Doom & Gloom Dispatch #57: Slow Motion Tessellations
Stop MVP / Measure, Pour & Mixtape, Lou Reed, The Breeders, Prairiewolf, Sonic Youth
STOP MVP: Artists From WV, VA & NC Against The Mountain Valley Pipeline / Measure, Pour & Mixtape: Music for Cooking
Two outstanding comps for your consideration! First up, we’ve got the Daniel Bachman-curated STOP MVP, which is raising funds for the Appalachian Legal Defense Fund in support of people fighting against the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline. A worthy cause! The music here leans in the avant-folk direction, but it also dips into hip-hop, alt-country, ambient and more. Some familiar favorites appear — Nathan Bowles, Yasmin Williams and Bachman himself — alongside plenty of new-to-me talents; I love the dreamy pedal steel swoops of the Skyline Boogie Boys in particular.
There’s a bit of artist crossover on Measure, Pour & Mixtape — the great Sally Anne Morgan and Magic Tuber Stringband, for instance — along with such ringers as Michael Hurley, Avey Tare and Lou Turner. Curated by Spinster Sounds’ Emily Hilliard, MPM takes a revealing look at the intersection of food and music. “What would an audio recipe sound like?” asks Hilliard. “How is a recipe like a musical score?” The answers from the musicians here are imaginative, inviting and sometimes weird. A perfect blend of flavors.
Lou Reed - “Sister Ray” (Buffalo, New York, December 8, 1973)
We’ve tracked Lou Reed through the annus horribilis / mirabilis of 1973 — from the Tots to Moogy Klingman to Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter, from Humpin’ Hannah’s to Falkonerteatret … it’s been a wild ride. And now, we’re back in New York, where Lou belongs. Well, maybe he doesn’t belong in Buffalo, exactly, but hey.
Fifty years ago this week, Reed and the Wagner/Hunter band had returned from Europe and were pointing their compasses towards NYC, where they’d record the smash hit Rock and Roll Animal live LP in a couple of weeks. But first — Sister Ray has her say!
Fascinating to hear the heavy metal thunder of this group attempt to take on the unholy contours of “Sister Ray.” The mix is supremely wonky, but what’re you gonna do?! Dick and Steve vamp like their lives depend upon it, wailing away until Lou enters about 10 minutes in, snarling out his deliciously twisted tale. It’s not the Boston Tea Party, but it works in its own weird way.
Have you checked out the new Will Hermes Lou bio yet? Here’s a quick excerpt that covers how Lou closed out 1973: “Ending the year with a bang, Reed was busted on Christmas Eve in Riverhead, Long Island, for trying to pass a fake amphetamine script. His assistant Barbara Fulk came to bail him out in the only rental she could secure on short notice: a white stretch limo with a horn that played ‘Here Comes The Bride.’” Just like Sister Ray said …
The Breeders - Slim’s, San Francisco, California, September 20, 1993
I’ve been Doom & Glooming so long that I probably celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Breeders’ Last Splash a decade ago. But hey, it’s an album worth celebrating whenever — I listened to it recently (in its latest 30th anniversary edition) and, once again, it made my day much much much brighter.
Last Splash came out when I was 14 — a key point in any music freak’s life, I think. At the time, I was less than enamored with the, uh, gloom of the grunge era. Not that I wasn’t all teen angst-y, I just wasn’t crazy about the way that angst was being filtered through the music, I guess. To my ears, bands like the Breeders were a welcome alternative, a more kaleidoscopic perspective: weird, dreamy, funny, mysterious, horny, brilliant. Also incredibly catchy; these songs twist and turn into wonderful shapes that feel new every time you encounter them.
Here, we’ve got an excellent audience tape of Kim, Kelly, Josephine and Jim playing in San Francisco, where they had recorded Last Splash. There are some rough edges, but it’s mostly awesome and high-energy; in just a little bit, the band would be graduating to arenas as the opener for none other than Nirvana. They play most of Last Splash and choice selections Pod and the Safari EP. Kim is magnificent, of course, that ridiculously great voice — listen to her howl on “Iris”! The highlight, however, might be Josephine’s ice-cold showcase on the cover of Aerosmith’s “Lord of the Thighs.” Honey, you’ve got to understand!
Prairiewolf - Lagniappe Session (Deluxe Edition)
A couple months back, I let y'all know about Prairiewolf’s Lagniappe Session over on Aquarium Drunkard, featuring covers of Yo La Tengo and Eddie Harris/Melvin Jackson. Now, that session is available as a pay-what-you-want download on the Bandcamp. Lossless, if you’re a FLAC freak. But wait, there’s more! For the ultimate sickos, we’ve added the 34-minute unedited version of “Silver Cycles.” Deluxe! We thought we’d post this one on the first day of Hanukkah, because of that Yo La Tengo synergy.
It’s been a fun year for Prairiewolf. We sold out of two vinyl pressings of our debut (CDs are still available, dudes!); we played a lot of shows, each one of them radically different from the next; we hung out with a lot of cool Colorado music lovers and musicians; we even got started on LP #2! Thanks to everyone who bought a record, shared a bill, set up a show, ran sound, listened … you are the real heroes.
We even got some press. Always fun to see how people respond to that crazy Prairiewolf sound! Here’s a smattering of semi-raves.
Raven Sings The Blues: The album’s most appealing endeavor is the erosion of barriers between the slow motion tessellations of spiritual jazz and the pastoral hues of Kosmiche.
The Slow Music Movement: Sounds like it was recorded in a Hawaiian beach bar & someone seems to have slipped a tab into the easy listening communal water supply.
Mojo: Faintly psychedelicised tiki bar easy listening.
Petal Motel: The entire record is monumental, heady and meditative and rambling yet intentional. More hook and less wook – although there’s truly something for everyone here whether you’re into spiritual jazz, electronic ambient, kosmiche jam, and beyond.
M. Sage: Spaghetti prairie jams for astral ranch hands.
The Boulder Weekly: A vibe-forward feast of texture and rhythm taking listeners on a laid-back journey to the far reaches of the universe.
Tablet: Will it sound a little like elevator music to some? Sure. But this is an elevator you could live inside.
Aquarium Drunkard: Listen and you’ll hear it…the howl of the Prairiewolf. On their self-titled debut, guitarist Stefan Beck (Golden Brown), keyboardist and synthesist Jeremy Erwin (The Heat Warps), and bassist Tyler Wilcox (who Aquarium Drunkard and Doom and Gloom from the Tomb readers know well) explore kosmische drifts, nocturnal guitar tangles, and expressively jazzy passages.
Spectrum: Music for a chill-out tent inside a biosphere, retro sounds for an alternate future, an intriguing mélange of artificial and natural, machine and human.
The Long Play: Exotica/ blunted Americana wafts, insular space rock and mountain-side streams.
Sonic Youth - The Ogden Theater, Denver, Colorado, October 4, 2010
The #SonicSummer Expressway has almost reached its terminus ... and indeed, this great audience tape from Denver features the final performance of "Expressway To Yr Skull," one of Sonic Youth's finest creations. Au revoir, California Girls! This was also where I said goodbye to the band — it was the last time I saw them play! An unwitting farewell ... if I had known it was all coming to an end, I would've been shedding some tears on Colfax that evening, savoring every last dissonant note.
As it stands, shows from around this time are a little hazy for me; I was a sleep-deprived dad of a one-year-old. But I do remember being amazed to see Thurston break out the acoustic guitar for a long, brooding "Massage The History." Here was a band that still had some new tricks up its sleeve! I also loved that I got a shredding version of "Mote," a tune I'd never seen SY play previously. The Eternal material was very nice too — it was great to see how Steve Shelley powered the whole thing, leading everyone through tricky segues, tempo changes and dynamic shifts. Steve rules!
It's the two encores, however, that really get me going as I listen back to the recording. First, a heaping portion of Daydream Nation via the vortex of "The Wonder / Hyperstation." Then, a haunting train trip through the unconscious on "Shadow of a Doubt." And finally, the aforementioned "Expressway," which takes a minute to get its bearings, but then explodes into the sublime.
Bandcamp | Merch | Concert Chronology
From the Doom & Gloom Archives
Mary Travers / Bob Dylan - KNX-FM Interview, April 20, 1975
I’m still deep in Blood On The Tracks territory thanks to the recent Bootleg Series … so here’s a little add-on for y’all: Mary Travers’ interview with Bob a few months after the album’s release. I’d read a transcript previously, but never actually heard it ‘til recently. Bob sounds kinda grumpy and not very forthcoming. But it’s a good listen, nonetheless — there’s a famous quote in here about Blood On The Tracks: “A lot of people tell me they enjoy that album. It’s hard for me to relate to that. I mean, you know, people enjoying that kind of pain.” Intense! In fact, More Blood, More Tracks has made me feel like it’s a much less soul-baring record than most writers make it out to be. Who knows! This is an interesting exchange between Travers and Dylan though …
MT: OK. Let’s talk about the present since we can’t talk about the future since it doesn’t exist yet. In the future right now is …
BD: Oh, it all exists, you know, the present exists, the past exists, and the future exists.
MT: How do you see the future as existing?
BD: It exists as part of the present.
MT: In the sense that …
BD: It’s connected. It just depends on how far you wanna set your sights, you know. I think you you could be very limited in, you know, Zen philosophy. I think it’s Zen philosophy. I mean, you live in the present, you know, but it’s more complicated than meets the eye really, meets the ear … but it’s all the same, the past, the present, the future.
MT: Historically, it would seem so.
BD: I think we might be crossing a line here that, er …
MT: OK, we’ll drop that.
BD: I don’t know if we’re the right people to be talking about … maybe you should be talking about it with somebody else, I should be talking about it with somebody else and maybe neither one of us should be talking about it.
Currently Reading: Already Dead: A California Gothic by Denis Johnson