Bees."

The priest reached into my backpack and ripped out my vinyl copy of Yours Until the End. (yes, the download was so good I had to run out and buy the vinyl.   I suggest you do the same.)  The priest stood there, staring at my album, holding it tightly in his hands, preciously, as if it was a lost artifact.  When The Bloody Hollies dropped into a vague Clash-like, reggae-infused punk assault of "Leave that Woman Alone" the priest let out a wallop of a primal yell, ripped the sleeves off his white button-down shirt, whipped his hair into a quick Mohawk, and jumped from the rubble and ran off into the night.

Taking my vinyl Yours Until the Bitter End with him.

I'm still trying to track him down.

--Racer

Second Academy – Bohemian Grove

Tsurumi Records just knows how to do things right.  Spinning on gorgeous marbleized grey and white vinyl right now, is the latest long player from Tsurumi’s Second Academy with main man Eric Balaban and his latest masterpiece of sophistico-garage punk, Bohemian Grove.  But before we get to the music (which will make me quickly forget everything else I want to say) let’s get back to Tsurumi.  In a very short period of time, the good folk of Tsurumi have solidified their vision of how to unleash quality music and product onto the music loving world.  Plying their Japan-meets-America-via-Seattle-Silk-Road of inspired primal-punkish rock, Tsurumi may only have 4 releases under their belts, but what releases they are.  Between Eric Balaban’s Beautiful Mothers or Second Academy, or the Japanese art-punk of Golden, each release is done right.  In addition to the gorgeous platter hypnotizing me on the turntable right now, the album comes with a quality pressed cover, a way-cool glossy insert, a glossy poster, and forget the download code, these cats include the entire CD in the package.  How’s that for doing it right?

Ok, so enough about them, let’s get to the music, shall we?  I’ve already expressed my man-love for Eric’s prior work with the Beautiful Mothers and the first, rather stripped down, Second Academy record.  Truth be told, however, I really didn’t know what to expect with this new release.  Joined by Brent Powell on bass, and Troy Lund/and Rob Wheeler on drums, I didn’t know if Eric could continue to captivate me.  Whether his Replacements-stripped garage-punk could continue to elevate itself to new heights.  To grow . . . to expand.

Oh, simple-minded me.

If anything, Bohemian Grove not only builds upon what the lads created with the first album, it represents a quantum leap in maturity, songwriting, playing, production and just about any other aspect of an album you can think of.  Simply put, this is one fantastic record.  If you’re a fan of acoustic-laced, powerpop fueled, amphetamine garage-based rock, (think The Replacements, The Violent Femmes, early Who) then you owe it to yourself . . . nay, you owe it to mankind to check this album out. 

I understand that the album is named Bohemian Grove after the title track, but damn if I don’t want to constantly write Bohemian GROOVE because that's what this album does.  It grooves.  It sways, it rumbles and rocks with a constant, head-nodding, toe-tapping groove of solid rhythm, killer melodies, perfect-scratchy riffs, and damn fine songwriting. Expect a spot on my Top 10 of 2011 for this one. 

Right from the start, Bohemian Grove captured my attention.  The title track trods out of the speakers with an ominous weight, sounding like some meaty 1960’s beat-cool, retro-groovy punk rocker.  The bass and drums are just monstrous here.  I keep getting this image of some darkened ‘60’s Batman theme going on here, as if the Dark Knight existed back then taking on the Joker.  Way cool.  Way, way cool.   Eric’s voice is inspired, harmony vocals bringing everything to the front.  Fuzz guitar wails through the mix as that damn fine GROOVE just tears the song to pieces.   Infinitely cool.

For this album, Eric upped the production quite a bit over the really stripped first Second Academy record.  That’s not to say this album is glossy, it’s not.  But it is full and warm.  A rich sound that really compliments the songs, fills them out.  It works.

“Like the Rich,” is a Jonathan Richman or Paul Westerberg love song classic.  Sung with total honestly, yet tongue in cheek at the same time, Eric extols the virtues of throwing off the drapery of the “poor artist” and getting rich.  “She says I only want to get by/I say Fuck That!/I wanna get a rock for my baby/I wanna get a stick for my baby/I wanna get a knife for my lady/I wana get a house for my baby/and have a good time/like the rich do.”  All played over a slicing acoustic guitar riff and and some killer electric guitar searing flourishes.  Again, the GROOVE is there.  Have I said yet that this album grooves?

“Lullaby for the Divorced” ups the ante with it’s big-time retro, surf meets garage riffage and swing.  Totally retro but current.   The kids are going crazy at the hop or the Go-Go to this song.  Wild bikini’s are doing the swim, guys are acting cool, but everyone is losing themselves in the abandon of the groove.  Oh yes, there’s that word again.

The final cut on side 1, “Perfectly Wrong,” is quite simply one of the best songs that the early Who never played, but wrote with Paul Westerburg and played with the help of the Femmes.  Big guitars fly in Townsend-ian whirling waves, and if that isn’t a melody that should have dominated the airwaves in the mid ‘60’s, then I’ve never heard one.   But listen closely to this one and “Lullaby” before it and you’ll see that these aren’t retro classics, they’re fully modern.  Pete Townsend never wrote about getting drunk in the afternoon or how her avoiding his phone calls was perfectly wrong.  Or the simply purity of allowing two people to divorce because nothing good can ever come from bad love. It all just shows how much Eric has grown as a songwriter.

So, if I was a fan of the first Second Academy album (and the rougher Beautiful Mothers), with Bohemian Grove, Eric has made a true believer out of me.  With any righteous divination, Eric will find his place in the revered ranks of gritty but pretty songwriters, like Westerburg or Richman (or Townsend, for that matter).

In a world where every square inch of my office is covered with vinyl, and I measure an album's worth by whether or not it deserves to occupy my valuable shelf space, this is an album, I’m proud to have in my collection.


--Racer

Buy here: Tsurumi Records