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.

Guided by Voices - 'Alien Lanes' (Matador)

I hit a bit of a lull in this blog, because I was suddenly struck by how pointless and/or difficult it is to write about Alien Lanes. I mean, this is another mammoth formative record in my life, a record I have beaten into my brain for twenty years now, and without ever wavering in my love for it. But the show must go on, so I'll try to formulate something here that is worth your time, a screed to justify the RSS bandwidth you may be reading this over. So, yeah, Alien Lanes. I'll say one thing -- it is a testament to the heralded 'lo-fi' recording techniques that this record sounds exactly the same every time I play it, even though the grooves have to be worn out more than anything else on my shelves, and also regardless of which type of sound-reproducin' equipment I play it on. Yes, ever since I snuck away from my high school's class visit to the College Faire (a trade show where various shitty local/ish institutions of higher learning set up tables and tried to talk us into applying to them) and purchased this, shrinkwrapped and new, I've been enthralled by its vision. This was supposed to be the start of GbV phase two (or three?), after Bee Thousand brought them notoriety, but really it's the penultimate gasp of their period of truest greatness. Alien Lanes is the perfect synthesis of everything they did, which includes wyrd folk-ish experiments ('They're Not Witches', 'Big Chief Chinese Restaurant'), perfect bubblegum ('Game of Pricks', 'My Valuable Hunting Knife'), 60s throwbacks ('As We Go Up We Go Down'), a few stunning Sprout songs ('A Good Flying Bird', 'Straw Dogs'), a few of Pollard's most iconic Pollard rock masterpieces ('Watch Me Jumpstart', 'Motor Away', 'My Son Cool'), some very fragmented-yet-rewarding sketches ('Gold Hick', 'Cigarette Tricks'), intentionally dumb rockers (surprising live favourite 'Pimple Zoo'), some rather experimental sci-fi songforms ('Auditorium', 'Hit') - as well as one of the greatest opening cuts ever ('A Salty Salute') and one of the most forgettable closers ('Alright'). And just before that, labeled as 'presumed throwaway', the stark, chilling 'Always Crush Me', which is almost showoffy - like bragging about the full extent of one's genius. And all the tracks I didn't mention, which are almost uniformly great and sound great when singing along to (let's name 'Blimps Go 90', 'King & Caroline', 'Closer You Are', 'Evil Speakers' because I like typing the titles almost as much as I like listening to them). And shitty album artwork that looks like it was done in Corel Draw (I bet it was, it was 1996 after all!). It's a complete package. One of my favourite memories is sitting around in a car, on tour with some friends' band, in 2005 I think, and listening to this while pantomiming hand motions to act out the lyrics. It was a brotherhood united by our love for this record and it's infinite mysteries, earworm-generating inspiration, and awe-inducing imagery. And it was fun to pretend to park a forklift, 'like a billion stars flickering from the grinder's wheel', though I don't remember the specific hand gesture to go with that one. Please play 'My Son Cool' at my funeral, and I wish they would have played 'Motor Away' at my birth. No, 'Watch Me Jumpstart'. Watch Me Continue to find inspiration twenty years into my lifetime bond with this masterpiece. Thanks.

Guided by Voices - 'Propeller' (Scat)

Eventually, everything from my formative years will be reissued in some deluxe vinyl package. I'm not unhappy about this; owning an original of Propeller was an impossible dream, and I never jumped on the twofer CD with Vampire on Titus since I had already had an original LP of the latter. Scat reissued this a few years back, selecting cover #14 for immortality (a good choice!) and thus enabling me to complete my dream run on vinyl of GbV's most fertile, amazing period. Except my original-ish white vinyl Bee Thousand disappeared mysteriously some years ago, leaving me with only Scat's Director's Cut, which is not bad and has 'Shocker in Gloomtown' on it, after all, but doesn't have the original sequencing which makes me feel that I need both. Anyway, we'll get there. But yes, this is the start of a fertile, amazing period which I would argue is not just GbV's finest era but one of the finest eras of any artist ever, in any medium. Yeah, 1992-97, starting here and going through Under the Bushes, Under the Stars, including most of (if not all) of the EPs and singles from this time - it's a run that is just utterly perfect. Now, Propeller I had listened to a zillion times on a dubbed Maxell type II (high bias!) cassette I got in high school from some enterprising soul online, back when I was actually trading dubs of albums through the mail, such was this high school kid's budget. It's a record that is so brilliantly conceived from start to finish that by the time I finally got this vinyl version, well, I didn't even need to listen to it. I could go through song by song and try to describe them, or even better describe what they mean to me, but maybe that would be boring or pointless. I could try to write something smart about the ironic rock and roll chant that opens the album, the arena-rock aspirations of these basement dwelling weirdos from Dayon, Ohio, and something about the failure of stardom being what makes this great, blah blah blah, sprinkle in some comparison to Kevin Coyne, and we're done. But what's the point? When they broke in '94 or '95 everything that could have possibly been written about them already was. And I can't even really say how great this sounds on vinyl cause it really just sounds like the cassette did - after all, it was recorded on cassette to begin with. So while the pressing is lovely enough (and includes a collection of some alternate handmade covers), it's not like the discovery of some great lost soundworld. OK, here's something I'll actually say: I love Pollard's more optimistic songs, and this record is covered in them: 'Quality of Armor', 'Exit Flagger', 'Unleashed! The Large-Hearted Boy' - these and most of the other cuts have been live staples for 25 years, through various lineups, and these must be songs I have listened to 3000 times each and I'm not the slightest bit tired of them. If I remember correctly they were gonna 'quit' the band and this was to be their final album, though given how many times Pollard has broken up and reformed the band, at this point I just see Guided by Voices more like a celestial force than a band, so I don't take that too seriously. I was just talking about the pre-Propeller Box that had all their albums up to this point, and was thinking about how actually great a lot of them are; I made a great mixtape of the best 4 or 5 songs from each of those. But Propeller is a step forward beyond belief; this is where Sprout really starts to shine ('14 Cheerleader Coldfront'!) and the band became, to me at least, the greatest fucking rock band of all time. Even the weakest cuts are epic soundworlds to me - the collage 'Back To Saturn X Radio Report' is made up of fragmentary songs that are found on King Shit and the Golden Boys, Static Airplane Jam, and other outtakes compilations from this era, and somehow the clumsy pause-button editing just strikes me as a brilliant vision. This is the first cornerstone of an amazingly rewarding vision, and I'll just knock off the superlatives now because I got a few more albums to spread them over.

Family Underground - 'Familiar Places' (Into The Lunar Night)

So many contradictions here! These Danes are about the sweetest, kindest people you'll ever meet, but their music often sounds like the devotional chants of a murderous cult. The title is 'familiar places' but the only familiar imagery this will conjure is an imagined nocturnal bender with distant, ever-ungraspable shrieks in the distance and a pulsating ur-drone throughout. That is to say, this is a pretty great album that somehow transcends the ecstatic drone scene it was birthed from and has lots of peers (Double Leopards, Birds of Delay, etc.) while still somehow retaining a distinct quality. The centrepiece, 'Valley of 1xxx Smokes', sounds a bit like the mid-fi horizontalism of Newcastle's Culver, though with extra members to sweeten the deal with melodicas, tinkering bells and other not-quite-identifiable sounds. It's not too obvious, but works up enough steam that having to break in the middle to flip the LP is actually a detriment. Family Underground seem to flirt between organic, pastoral drone and darker, industrial-tinged rattling; it's a delicate balance than shifts its weight even in the same track. And when 'Hellish Design' rolls around to close up, it feels sufficient, a band that hasn't outstayed their welcome and knows exactly what they are converging on.

Robert Ashley - 'Automatic Writing' (Lovely Music)

Listening to this record essentially twice in a row (I mean, I slept a night in-between) is a bit like subjecting yourself to sleep deprivation. The mumbling and groans here may have actually been recorded while Ashley was sleeping, and the synth tones in the background (not to mention the distant rhythm as described on Elbowed Cinderblocks) give it a dream house quality. I didn't say anything about the cover art last time, which I also think is brilliant. Because it sounds like your neighbor is having a party, I always associated this record with casual living - beaches, button-down short-sleeve shirts that are open a few buttons, ya know. Besides my obvious LP bias this wins out over the CD, DESPITE having to be flipped, because it's presented as one complete work, without the weird rape explorations of the CD bonus tracks. Plus you get a 27-minute LP side without any apparent compromise of sound quality (I mean, the whole record is low volume to begin with). And like great ambient records, or Rafael Toral's Wave Field, this is amazing at a low volume yet if you crank it up there's more goodies inside. And to be honest, when Ashley and Mimi Johnson shut up and just the synth intervals take over, it kinda reminds me a bit of Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden, specifically the parts where the clouds part and the voice of God rings down. Except here it's the lack of voice that make things so holy. Not that I'm reading anything particularly spiritual or liturgical into this beast.