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.

Gastr del Sol - 'Camofleur' (Drag City)

More personal nostalgia (as if you haven't already endured heaps, if you've been reading this over the year): the release of Gastr del Sol's Camofleur in late 1997 was as impactful to me as Sgt. Pepper's or In Utero was to some people. Of course, there were very few people who I could share this with during my freshman year of college except a handful of friends. By the time this was released, the nascent Internet gossip (particularly the exalted droneon list, the archives of which from 1996-1999 I would kill to find) already indicated that the working relationship between Grubbs and O'Rourke had broken down, and Camofleur would be their last album. What I didn't realise then until it was released (and actually I forget about even now) is that Markus Popp joined as a full third member (or at least is credited as such) and whatever his impact was on the collaboration remains unknown - but the result is masterful. This is around (or just before) the time Jim O started producing Superchunk records and was talking in interviews about how much he loved Burt Bacharach, and this was not needless iconoclasm - it was an embracing of a plurality of sonic palette that served him really well on his first few Drag City solo albums, and surely influenced Camofleur immensely. What is more noticeable when listening to this, just five seconds into 'The Seasons Reverse', was how exuberant the sound was. Popp's digital glitching or whatever the hell he does (and that's not meant to be derogatory - I love me some early Oval) seems to propel these songs with a brightness that you could argue Upgrade & Afterlife lacked. It's not just that there was now a beat behind things, but that even Grubb's singing found a more conventional melodicism and while the lyrics are not necessarily any less cryptic, they feel truly like they support the musical idea rather than digging in their heels against comprehension. This opening track ends with an explosive cornet solo (one that I remember caused some controversy on droneon, cause after all, there are rules for experimental music, right?) and then it leads into a great bit of field recordings with O'Rourke attempting to communicate to a confused, non-English speaking child. 'Black Horse' is a thick, lush instrumental that sounds remarkably straight-forward compared to, say, 'Hello Spiral', but to me follows logically from that aesthetic. My local radio station used it as their station ID music bed for years so it conjures a special feeling; YouTube shows a live version from 1995 as just a guitar/bass/drums trio that feels like exactly the same song, yet completely different at the same time - so it's composition predates Upgrade but was wisely left off because (probably) it didn't fit the mood of that album. A song such as 'Blues Subtitled No Sense of Wonder' would have sounded like 'Rebecca Sylvester' on an earlier work, but the Camofleur transformation adds some fruit to this dinner plate; Popp's waterfall of digital effects feels as warm and organic as Systemisch and the cryptic, circular nature of Grubbs's worldview is something I love to lose myself in. 'Mouth Canyon' is the debut (as far as I know) of Jim O as a vocalist, and it also has this really wonderful opening passage that is like a series of breezes blowing against you - bleeping electronic tones and wind instruments come together in a magical harmony. 'A Puff of Dew' is the darkness before the dawn - a molasses-drenched swamp of stasis, with Grubbs intoning about staircases and mountains. I think Camofleur is by far the most American Gastr record, sounding influenced by landscape and other scenery throughout; 'A Puff of Dew' brings a dark undercurrent to the surface, and is one of the only mentions of an air mattress in a song that I can think of. And then it all comes to a summation with the instrumental beauty 'Bauchredner', the final march towards a higher consciousness. As it's the last track ever released by Gastr del Sol, it feels like a fitting conclusion.

Game Theory - 'Lolita Nation' (Enigma)

And here it is, the record that Game Theory's reputation is really founded upon, and Scott Miller's truest and most unencumbered statement of purpose. This is one of those cases where the notorious difficult double album really is their masterpiece; I'd say it's their Trout Mask Replica, except the length of Lolita Nation isn't due to impenetrable density (despite the bizarre avant-experiments on side three, one of which I will cut and paste the full title of here to make this post unnecessarily longer: 'All Clockwork And No Bodily Fluids Makes Hal A Dull Metal Humbert / In Heaven Every Elephant Baby Wants To Be So Full Of Sting / Paul Simon In The Park With Canticle / But You Can't Pick Your Friends / Vacuum Genesis / Defmarcos - Howsometh - Ingdotime - Salengths - Omethingl - Etbfollow - Afternoo - Ngetprese - Ntmomonti - Fthingswo - Ntalwaysb - Ethiswayt - Bcacausea - Bwasteaft - Ernoonwhe - Neqbmeret - Urnfromsh - Owlittleg - Reenplace - 27'). No, it's just kind of a LOOONG record, and new guitarist Donette Thayer is promoted to co-songwriter here, contributing a few like 'Look Away' and co-writing the brilliant opening hit 'Not Because You Can'. This is still an 80s pop record, so if you came expecting Schoenberg-influenced skronk, you've chosen incorrectly. Side one is about a perfect of a takeoff as you can get - the by-now standard Game Theory opening flash of amusical oddness, a brilliant first proper song ('Not Before You Can', which is all angles and tension before the singing finally delivers the money shot), and then it starts to get weird. But not too weird - the fragmentary 'Go Ahead, You're Dying To' is more like a hint of future worlds (some of which will be ruled by a certain Emperor Robert Pollard), and 'Dripping With Looks' is one of Miller's finest achievements ever, a fierce and soaring monster with a simple, drum-free arrangement that casts the song in a perfectly inappropriate heavy metal glow. As much as I've listened to Lolita Nation, I must confess side 1 has received about thirty times as much airplay as the other sides; 'We Love you Carol and Alison' and 'The Waist and the Knees' close it out, both amazing songs, and it would be a perfect, perfect EP if the other three sides were blank. But I'm not trying to diminish the rest of the record, which is consistent throughout, though there are a few dull spots (Thayer's 'Mammoth Gardens' is truly unremarkable, reminding me a little bit of Cyndi Lauper actually, and the instrumental 'Where The Have to Let You In', written by drummer/guitarist Gil Ray, feels like a wasted opportunity). The Thayer-sung contributions are mostly fine, if typical pop songs of the era, and neither can hang with heavyweight cuts like 'One More For St. Michael' or even 'Chardonnay' - there's an inventiveness, not just lyrically, but in how the songs fit together and are delivered, that is the Scott Miller Sound. Side three is the 'weird' side (aren't 'weird' sides always side 3??) but it just means there's more short experiments in between the 'real' songs, some of them perfect and some of them (such as the aforementioned  'All Clockwork And No Bodily Fluids Makes Hal A Dull Metal Humbert / In Heaven Every Elephant Baby Wants To Be So Full Of Sting / Paul Simon In The Park With Canticle / But You Can't Pick Your Friends / Vacuum Genesis / Defmarcos - Howsometh - Ingdotime - Salengths - Omethingl - Etbfollow - Afternoo - Ngetprese - Ntmomonti - Fthingswo - Ntalwaysb - Ethiswayt - Bcacausea - Bwasteaft - Ernoonwhe - Neqbmeret - Urnfromsh - Owlittleg - Reenplace - 27' being primitive and inconclusive, and not in a good way). The shorter song fragments are something Miller returned to years later for Loud Family's Days for Days, and a few (such as 'Exactly What We Don't Want to Hear') don't need to be any longer. Production-wise this is a bit glossier than Real Nighttime, with the keyboards and vocals even more prominent. The keyboard sound here is about as far away from the retro-hip analogue synths that became popular a decade later with bands such as Stereolab, Broadcast and the American Analog Set, and that's also part of the charm. Nothing here could ever sound like it wasn't made in 1987, but it's still somehow a unique beast that transcends the limitations of the zeitgeist. Miller's best work, probably, is really this, and it's not a concise or perfect vision - it's a sprawling, slightly messy cornucopia of ideas. But some artists are just more successful that way.

Essential Logic - 'Beat Rhythm News - Waddle Ya Play ?' (Rough Trade)

It's easily been a decade since I last listened to this, so it's like hearing it for the first time. Essential Logic is built around Lora Logic, the saxophonist in X-Ray Spex, who comes to the forefront here as songwriter and lead vocalist. It's much less herky-jerky than I remember it being. I daresay this is closer to pop music than anything radical or abrasive, though with weird punk girl vocals (not really a million miles away from Cyndi Lauper) and brassy jazz bits. But was 'punk', in the UK at least, ever supposed to be more than a new form of pop? Logic's songwriting is strong, which I've always overlooked about Essential Logic before. This isn't the verbal territory of 'O Bondage, Up Yours!', but one of more abstract, poetic observations (which is possibly why she clicked so well with Mayo Thompson). The catchiest tune is 'Wake up', which for some reason doesn't have lyrics printed, but it's a perfect guitar hook that moves quickly beyond any trappings of it's milieu. 'Shabby Abbott' does critique organised religion but it's not so obvious, instead built around domestic awareness. Logic is a saxophonist so that's featured on every song, with additional sax by Dave Wright, arranging songs like 'World Friction' into thick, big-band style interplay with a slightly discordant lean. 'Albert Albert Albert' is about as challenging as it gets, with some Sonic Youth chord cadences and some really distinct song structures; closer 'Popcorn Boy' descends into a marching band chant for the album's final moments, and it's an accomplishment, as is the album as a whole. Shit, this is a really great record, and it feels somewhat underrated now (as it's been a decade since all this stuff got reissued and hyped up). Let's keep it in our consciousness. I'm curious about finding a copy of Logic's solo LP, Pedigree Charm -- maybe by the time I reach the L's, I will have found one.