Coronarias Dans - 'Visitor' (Inner City)

The leader of Coronarias Dans is clearly Kenneth Knudsen, the keyboardist, who composed all eight of these jazzy fusion/prog jams, and dominates with his vibe-like electric piano. The liner notes tell me that this an exciting chapter in Danish music, but I'm not so sure. This has lingered in my accumlation of vinyl for so long mostly because I forgot about it; does my passion for wonky 70's Scandinavian prog have limits? Visitor really catches fire at the end of each side, when the band starts to rawk; until the we get a lot of noodling, and Peter Friis Nielsen's bass guitar continually poking it's head through the dirt, like a worm. 'Morning' is abstraction at its best, a nice dewdawn despite the aforementioned punchy bass. Some of these guys used to be in Secret Oyster, and also Burnin' Red Ivanhoe, and I guess that's what the Købehavn kids were jamming in the mid-70's when they weren't busy making those Tegn pornos. Actually my entire concept of Denmark in the 1970s comes from porn, but not actual porn as much as that Rodox magazine which I once saw a bunch of photos from, all cropped to be PG-rated, and one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. I feel that same sense of toppling into a mystery here, but only if I strain. I think I grabbed this cause it was on Inner City, which did release some Art Ensemble of Chicago records around the same time, and because I was hoping for something as far-out as Flasker-Brinnet or Arbete/Fritid. Had I noticed the telltale name of Friis I woulda not mistaken this Danish band for being Swedish. This could of course benefit from being further out, though the rocking bit of 'Don't Know' does have a nice burning drone underneath, like a hurdy-gurdy thing on a guitar. On the flipside, the title track has some snappy drumming but the bassist is in total Bill Laswell mode; you wonder how these guys would sound with some Rodoxed vocalist wailing on top of everything. There's one section when the drum solos for a few measures, right before the song sputters out, and it's like a dub track because they've kicked the treble or done something weird. I dunno, but it's kinda cool in a This Heat way. 'Tied Wawes' immediately takes it down a notch; it's the sensitive ballad. (Yawn.) The compositions are actually quite open - there are times when everyone is playing well with each other around nothing at all. 'Which Witch' is the most aggressive tune of the album but it never rips free from it's shackles; it's a bit frustrating overall, Knudsen's compositional style, as it's rooted in its own navel-gazing but without really being willing to say anything. I'm being too harsh on it - the whole LP ends in a bit of Canterbury-esque chordal crashes that are kinda nice in a familiar way. I guess I'm just tough on the Nordics.

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?