The Kinks - 'Muswell Hillbillies' (RCA Victor)

Muswell Hillbillies shouldn't work as well as it does; this is where the Davies brothers' move towards American blues and country styles becomes fully integrated into Ray's extreme Englishness; somehow the whole mess congeals, and it attains some great heights. Ray wrote all of the songs here, making this even more of a one-man vision than Village Green; this lyrical cohesiveness holds together a record which borrows musical motifs quite liberally from honky-tonk, Dixieland jazz, folk-rock and music hall traditions. Because this blog only covers my vinyl accumulation, we've skipped a run of classic albums in between Face to Face that I only have on CD, so this jump would make this almost an unrecognisable band to the unknowing. And a band it is - the bassist has changed from the classic Kinks lineup but the core quartet really grinds through these songs, augmented by a brass section on some tracks and some really heavy, swampy organ. The first side is essentially perfect, moving through a suite of exaggerated lyrical concerns, starting with '20th Century Man' and ending with 'Complicated Life'. In between we look at poverty, alcoholism and British seaside holidays through Ray's glasses (eyeglasses, but I suppose pub drinking glasses as well), which blend his usual nostalgia trip with the urban neighbourhood proclaimed by the title and cover art. There is no reason that 'Acute Schizophrenia Blues' should succeed as well as it does ; the mix of Felix Guattari and the Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band is unlike anything else I've ever heard, but it's catchy as fuck. '20th Century Man' could be a Tory fight song in its most favourable viewing, or an EDL anthem in its least, but this Marxist happens to love it. I would declare if one of my guilty pleasures, except I try not to believe in guilty pleasures; it does seem like quite a reaction to the Harold Wilson government and the plan, plan, plan mentality; technocracy was still nascent at the time this was written, and I wonder how the elderly Mr. Davies would feel about these matter. He sings a bit weird on this album, like he's letting the words escape from the side of his mouth for the most part, in that casual half-spoken style of singing that Lou Reed popularised. Yet he belts it out in a few places, namely the choruses ('ladi dah de dah dah' in 'Complicated Life' most memorably, which is actually written out in the lyric sheet); the jazzy affectations work well here as brassy complements to it. Dave Davies's guitar playing has always had a hard, blues-driven edge; 'Skin and Bone' and 'Complicated Life' take the 'King Kong' buzzsaw tone and somehow integrate it into the country-fried songs. Side two admittedly slows down a bit, but that's a good move; the songs are all still solid, and 'Have a Cuppa Tea' is so over the top with its Englishness that I get slight Ukip shivers while listening. 'Oklahoma USA' is a delicate piano ballad which is catchy to the point of infectious but also directly confronts the influence of American culture on the British. The title track closes things out by most explicitly stating this fascination, while acknowledging the essential Londonness. Simplistic in ways, but the way the music and lyrics come together into such a total package that over the years this has probably become my favourite Kinks album, though I've never given the rock opera era a chance, and I've never heard Percy.

The Gerbils - 'The Battle of Electricity' (Orange Twin)

The Gerbils are pretty much forgotten now, but were pretty much forgotten when they were happening, too, at least outside of their Athens-based scene. They were dismissed as a Neutral Milk Hotel side project, one of the more obscure offshoots of the Elephant 6 thing, which meant they got lumped in with those bands just by their associations. And who can blame us? Scott Spillane and Jeremy Barnes are half of the Gerbils and also half of Neutral Milk hotel; the other two guys were certainly a big part of the Athens, GA pop scene around the turn of the millenium and the Gerbils managed to record two albums and a handful of 7"s before disappearing completely. And their sound is also pretty similar to their other bands, in that they are built around fuzzy guitar pop with some external instruments (horns, melodicas) as accents. This album is made up of ten songs with untitled interstitial tracks in between, some slow and dirgy and others a bit more spry. Vocalists Spillane and John D'Azzo harmonise in a very classic indie-pop singing style - not too gruff, occasionally reaching for low registers and helping to deliver the lyrics which are slightly dark and cynical ('The Air Up There' lyrically belies the jaunty shuffle of its music; 'Lucky Girl' is likewise more bitter than it's high-pitched, bright indie-pop cadence suggests). 'Snorkel', the title track, and 'Share Again' are a trilogy near the end, without these instrumental passages. The first of them is a slow song about going to the beach that keeps threatening to crash like a wave; for seemingly slight subject matter, it feels huge and monolithic. The interludes aren't filler; there's two in a row on side two, and they are lovely. They not only show some diverse musical influences with this limited palette (there's a pre-rock pop music feel at times, almost Tin Pan Alley, plus some funereal dirges and impressionistic sketches); they also serve to tie the whole thing together and make this feel like a proper band, despite drummer Barnes credited not with a kit but 'snare drum, floor tom, cymbal'. The Gerbils know when to step on their fuzz pedals and amp things up; 'Meteoroid from the Sun Strikes a Dead Weirdo' feels as punk as things ever get in this scene, and 'The White Sky' has some near blast beats behind it's shimmying keyboard licks and fast chord changes. The whole "indie pop" sound has been so maligned over the years, particularly by those who focus on the Calvin Johnson sweater-wearing cuteness that came out of the Pacific Northwest and all of the attendant developmental disorders that went with it. But I have a real soft spot for the bright lights of that movement, some of the 90s most memorable bands, who actually sound a lot more diverse and some, such as Tullycraft, even feel like spiritual descendants of punk. At its best, great indie-pop can convey a wistful sentiment such as  'Not a night goes by that I don't think of you / I watch you in my darkened room / Electricity was invented when I was left like this again' with a feeling of approachability, solidarity, and craft. The Gerbils had this in spades, and while it's hard to truly sonically separate them from that genre, they, like many of the best examples of any scene, stand apart.

Brian Eno - 'Floating in Sequence' (The Impossible Recordworks)

I think I have three records from this illustrious bootleg label, though this is really just an EP, with only six songs. There's some radio sessions which are of stellar sound quality (though still nice and raw and unproduced) and some live material from the 1976 Reading festival. These two live cuts have an expected level of crowd noise, clearly an audience recording, though that's not without merit. 'The Fat Lady of Limbourg' (an odd choice for inclusion, really) starts with ambient (no pun intended) crowd chatter over a pulsing shaker rhythm, sounding like a Casio beat except I don't think Casios were invented yet. The arrangement doesn't stray too far from Taking Tiger Mountain's version, with obviously a more limited palette. Eno's vocalisations are earnestly precise, enunciating every lyric of this cryptic tale as if he means it. One can only imagine a crowd of festival-goers at various stages of drunk and/or high, patiently sitting through this song in hopes that something more satisfying will come along. The applause at the end is pitiful, but the other live cut is 'Third Uncle' so they probably got their wish. This version is as brilliant as ever -- can this song be ruined? Built to Spill even did a great cover of it, check YouTube -- and a bit grungier than the album version, as to be expected.  Simon Phillips keeps it fluttering along on the drums, and Manzanera shines as always, particularly when it turns into a thrashed-out melee. But the radio sessions are the highlights of this LP - 'Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch' absolutely rips, with the guitars exploding in a violent cacophony and sounding at points like some lost private-press psych LP, like something you'd read about in The Acid Archives, except with vocal exaltations that are distinctly Eno's. There's a cover of 'Fever' which is fun, and not at all tossed-off, suggesting that the band actually worked this out for some release. 'Baby's on Fire' has a speedier tempo than normal (or else this is mastered too fast, a not uncommon trait of bootleg LPs) and the solo/bridge section accelerates into screeching monotony before the band comes back having doubled the pulse. This segues right into 'I'll Come Running', which (as I suggested a few posts ago) is greatly improved with crunchy electric guitar riffs instead of piano arpeggios. I never thought of Eno's band as something I would have wanted to see live, but these two cuts suggest they would have been a sight to see. I now realise that if I had a time machine, instead of killing Hitler or doing anything altruistic, I'd probably just use it to see old bands. And eat cheaper lunches.

Eat Skull - 'Wild and Inside' (Siltbreeze)

Eat Skull's second album is something I've consistently listened to since it came out almost four years ago, and it makes a lot of sense to me. This gang just pulls everything together in the right balance, making records that are strident, yet not cocky; welcoming but not obvious; quirky but not obtuse. 'Stick to the Formula' lays things out on side 1 track 1 with a knowing smirk, and listening back to back with Sick to Death, nothing has really changed, except the songwriting has leaped ahead a notch. There's perhaps a bit more of an embrace of the 80s Kiwi sound here - 'Heaven's Stranger' sounds exactly like early Clean. It's also my favourite song by Eat Skull, with it's slightly-too-many-words for the chorus line ringing out like an indefinite anthem. 'Happy Submarine' continues this feel - lay an earnest, upbeat male vocal over a reverb drenched electric guitar and minimal tambourine - it's followed by 'Talkin' Bro in the Wall Blues' which is a slow ballad, at least by Eat Skull standards, and like the first album, it ends with a more subdued, almost folky feel ('Dawn in the Face' and 'Oregon Dreaming'). The aggro side is most evident in 'Nuke Mecca' which somehow works despite it's ridiculous nature. The lyrics are there to be heard; nothing is hidden, yet it's still somewhat elusive. One wonders if Eat Skull could express some true pain, or show any sign of a struggle, but this is the bedroom psychedelia movement in a nutshell - good times on a pinpoint aesthetic. It's a very short trip, too. I remember that a good friend of mine did not match my enthusiasm for Eat Skull, citing this band as one of the reasons he felt alienated from contemporary underground rock; he saw this as vapid, cheap and empty music that played it safe and just followed a cookiecutter pattern. Maybe he's right, because I feel his alienation with much of the current wave, so i think I've just made an exception for Eat Skull because they push exactly the right buttons for me. This isn't meant as a criticism - their output since this has definitely tried to open some doors, and I'm glad to hear it.