Goat Girl - Country Sleeze

Love this. Has there ever been a crappy band on Rough Trade? Order the 7" here.

Giraffe Tongue Orchestra - Blood Moon

When this video began I thought for sure I was going to hate it. I've been waiting for Giraffe Tongue Orchestra's first record with bated breath and usually I'm already that anticipatory toward something I hold off watching or listening to anything until I can hit the entire record as a whole. Well, the album drops this Friday but I couldn't wait when I saw this in my inbox this morning, courtesy of Mr. Brown. And like I said, from the opening thirty second or so I thought I'd made a mistake.

Suffice it to say this is why we don't judge books by their covers - or videos by their opening moments. I was laughing out loud by 2:15 in.

Giraffe Tongue Orchestra, by the way, is the new band that features the following humans:

Ben Weinman (founding member of Dillinger Escape Plan)
William DuVall (Alice in Chains)
Brent Hinds (Mastodon)
Pete Griffin (Family Guy, Dethklok)
Thomas Pridgen (The Mars Volta)

Yeah, that's why I've been waiting with bated breath. Drops Friday - go snap that little bastard up at your local independent record store. I'll be hitting LBC's Fingerprints after work.

For The Love of Comic Books...

... is a new column I started on Joup. It's the replacement piece for Thee Comic Column and meant to be considerably more interactive with my fellow writers at Joup. In this inaugural edition I talk about Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips and Elizabeth Breitweiser's new series from Image, Kill or Be Killed. It's awesome. Read my thoughts here.

Pearl Jam - Porch on SNL 1992

I'd never seen this before. Not the biggest Pearl Jam fan - love first and most of the second record, pretty much stopped after that. I've always respected them as a band though, even if it's a once in a blue moon event for me to actually throw one of those two records on to listen to.

Until recently. I spoke about the reasons why I am currently indoctrinating myself with music from my high school years in this week's edition of The Joup Friday Album. Both those first two PJ records fit into that, especially the first one and especially this song. I got chills watching this a minute ago, so I had to jot it down here for posterity's sake. Enjoy.

Dumb Numbers video Stars David Yow, features Kimmy Robertson

So good to hear David Yow on vocals again. Even better to see his performance on the screen. I laughed out loud several times, loved 'Lucy''s cameo and will be utterly surprised if this doesn't clock in as the best video I see this year. I was unfamiliar with Dumb Numbers before this but after a little digging around I found this and have realized I can no longer live without this band.

Opeth - Sorceress

Opeth is amazing. And though I haven't been able to get into anything the band has done since they began down the prog path on Watershed, I still enjoy keeping tabs on them. This new track is no different. I probably won't buy the record, but I'm glad Opeth is still out there challenging themselves and making great music. This is the title track from their new record, out 9/30.

And actually, before I go I want to drop a link. Directly after I just stated I would probably not buy Sorceress I read Max Frank's opinions on the record over at Metal Sucks and I have to say, it might just be the reference to Davis and Friedkin, or the comparison to Fleetwood Mac, but now I think Sorceress might be the first Opeth post Watershed that I really try to sink my teeth into.

Unholy Cow! New Ghost (and it's AWESOME)

This band gets better and better. Can't wait to see them next month!

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - One More Time with Feeling

Last night I went to Hollywood's historic Egyptian Theatre to attend the premiere screening of Andrew Dominick's new film One More Time With Feeling, the documentary that follows Nick Cave's creative process for the new album Skeleton Tree, out today. The film is dark and beautiful; a true document of a family's grief in a time of unrelenting tragedy.

Skeleton Tree was on sale a day early at the select theatres that participated in last night's screening. Of course I purchased a copy and listened to it on my drive home after the screening. Both the album and the film are massive, world-rending documents of Nick Cave at this point in time and space. There is so much pain, so much chaos in the wake of his loss, and brother it's stitched in wounds across both these two pieces of art.

You'll notice I keep coming back to the word 'document' while referring to the film and now the album. There's no other word for either, and while that's to be expected of the film - as it is a 'documentary' - my reference to the album in the same capacity deserves some explanation.

In 2014's film 20,000 Days On Earth Cave talks about his creative process. He talks about and shows us his office - an integral part of the creation of every album; a room within which Cave gestates his ideas; a room that eventually becomes both a shrine and a tombstone to the album of the moment. A room that he eventually finds easier to replace than to strike back to zero. At the time this window into his process felt like an enormous revelation for me, and yet in retrospect it was really no real surprise at all. Cave's output is almost more literary than musical and as such I'd always indirectly imagined him growing into the space around him while creating*. Seeing it in 20,000 Days on Earth (pictured above) that space felt very womb-like; apropos, as his ideas eventually do shatter their chrysalis and emerge into the world as albums, books, movies. All the output from Cave and his band we know and love, all of which have previously had one thing in common - the final product a much-slaved over work of intricate perfection.

Skeleton Tree is not this AT ALL.

Skeleton Tree is a document - a beautifully flawed "capture" of time and emotion; a raw, emotively heavy excretion of pain and suffering and a sudden uncertainty expressed by Nick Cave and his world by Nick Cave and his world. Everyone involved is in pain, everyone involved is overcome by emotion, and everyone involved does not quite see what the next chapter will bring. A hard-won certainty - at his life, his career, his process, his mind and his family - is gone and Cave stands on a precipice that seems both devastating and sickeningly exhilarating. Andrew Dominik is a friend of Cave's and as such was allowed unprecedented access to both his process and grief. Thus, One More Time with Feeling is a hard watch. It is also a must for fans of Mr. Cave's. This is a man's soul laid bare through his process and its resulting art, and it is beautiful in the way that cemeteries, death and sorrow so often are despite the fact that from our perspective we are unable to see them as such.



Godspeed Nick Cave. My heart - a mere whisper in the darkness surrounding your world - goes out to you and your family.

...

 *An image I believe first struck me when I first attempted to read his novel When the Ass Saw the Angel - a book I did not finish and have been meaning to come back to now for about eleven years. Might be time.

In A Valley Of Violence

I feel as though I have been waiting for the new film by Ti West forever. I remember feeling the same way for The House of the Devil and despite that wait resulting in particularly insane levels of expectation I was not disappointed. I seriously doubt I will be for In a Valley of Violence, despite the presence of possibly my least favorite actor of all time (I won't name names, but here's a hint). Ti West's new feature film is out October 21st. I am posting this trailer here but would like to note that I have not and likely will not watch it. I want to go into this one as blind as possible.

Swans Live

Last Friday night I saw Swans live at the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood. This tour, supporting the group's newest record The Glowing Man, is the last in the current line-up Swans founder/mastermind Michael Gira has been utilizing to record a truly stellar run of albums that have completely re-invented/re-invigorated the group over the last few years. I'd not seen Swans live before - I've really only gotten fanatically into them since 2012's The Seer - and I wanted to be sure I did before this iteration ended. It was at amazing; in every sense both an ordeal and a learning experience.

You simply cannot understand the sonic experience of Swans live until you see them. You just can't. When you hear things like 'they play dangerously loud', even if you're not necessarily discounting the statement as hyperbolic, you still just cannot imagine HOW LOUD it is.

Pain. Yes, pain.

And while this is a bit of a bad thing, it is also awesome in the truest sense of that very over-used word. Awe-inspiring. 60% of the experience Friday night was observing the physiological reaction my body was having to the sound waves unleashed upon it. Then there was the psychological reaction, and the emotional. It was, in a very real sense, an altered state. A magickal one. At that volume the music has a palpable physical presence - you know what it's like when something alien invades your personal space? That begins to approach the presence I'm talking about. It was, incredible.

If you have the chance to see Swans before this tour is over and you want something unlike anything else, please go. Michael Gira is a true artist/shaman/catalyst and we need to support people like him, so they continue to do the things they do. But I would add, if you do go, bring ear plugs. You may choose to forgo using them, but at least give yourself the option.

The video is not from the show I saw, but I thought it a good example of what the band looks and sound like live. Without the volume I describe above, of course.

Mike Caputo's Island Exotica

Mike Caputo is a friend of mine from waaay back in the Old School. Great guy. I haven't seen him in years but every once in a while social media leads to an interaction and I'm always thrilled by the life he's leading in Hawaii. Caputo is the original free spirit, balancing our middle-aged responsibility with an eternal sense of fun and, more importantly, happiness. He surfs, he shoots photography, has an amazing IG account where he posts series of photo shoots that recreate classic movies (his Big Lebowski series is my personal favorite) and now he even makes short films.

Here's the first one Mike shared with me. I love it.


Island Exotica: Super 8mm Surfing from Mike Caputo on Vimeo.

New Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Video - Jesus Alone

Good lord, based on this track alone prepare for Skeleton Tree to be both beautiful and devastating.

Black Sabbath - After Forever

Coming back home to my native environment in the Midwest during August is a toss up, however it's one that's worked pretty much to my favor two years in a row. But I ain't pushing it; back to October from here on out. I miss Autumn, a season we don't have where we live now. That said, I can't complain; for two years in a row I've gotten a minimum of the hot, muggy crap and instead had some really nice thunderstorms and a generally cooler atmosphere than I would have expected. In the midst of that kind of cooler temperature I've been able to hit the woods and explore some old haunts. I spent a lot of time in the forest preserves of the greater Chicagoland area during my formative years and one of the things that always accompanied them - other than a particular green and leafy vegetable consumed via smoke inhalation - is Black Sabbath. It is, in a word, in my blood.

I still listen to Sabbath on a somewhat regular basis, going through seemingly unprompted jags from time to time back home in my adopted Los Angeles, but it's not quite the same. And usually there's a whole host of new music that demands my making new Chicago memories with when I come home to visit. This year though, maybe because of the rain and the forest preserves, I'm stuck on an Endless Loop of Sabbath while I'm here. And "After Forever", a song I've always loved as part of the overall oeuvre of the band but never really focused too much on for its individual traits within that oeuvre, has become something of an obsession for me at the moment.

Master of Reality, the record upon which the track in question is found, has never been one of the go-to Sabbath records for me. Well, really the entire run of albums the band put out with John "Ozzy" Osbourne are go-to records, but within that run there are favorites I harbor. Mine have always been the Eponymous first record, Vol. 4 and the band's masterpiece, Sabotage. Surprisingly to many, even their often maligned second to last with John, Technical Ecstasy probably clocks more yearly spins that M.O.R. Which is interesting when you stop to consider that at least three of the tracks on M.O.R. are among my favorite Sabbath tracks. "Into the Void" was one of the first tracks I ever heard by the band and both that and "Lord of the World" have what might be my favorite riffs by Iommi. And the quiet "Solitude" has always captivated me with it's eerie, serene beauty. Despite all this, the record has always struck me as a bit abbreviated. "Embryo" and "Orchid", the two instrumentals that serve as introductions for longer, thicker tracks are both beautiful, but when you have a thirty second and a two minute instrumental that count as two of eight tracks that comprise a record, weeeellll... And yes, several of the other tracks are rather meaty, but I still always feel M.O.R. is over before it begins.

Anyway, because of this stigma I've created for my relationship with this record - still an amazing record - "After Forever" has spent the last fifteen years perpetually slipping below my radar. So I guess now, while the rain's flowing and the forest preserves of my hometown call to me, I'll give it its due.

Volume knob set firmly at 11.

Gravitysays_i - Quantum Unknown (Riveted Eye) Official Audio

I'm currently traveling in the Midwest and amidst the endless hours of trying to see all my friends, trying to eat all the food that I so dearly miss (but am glad I do not consume save for once a year) and the subsequent celebratory imbibing that accompanies both there have been few quiet moments for peace.

Not a complaint.

Still, at 40 there is no possible way I can keep up the pace I have in years past on these trips and I find myself in need of a few hours of downtime.

This morning was it. Rest and relaxation with a head full of hauntings, most good, some undetermined at this point. My book is done - in the hands of my first two 'beta readers' and I'm working on a new short story. While doing so I realized there's a whole host of things I haven't gotten to yet, not the least of which is the new record by Gravitysays_i, a record the group's publicist very graciously sent me and I haven't had a chance to ingest yet. So I spent some time this morning sipping hot, black coffee and giving Quantum Unknown a first go round. Not only was I not disappointed (I was completely unfamiliar with Gravitysays_i previously) but I found it was the perfect record to spend a couple of hours decompressing and taking an account of the 'inner landscape' after all this hullabaloo. Give the first officially released song a gander and then grab Quantum Unknown from Inner Ear Records on September 16th.

Ritual Howls - Spirit Murder

best band photo ever?

So this dropped yesterday. The new album by Ritual Howls, Into the Water, is a breathtakingly dark contemplation on - these ears - broken cityscapes, dangerous situations and the endless enigma of frustration that defines modern life.

Song title sooo makes me think of Barry Adamson's Soul Murder. Just saying.

Yeah, it's fucking fantastic. Buy it here.

Well, This is a Surprise: Metallica's Hard Wired

I never thought I'd be posting a Metallica song on this blog - certainly not one written after 1988. But I'll be damned if this isn't a great, very old school without sounding contrived (ahem, death magnetic) track that, while Some Kind of Monster may have forever killed my opinion of these guys as artists, well, I can jam to this. Or at least the vestiges of 16 year old Shawn that still blares Master of Puppets now and again can. Shit, just listen to that fucking solo - it sounds straight off Kill 'Em All.

Fucking terrible album cover though, so I didn't use that as the graphic.

New Pixies song Talent

The announcement for the next Pixies record Head Carrier entered the world via email sometime within the previous month. Being on their mailing list I saw it, however in the constant 75 mph I've been moving I still haven't really had a chance to listen to or read anything about it other than the fact that it drops on 9/30 and you can pre-order it in many different forms HERE.

The initial reunited-era Pixies record Indy Cindy seemed to catch a lot of flak online - not really sure what that was about because to me, as a long-time fan of the band, and one that honestly would have preferred Mr. Black continue his solo career to reuniting the past, I La La LOVED it. Indy Cindy sounded like the next logical step from 1991's Trompe Le Monde, so I am very much looking forward to Head Carrier.

But let's get another Grand Duchy or Black Francis record sometime soon (OR Frank Black and the Catholics for that matter- now we're talking!)

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - One More Time With Feeling Official Trailer

Chills.

Ritual Howls - Going Upstate

Continuing my new found love affair with Felte Records and their exemplary roster of talent, early this past week I pre-ordered the forthcoming new album by Ritual Howls. Three tracks were made available to me immediately upon purchasing Into the Water and I've been beating them into my brain ever since in long writing sessions with the iPod on. Without really sounding like them, these guys remind me a little of what I love about early My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult. This is some dark stuff, like music you might hear while descending into the basement of an enemy just as the acid kicks in.

Love the music, love the album cover and again, LOVE Felte Records.



You can check out Ritual Howls here and Felte Records in general here.

Turkish Leather on wax is my next purchase and I'm chomping at the bit to get it. Until then, make mine Felte!

Adam Wingard's The Woods is really...

Well, this is everywhere by now but I'm at work so this is the first chance I've had to post about the fact that one of my newest favorite horror directors, Adam Wingard's upcoming film The Woods has been revealed to be nothing other than a new installment in...

The Blair Witch Project.



Words cannot summate just how excited I am. I have always considered the original Blair Witch Project to be the second scariest movie I have ever seen (coming in behind The Exorcist of course). I also really dug the sequel for its tone and pragmatic "we already did that now let's do the exact opposite" approach. And now, well, from what we're hearing after the press viewing, 2016's Blair Witch may enter into the upper echelons of that 'scariest flicks of all time" list.

Also worth embedding is the teaser for The Woods, simply for juxtaposition and, well, I really dig the way they used this version of Every Breath You Take.