Simon Joyner - 'Songs for the New Year' (Sing, Eunuchs!/Shrimper)

Songs for the New Year is a record of quiet, intense songs; its lyric sheet takes up two full pages and it's not in a large typeface. Joyner often pens lengthy tracts, never at this point in his career content to repeat a simple mantra or let less do more. This isn't a criticism, nor is it meant to convey that he is some radical experimentalist in form – there's still verses and repeating choruses, the basic building blocks of the song. But a tune like 'Parachute' shifts through so many different ideas over a few minutes that it needs to be listened to again to be fully absorbed. And even after almost twenty years I still haven't fully digested Songs for the New Year. The title would indicate that this album has a theme of newness and rebirth, and I suppose it's there, but it's really about winter and coldness taking over. I can imagine the Omaha winters are stark and harsh; here, it's just beginning in Helsinki so it's a perfect soundtrack to watch the snow fall. The album opens with 'The Cowardly Traveller Pays His Toll', a song that was not on the album of the same name and wouldn't have really fit there anyway, but here it's perfect. It functions as a gateway to the rest of this record, with Chris Deden's echoey piano notes and Joyner's gentle voice providing the foundation for this song of journey and escape. So many of Joyner's songs seem to be about travelling, or at least trying to get somewhere, and this is almost like a meta-tune, a skeleton key to the rest. The song I've gone back to the most over the years is 'Two Friends Take a Bow for the Record', describing just what its title indicates. Distance is again a theme, though here's its emotional distance, and this requiem for an ending friendship is complex without being bitter, grimacing through pain without resorting to irony. It's a feeling we've all lived through, yet has rarely been chronicled in 4/4 (or any other) time. The slow, plaintive pulse of the music allow Joyner to inhabit the narrative, and his voice sounds less warbling than on previous records, driven by the honesty and conviction of what he's singing about. Loss, again, is a recurring concept; these friends are certainly from the same Joynerverse of characters that narrate 'Born of Longing' or 'I Wrote a Song About the Ocean', who yearn to escape from their own memories. 'Disappear From Here' closes the record and is the most stripped down, just Joyner and his guitar, and the way it proceeds through a line of verses reminds me of Neil Young closing On the Beach with 'Ambulance Blues'. The rural themes so prevalent on Heaven's Gate return, with winter explicitly discussed, and the final moments really feels like a man trying to intentionally fade into nothing. This record is so quiet and it's also recorded in an intimate way, with carefully chosen arrangements - the accordion playing that I raved about on the last record returns here, and is just as beautifully understated. I wouldn't call this lo-fi, hi-fi, bi-fi or any other kind of fi - it's merely plain ol' fidelity, and when you turn it up, it doesn't sound richer or more complex; it's like this was meant to be listened to quietly, while a candle burned. Songs for the New Year is the end of an era, for after this Joyner began his more heavily orchestrated Truckstop era, another rewarding period of his insanely prolific career. Unfortunately I never managed to acquire physical copies of any of that stuff so we have to end the discussion of Mr. Joyner's output here, but this is a beautiful and precise place to do so.

Camper Van Beethoven - 'II & III' (Pitch-A-Tent)

This is where early Camper peaks, as I said in the last post - the dark/psych edge is much more pronounced, but it's no less eclectic. And there's lots of short songs, the way I like it. Let's talk about the instrumentals first - 'Abundance' opens up and it's to me, the signature violin-driven Jonathan Segel piece in the CVB repetoire. I don't know why this one jumps out as me as being so much better than we heard on Telephone Free, except for maybe the weird melting violin solo/bridge. And 'Turtlehead' is a a bit of Sun City Girls-styled spazz-core with another elliptical, middle-Eastern style breakdown in the middle. '4 Year Plan' reprises the ska-style rhythm guitar heard a few times on the last album, but with a very bright crisp recording. Though this record was recorded in multiple studio sessions and with no consistent drummer, it sounds really cohesive - and I guess if Telephone Free was the culmination of a zillion early lineups with twenty different members, II & III is at least a step closer to solid. 'Dust Pan' and 'ZZ Top Goes to Egypt' are beautifully evocative for being brief rock instrumentals,and while 'Circles' may not be strictly instrumental (with backwards singing, a trick they'll employ again on the third album), it's a winner. Now, vocally, Lowery is certainly continuing the witty goofball lyrics, but there's less of a focus on taking the piss out of the punk underground and maybe he's turning his lens towards a more worldly focus. 'No More Bullshit' ends the record wryly commenting 'No more MTV/No more rock stars' before embarking on an epic instrumental jam, worthy of the greatest guitar gods. And sure, there's some chuckles throughout just about every song. I place the misanthropy of 'Don't Go To Goleta' somehow above the nonsense of 'The Day that Lassie Went to the Moon'. Few others would probably make such a distinction, but the fine line of humour in music is tred as carefully as possible to the dark side here, and it never goes over. 'Gonna dress and act like Lou Reed' (in 'Down and Out') is an astute cultural observation here. And the mock-aggression of 'We're a Bad Trip' is absolutely classic status here. (Nerd alert - this copy has the slow version of that tune, which means (I guess) that this is the first pressing, and also I think that Crispy Dersen doesn't play on my copy at all). What a great song, and I prefer it slow - you can hear the pulsing keyboards better, and the descending guitar solo has a bit more breathing room, and no one has ever put the word 'hors d'oeuvres' into a song so well (Roy Harper may have titled a song as such but balked on the actual lyrics). But let's commend the move away from the ha-ha: 'Sad Lovers Waltz' is a CVB classic, and still moving because of it's naivete and amateurishness. One step for anger and one step for pain, indeed. 'Sometimes' is the ultimate Paisley renaissance piece, buried in hesitation and honesty, and arranged with the perfect hazyness. But my absolute favourite track of this album, and probably the most underrated tune in the entire CVB canon, is 'Form Another Stone'. I think it's overlooked because it's buried at the end of this album, which is probably the least well-known of their work, and lacks the ha-ha punchline or the obvious pop hook. But this is a fireball of a track, and one that I will continually cite as inspiration for my young guitar-addled brain. Jonathan Segel's 'Chain of Circumstance' isn't half-bad either. The simple duotone cover and general low-budget feel of this record is another thing that I find amazing -- it's weird that this came after their big hit ('Skinheads') and that they self-released it, but looking at it as a finished product, it's a magnificent statement. If I had come across this LP when I was 14 (instead of a dubbed cassette version, which is what I subsisted on for years until eBay came around) I would have been blown away, because this would have represented everything I dreamt of about "the underground". Hindsight shows this to be far from obscure or difficult, but that doesn't diminish it's greatness in the slightest.

Blank Dogs - 'On Two Sides' (Troubleman Unlimited)

The cover art to this feels a tad silly now, as the identity of Blank Dogs was shrouded in mystery at the time of release -- though now, it no longer is, so an opportunity for a cool album cover was squandered by putting a photo of a dude with a blanket over his head. But at least it's designed nicely, just like the bumpy post-punk-influence pop ditties here. These "bedroom punk" tunes are probably quick to record and he sure pumps them out on this (and other) releases, but they're really solid here. 'Ants' kicks things off with the formula that works, unchanged, across 12 songs. Canned drums, cheap synth icing, repetitive simple melodies, jangly guitar notes around the edges and some killer guitar crunch when the time is right. Vocally it's moaning, affected, distorted, and weirdly catchy. 'Blaring Speeches', 'Calico Hands' and 'The Lines' are particularly strong, and when you've listened to this a few times they all start to blend together into a mishmash of hooks. I don't find myself singing along as much as I tap/bash my fingers on the desk when listening. But maybe that's cause I have to strain to understand the lyrics, which is more effort than I'm willing to put in. Could 'Pieces' be the pinnacle of office punk, perhaps? Though the obvious comparisons are early 80s mileau like Magazine, early Cure, New Order/Factory stuff, etc -- I actually hear a bit of 90's indie rock in 'Three Window Room', the closing track. For some reason this unfolds like a classic Magnetic Fields track to me, maybe just in the way the chords move. I admit I haven't kept up with the slew of output to follow this but at some point I could see myself needing more.