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Lilys - 'In the Presence of Nothing' (spinART)

And so here begins a brief foray into the work of Lilys, a memorable outlier from the 90s white American indie guitardrome, whose work still resonates with me a ton, almost irrationally so as the future keeps on happening. This first album (here sampled as a 1998 repress/reissue with different cover art from the handmade OGs) firmly planted its flag in shoegazer territory, and only hints at its own identity in flashes. It was fine to ape My Bloody Valentine in '92 –– everyone was doing it, after all –– and Lilys on this record really got this bending whammy bar sound, just like on 'To Here Knows When', which I guess is what 'Tone Bender' is about. Said song alternates between a plodding, thick low-end by the rhythm section, and then a lightening up to let some relatively unaffected guitar strings scratch through, and back and forth and back and forth. Lyrics occasionally poke out of the morass, but it's more a feeling than anything to sing along with, and yet this is actually a pretty clear-sounding record that has pretty solid separation between the instruments. The opening cut, 'There's No Such Things As Black Orchids', is practically a MBV homage, but I still love it anyway. Why listen to a record of a band that hasn't yet found their voice? Well, for Lilys/Heasley that's not such a straightforward proposition; after 25 years of loving this band (while also finding something exasperating about them), I can't put into words what makes his music greater than just a clone of whatever was on his playlist at the time, but I know that you hear a ton of it in 'Elizabeth Colour Wheel' (complete with UK/correct spelling, a subtle nod to his Anglophilia for those paying attention). Of course his voice is part of it, a singing tone perfect for being buried in fuzz and reverb, but there's a little more mystery between the effects, as if this band is curious about more than just seeing what sounds guitars can make but you're going to have to work, and infuse your own interpretations of what that might be. The rhythm section is more than competent here; uncredited, but apparently containing members of Velocity Girl. But no member of Lilys is long for being in that band, and being the debut LP is no exception. This is quite a different record than what was to follow (though to be honest, Lilys didn't do abrupt 180s, gradually shifting from sunny hooks towards the dreamy haze of their next record, their masterpiece, into more overtly 60s/mod-influenced pop, into whatever unique hybrid they had become by the time of the major label signing). Sole Actual Lily Kurt Heasley is known as a somewhat difficult figure, a personalty that shifts as much as the sound of his band does. I've never met him but have come to feel he's a bit of a genius in disguise; to dismiss him as a soldier of pastiche is missing the point. The long track here, 'The Way Snowflakes Fall', builds up from a fluid type of group improvisation that would have fit on a Jewelled Antler CDr a decade or so later. It's in this track that I really hear a mastery of what he was trying to do; this isn't a band doing shoegaze-indie music pop to latch onto a trend, but exploring sound expression through the lens of shoegaze-indie. I guess I'm a completely unapologetic Lilys defender now in 2020, and I'm going to gush even more about the next one, but 'The Way Snowflakes Fall', with its static-industrial bedsheets and converging resonance, is clearly more than a band of coattail-hangers trying to flex their long-form muscles.

Liliput (Rough Trade)

I first read about Kleenex/Liliput through one of those collections of writings about post-punk music that I checked out of the library when younger –– it was either Greil Marcus or Simon Reynolds, and the fact I can't remember is funny because those two writers are pretty different. I swear the article claimed that they invented their own language to sing in, but maybe I imagined that. Anyway, over the years, I've played this Liliput record occasionally, always impressed when I did, but never falling in love with it, and never becoming too intimate with the rest of their discography (which Mississippi compiled onto a 4 LP set awhile back). This is pretty weird and imaginative rock music, though, with start-stop motion made gentler through an awareness of texture and tension. The lyrics sheet is bilingual those most songs appear to be sung in English (with 'Tschik-mo', not printed here, possibly being in another language, but I'm so Deutsch-dumb that maybe I just don't know what German sounds like). This has the distinction of being the first record I have played in a new house/room/turntable setup, and today I'm hearing all screaming mids, the sibilance of the punchy electric bass mixing with guitars occasionally played above the nut or below the bridge. The credits don't indicate a full-time drummer, but percussion is super heavy throughout, with 'Umamm' the fullest expression of this, coming across like a track from My Life in the Bush of Ghosts soaked in ether. The vocals, happy to lurch between language and more guttural shrieks and grunts, have a nice interplay with each other when two vocalists are playing off each other ('Outburst'), and the tempo stays peppy throughout, with the aforementioned 'Tschik-mo' a notable exception, that one pulsing along with a single heavy bass note as the engine, like a clock tower ringing out over a strange wide sky. What sort of world does this band express? Lyrics such as 'Close your eyes, you're as good as lost' suggest a world of psychological despair or a horror show, but then the music doesn't go for easy terror tropes. 'Might is Right' has an almost folky cadence to it, gently sung, and flute as well; the lyrics, an impressionistic structural observation on death and power, reminds me of the kind of lyrics Stereolab could deliver so succinctly in their amazing mid-period; the Euro-accented singing also helps draw this comparison. Over the years my feelings on Kleenex/Liliput haven't changed; this is totally a unicorn, one of those bands that's simultaneously of their time and completely an anomaly, and it's a sound that seems to have influenced few directly, maybe more in spirit. The winding melodies, off-kilter sonorities, and odd intervals all make this band sound like no one else, even in the forty years since that have birthed plenty of avant-rockers employing similar techniques. The sheer oddity of Liliput is not one that is threatening, but it's enough to keep this record perhaps permanently at arm's length, which is a sort of virtue in ways.

Lightnin' Hopkins (Everest)

My father gave me this record years ago when he was culling his own vinyl accumulation. It's a decent compilation on the esteemed Everest Records Archive of Folk & Jazz Music label, adorned with underwritten liner notes that give no indication where or when the recordings come from, as was the fashion back then. Nor does it give any more information about the identities of 'Brownie' and 'Sonny' who accompany Mr. Hopkins, though the internet reveals that they are Sonny Terry on harmonica and Brownie McGhee on the other acoustic guitar. The solo tracks are wonderfully rambling, the opening 'Big Black Cadillac Blues' really more of a spoken word cut than a song, and 'Brand New Car' containing some more extemporising vocals from Mr. Hopkins, also helped by the backing band and 'Big' Joe Williams also on vocals. Plenty of people have studied this music properly, both amateur and academic scholars, and I have little to add as said field is not my forte, except that  the rare times I throw this on are immensely satisfying. The joy in Hopkins' music is in the drift, the lurching from a well-sung line to a finger-picked run and back, with everyone loosely circling around a centre that likely adheres to the 12-bar (or whatever) format, without ever feeling rigid. The tracks with Terry and McGhee are the high points –– the version of 'I've Been Buked and Scorned' here is amazing, really something that must be heard to be believed –– and Terry's harmonica chops on 'Drinkin' in the Blues' are wonderfully feral. I might just get an extra special personal pleasure from this because it was from my father (who is still alive, this isn't an elegy), which is probably not so interesting for you to read about, but then again, why write these if I don't bring in my personal associations + reactions to it all? I think compilations like this can still be found for nothing, some of the last remaining cheap vinyl in an age where copies of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours sell for over 20€ (at least over here); there's no shame in the compilation, as so much great traditional and classical musics can be discovered though them. And I'll still take anything on vinyl over a certainly-available YouTube rip of dubious quality, which forces one to endure an advertisement burst before the song starts.

Lifetones - 'For A Reason' (Light in the Attic)

As rewarding as This Heat's discography is, the projects that formed in their wake offer fertile paths for discovery as well. Hayward's career is well established, and the Gareth Williams Flaming Tunes record with Mary Currie is a quiet masterpiece. But Charles Bullen's work is not as well known, and Light in the Attic's reissue of 1983's For a Reason was an attempt to do something about that. Lifetones was a collaboration with Julius Samuel, a drummer/percussionist who primarily has worked in the dub/reggae genre, and the result is a heavily Jamaican-influenced mishmash of Heat-style textures and rhythmic interplay. The six songs here are not particularly long, but they are packed with movement, a project of studio layering that doesn't strive for tension in the same way as Bullen's previous band did, and therefore is a little bit more approachable (while also not delivering obvious, immediate satisfaction). The opening title track lays down some explicit reggae-ish basslines and rhythms, but with the familiar singing style of This Heat (a little bit droning, and moving slowly through its cadences). This record is full of sounds, each song packed with clanging strings, keyboard lines, and lots of bells and whistles; parts of it sound like a bunch of buzzing clocks. My favourite cut is probably 'Travelling', which employs a Czukay-like bassline under a swirling buzzsaw of strings, overtones blanketing the midrange, staying instrumental until the end, where a few dour lines are sung almost like a coda. There are echo effects on most tracks, sometimes a melodica swirling over a start-stop drum part, sometimes keyboards swelling and receding. The most fruity, splendid parts are layered in way that actually make me think of the band O.Rang (a post-Talk Talk 90s post-rock project), and maybe the My Life in the Bush of Ghosts search for an unworldly pulse, which is found here and mined voraciously. While there's clearly improvisatory moments here, the whole record is just over a half-hour, and there's a lot of control over these songs, which move into ideas, explore them, and then move on without beating anything into the ground. For A Reason has grown on me with each listen, and the brightness of the tonal palette is really remarkable; for a two-man band, there's a tremendous dynamic range here, of course using overdubs to achieve so many laters, but the space between everything stays audible. 'Patience', the closing cut, is driven like most other songs by the bassline, yet somehow recalls hot summer afternoons, and a feeling of childhood. It eats its own tail, guitar, bass, and melodica turning in on each other until it's hypnotic and a bit maddening. Thinking about England in the early 80s and specifically the production work of Adrian Sherwood, I can hear affinities between his work and Lifetones. There's not any aggressive edge here, and besides echo not as many signs of processing, but I wonder how this might have sounded under the Sherwood treatment, and what influence (if any) they might have had on each other. This colourful, eclectic sort of art music was a really beautiful progression out of the post-punk sound, and the connecting lines between records like this and the aforementioned O.Rang would be interesting to discover.

Jason Lescalleet - 'The Pilgrim' (Glistening Examples)

'Sometimes you drive, sometimes you're a passenger.' This is one of the most intense and personal works of avant-garde art that I've ever experienced, and it's actually so extreme in the nature of being personal that I find it very difficult to listen to.  I probably played this once when I got it, and once again today. It's not something I'd just throw on when guests are over, or even very often to listen to myself, such is the effect it has on me, one of feeling inappropriately voyeuristic and of course, sad. That said, I would never part with it; it's a beautiful object that encapsulates everything that humanity is capable of achieving through art –– a total expression that is personal, raw, and relatable (if difficult). This record is a tribute by Jason Lescalleet to his father, who passed away in 2005. The first side contains a piece performed live at a festival a few years earlier, inspired not just by the father himself but by how the elder Lescalleet related to Jason's music, understanding it through his own memories of a car ride with his father, Jason's grandfather. The record begins with Jason's spoken introduction, reading out a letter from his father, and then the piece begins, a rumble that attempts to imagine the soundworld of what his father experienced while young. The liner notes explain that he already knew his father was likely to die with two years of creating this piece, and thus this composition ('His Petition') took on immense significance. It's a beautiful blur of sound, with the guttural momentum of a car engine felt but not heard, and the slow sputtering finish taking on a powerful effect given the motif of death that hangs over this record so much. As someone who sometimes struggles to connect with the emotional resonance of abstraction (despite, obviously being invested into the field for years) this really hits me, not just because of the externally-supplied context, but because this is specifically about how to relate one's own work to a loved one, and how your relationship can grow through your art. It's the second side of this picture disc that is the really difficult material, made up of recordings of Lescalleet's father as he was literally dying, deathbed conversations processed and presented as an actual recording of the end. I have to admit that when listening to this, my mind races to go elsewhere, almost as if this material is too personal, not meant for my ears. It's a struggle to focus on the sounds and the language, and my lack of concentration feels disrespectful to the man and the material. So it's odd to write such praise about an artwork that I actually have trouble experiencing, but in some ways, maybe that's the mark of something truly boundary breaking? Words fail me here, as there's not really any way to do this justice for what it means to Lescalleet and its unique status as a form of expression. I would suggest any reader to seek it out, with the caveat that this is not an uplifting experience, or maybe it actually is, but through the presentation of loss as a shared experience, which is best described as inspirational, not uplifting. But not everything should be uplifting, anyway.