Guru Guru - 'Dance of the Flames' (Atlantic)

Guru Guru, on a wider release (and American major label) get back to business with the crunchy rock-riffage found on side one of the self-titled album. It's not a genre I'm super qualified to critique, but after typing this I realise how 'rockist' this vinyl accumulation is. I've always liked things on the cerebral side, but weirdly as I grow older the gut-punching guitar epics make more and more sense to me. It's like I'm aging in reverse, or maybe the few times I've read Carducci's Rock and the Pop Narcotic sunk in, and I have a real appreciation/understanding of what makes a rock band great (and ignore all the homophobic stuff in there). So yeah, Guru Guru know how to shred and this for the most part resembles the first side of the previous record, not the spacey, sci-fi second. But things start opening up a bit on 'The Girl from Hirschorn', containing a long, long shredding guitar solo before a nice singing part comes in, the pieces slows to a gentle 60's psych vibe, and concludes. It's well-recorded too, sounding like a psychedelic rock record should, and maybe the two sides of Guru Guru find symbiosis here. 'Samba Das Rosas' is the album's other wildcard, being a genre exercise in samba, with the guitarist singing in a falsetto and a nice atmosphere - no one does samba like a bunch of Germans from Heidelberg!  'Rallulli' is the record's most collectively improvised feel, sounding like Dutch free jazz in the beginning before the almighty rhythm comes in, though it stays acoustic (including upright bass) and sneaks around without ever getting settled. On the rare times I listen to Guru Guru this is a record to skip around rather than play straight through - I prefer the previous record's second half for the focused listen and there's about 40 other albums I could investigate were I so inclined. This band still exists! And when one thinks about how a rock band can persevere for almost a half-century without major commercial success, it makes one see a sort of musical purity there, even if that's just a bit of hindsight and conjecture. Sometimes I like to pronounce the word 'guru' as guh-ROO, like if I'm describing some weird yoga instructor in a mocking way; and saying guh-ROO guh-ROO as a band name is almost as funny as saying "zed zed Top". If I were to rank my favourite rock bands Guru Guru are probably somewhere around 286th, or maybe lower, but that's still pretty high if you think about how many rock bands there are.

Kevin Coyne - 'Case History' (Tapestry)

The first Kevin Coyne record was repressed on thick 180g vinyl with good remastering and a really thick, solid cardboard sleeve - really, this thing could stop a bullet. I always wanted to hear this as I've loved most of Marjory Razorblade, particularly the acoustic/bluesy songs, which Case History consists almost entirely of. I wasn't disappointed - this is a great, intense trip, consisting of songs Coyne wrote while working in a mental institution. He has a great British bluesman voice, a bit Donald Duckish at times, but with just the right taste of pain. Some members of Siren turn up on a few tracks, most notably the great opener 'God Bless the Bride', where the extra guitars are a lovely complement. In all honesty, almost every one of these songs is about mental dissolution and despair, usually with an intense steel strum and repetition in the right way. 'Need Somebody' tackles age and loneliness in a quite prescient way for a 28 year old, and it foreshadows Coyne's own descent into depression later in his career. I saw him play around 2002 or so with the Mountain Stage band from that radio show as his backing group, because I think his son was in it. I didn't really know any of the songs he played except for 'Having a Party' which at that moment represented the true failure of rock and roll - the side we never hear about. He died soon after, and I'll always remember this pudgy guy in sandals bleating out this forgotten rock classic to a near-empty room in a Pittsburgh industrial park. But back to the other end of his career, all full of enthusiasm and promise. Case History is pretty fucking great. 'Araby' gets wispy and rambling, just like the somber 'White Horse'. Many of these songs, from a guitar-strumming POV, are simple-minded and repeititive, even trance-like. 'My Message to the People' feels far longer than it is, as does 'Mad Boy', making side two feel claustrophobic and nightmarish - which is exactly the intent. Though there's nothing musically experimental happening, it's pretty uncompromising. At it's most loopy it starts to resemble psychedelic blues, closer to Ed Askew than Country Joe. But it's the voice and the lyrics that drive through everything, and I ought to listen to this one much more often.

Camper Van Beethoven (Pitch-A-Tent/Rough Trade)

You'd think by the psychedelic cover and classic-style riffings that these boys are outing themselves as neo-hippies for the third album. I mean, they're noticing Jerry's daughter (and using a firstname basis with Mr. Garcia) and soon they'll probably start hanging out with Poi Dog Pondering if they're not careful. But flip it over and look at the amateurish scrawl of the Bic pen, and it all makes sense. The target of Lowery's seemingly endless bucket of bile is just being refocused - except it's not endless, it's pretty much the last gasp before major-label recognition and Dennis Herring production. So the sixties return with a vengeance (like herpes), though actually there's so many Led Zeppelin references here maybe we should include the 70s as well. Of course these guys are deconstructing retro/revivalism in their usual way and why not? As long as that shadow is going to loom over rock music, it's fair game. 'Good Guys and Bad Guys' was one of the iconic CVB tunes for this teenager, but now it sounds just a bit too trite for me. Though the triumphant keyboard/violin part and feelgood lyrics are certainly delivered with tongue embedded firmly in cheek, I think their edge is gone. Political satire works best when you don't dig too deeply, or maybe that's the point. I still love this third album, just in different ways, and largely due to the more progressive and experimental edges on the surrealism. Case in point - 'The History of Utah'. Yeah, it's inherently as nonsensical as any of the Telephone Free jams, but with a relentless minor-key sawing and bizarre song structure. 'We Love You' is the best version of 'Devil Went Down to Georgia' I've ever heard, and 'Shut Us Down' continues their "last song on the album" style - simple, anthemic, and self-mocking. Some of the instrumentals are a bit tempered - the cover of 'Interstellar Overdrive' notwithstanding that this heretic believes to surpass the original - there's more of a tendency towards folk and country exaggerations, and why not? Eugene Chadbourne is billed as a full band member here and if you listen to 'Hoe Yourself Down' you'll hear why. But 'Stairway to Heavan (sic)' is a dysfunctional, overstudio'd fuckup of 'Mao Reminisces' and it's kind of awesome. If you want to hear beautiful songwriting you're going to have to wait, cause apart from maybe the beautiful (perhaps misplaced?) 'Folly' and 'Une Fois' (which is brief and unintelligible), the lyrics are staying distinctly distanced from human emotions. Jonathan Segel's 'Still Wishing to Course' is maybe the exception, but it's a bit of a dud, which would have been better suited to his Storytelling solo album. 'Peace + Love' is also a winner, though it's really the CVB version of 'The Murder Mystery' (or 'The Gift') with Victor Krummenacher (I think) narrating this dark tale. But I always like experiments like this, and there's some great backwards guitar soloing here that I assume are Mr. Chadbourne in action. There are times when I forget that this is supposed to be a rock band, and this is the album that most reminds me of that. But maybe I want CVB to be something else?

Burning Star Core/Comets on Fire (Yik Yak)

This collaboration between one of the mid-decade's underground stars and an ascendant Burning Star Core lineup of C. Spencer Yeh and Robert Beatty was clearly recorded in one long, fun session and sliced onto vinyl for the listening public to enjoy. The recording quality is a murky, overblown mess which is part of the appeal for Comets on Fire fans, though I must admit that I always prefer my Burning Star Core more Hi-fi'lutin. Side one is all crunch, driven around a raven riff that could be the Son of (Edgar Winter's) 'Frankenstein'. Some press referred to this as Hawkwind-esque, which I can see, though I must admit my knowledge of Hawkwind is surprisingly thin. But this isn't space-rock - it's very grounded, earthy, and and geological. Side two has a more chug-chug feel, revving up into the aggro-boogie that I associate with Comets on Fire, and you also get a little more breathing room for the electronics and (I guess?) violin of Burning Star Core. There also appears to be vocals in there, perhaps a taste of Yeh's predilection for odd-throat soundforms. The drums are thunderous but the midrange is so blown out that you can only really feel the kick and hear the cymbals flittering about. I'm not sure if the recording quality benefits this, because then it becomes some aesthetic statement, or if it compromises it. It runs at such an intense level that there's little dramatic impact, but it's also awesome to follow the piercing electronic tones that cut through everything and whizz and dance around like fireflies.