Doom & Gloom Dispatch #44: The Light That Will Cease To Fail
Moon Bros., Horse Lords, The Beatles, Stereolab, Sonic Youth
Moon Bros., freshly relocated to the Front Range of Colorado, returns with an absolutely wonderful five-song mini-LP of lightly fried folk rambles. Fred Schneider recorded The Wheel mostly on his own, but he expertly conjures up a laid-back scene of friends sitting around a cozy living room playing together — sweetly groaning pedal steel, chiming 12-string, stoned harmonica, intimate vocals. (It’s not entirely a solo affair: the great Josephine Foster shows up to sing along on one song.) The result is kind of like a heretofore unimagined collab between Robbie Basho and Michael Hurley. Vivid visions of the country, indeed.
I’m also going to recommend that you check out a previous Moon Bros. release, Le Jaz Mystique, released last year on Ryley Walker’s Husky Pants label, wherein Schneider tackles Fats Waller in delightfully twisted/tangled fashion. So nice it must be illegal.
And ONE MORE THING. Prairiewolf, that band I play in, is sharing a bill with Moon Bros. and The International Disassociation of Aaron Dooley later this month down in Denver. A guaranteed good time. Click here for the details, Doom & Gloomies!
Horse Lords! A great band, in my opinion. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s the quote Pavement’s Bob Nastanovich gave me for a recent Uncut feature:
“Horse Lords make music that is so meticulously organized and executed that it lifts the listener to both a focused and frenetic state. In a sense, it sounds like music made for speed-happy truckers and 24 hour video game people. They slay precise tunes for the robotics team. I’d be amazed if they didn’t enjoy band practice.”
Thank you, Bob! And hey, you can read my Uncut feature online now. Good stuff. Horse Lords just played the End of the Road Festival in the UK and have a few more European dates coming up.
For the rest of us, we’ll have to enjoy the recently released Live In Leipzig EP. I recommend grabbing the download, but I also recommend watching its accompanying video — it’s extremely cool to see how Horse Lords puts this extremely complicated music together. As we discussed in Uncut, they’re not exactly a rock band but they definitely rock.
The Beatles - Stowe School, Buckingham, United Kingdom, April 4, 1963
OK, fine, the fucking Beatles! Here, we’ve got a newly unearthed piece of miscellany — John, Paul, George and Ringo entertaining the kids at a posh all-boys public school just about 60 years ago. Rattle your jewelry, lads!
Recorded by former pupil John Bloomfield, it’s a fairly raw document, but once your ears adjust, it’s pretty enjoyable. Please Please Me was less than a month old at this point, so it captures the Beatles just before Beatlemania blossomed into, well, mania. As a result, this is the rare Beatles live tape that isn’t dominated by shrieking pandemonium. Not that the Stowe crowd isn’t enthusiastic — they definitely are — but the boys are mostly quiet in-between songs, letting the band banter and chat casually, something that would be more or less impossible soon.
And what about the music itself? Six decades later, it definitely doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that would be setting the world aflame in the years to come. The Beatles come across as a talented beat group with a handful of above-average originals and strong vocal harmonies. That’s not a complaint, really — this is a rare opportunity to enjoy hearing the gods made mortal. The Human Beatles!
For more details about the rediscovery of the tape, check out an informative BBC programme, featuring interviews with Bloomfield, Stowe headmaster Anthony Wallersteiner and Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn.
Stereolab weren’t afraid to stretch things out onstage from time to time. But this medley might be as stretchy as the Groop ever got, as they build “The Light That Will Cease To Fail” and “Soop Groove #1” into a massive 25+-minute jam. It was their epic parting shot during a Dallas gig on the Emperor Tomato Ketchup tour and it is a thing of beauty. It’s also a good summing up of where the ‘Lab was headed at this point in their career — leaving behind those pure motorik moves and heading into funkier territory. So terminal, unreachable …
Laetitia Says: The purer the connection you have to the universe, the more things are going to flow in your life. And of course, the struggle is that there’s a system out there that doesn’t want you to connect to the universe or the forces of nature, because if you do so you’re empowered and you’re going to buy less shit.
Sonic Youth - Champoeg State Park, Oregon, August 29, 1997
Just two summers after Beck toiled at the bottom of the Lollapalooza 95 bill, he was headlining his own big outdoor shows, with Odelay taking him from one-hit-wonder to genuine (if still genuinely weird) pop star. But Mr. Hansen hadn't forgotten his old friends, Sonic Youth!
To say the least, 1997 was a transitional year for Thurston, Lee, Kim and Steve. To begin with, they took their hard-earned Lolla cash and invested it in their very own recording studio and launched the experimental SYR label, getting back in touch with those avant roots after swimming in the mainstream. They also workshopped the material that would become A Thousand Leaves, which, in the bucolic setting of Champoeg State Park, is presented in mostly instrumental form.
It’s a cool set, though you have to imagine that most of the attendees waiting for the big Beck show were a little mystified. The triple guitar weave that Sonic Youth were developing was generally mellower and more contemplative than what had come before, calmer waters after the stormy Diamond Sea. It’s still spiky, but with more exploratory flow: pastoral no wave? Something like that anyway. (For extra jamming from this era, check out this excellent Sessions At West 54th broadcast ...)
And hey, you can also check out the artist currently known as Beck’s set! Personally, it’s a little hard to tell exactly how well this stuff holds up in 2023 ... but believe me, it was a lot of fun at the time.
Bandcamp | Merch | Concert Chronology
From the Doom & Gloom Archives
An unexpected – but extremely successful – collaboration between Yo La Tengo’s James McNew and guitarist Bill Frisell (with visual artist James Woodring in tow) took place in Seattle last weekend. What did these two musicians cook up for their “evening of spontaneous creation”? An almost hour-long Dark Star > Comes A Time. Seriously! Kind of a dream come true, really. Thanks to a great recording by Steve Kennedy-Williams we can all take this cosmic trip, too.
Currently Reading: But Will You Love Me Tomorrow: An Oral History of 60s Girl Groups by Laura Flam and Emily Sieu Liebowitz
Yea the Beck on 54th street is a fun party! Unsure about holding up, but think I’ve just over-listened at this point.
Dark star is always fresh.
Hi, the Bill Frisell trio link is not responding. Maybe a refresh on your end?