Page 33 - the NOISE October 2013

Custody Battle
7” and Split w/ Sharkpact
Morning Star/Goin Apeshit
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Short blasts of snot and fury. The Flagstaff three piece seems to be holding the whole city down from flying off into punk rock emigration obscurity. Shred. Stomp. Boom.
Custody Battle, 7” and Split w/Sharkpact Mountain or similar classic rock radio stations that love to
play Foreigner and all the wrong Van Morrison tracks. I really like the song that apes the Link Wray riff. It’s instrumental. It’s sturm and mental, and it’s one of the few times on the album the tempo goes slow.
This album seriously rips. It’s got that Japanther catchiness, which was probably very intentional, and the tracks that raul Morales plays drums on are worth it just for that. Did you know cassette tapes were on the come back? They’re like re- cords but so much cheaper. Like records, if they don’t melt, they last forever. Go ahead, throw one against the wall. Not too hard, ape head. Sounds perfect still. And like records, they get a little better/worse with every play. There’s something natural to me about an album having two sides. I like that little natural half way point intermission that puts you back in reality for a moment. Sixty to eighty minutes of uninterrupted music, even by the masters, can just be too much. Hence the main flaw of these next two albums:
— Frank Chipotel
Crocodiles
Crimes of Passion
Frenchkiss Records
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While massively impressive soulful rock n roll is simply the bees knees and this is fine bees knees indeed, it’s also heavy on the cheese. But there’s no crying over spilled milk. (That’s a reference to opener “I Like It in the Dark.”) The album follows a certain logic flowing from Pulp, Echo and the Bunnymen,
Jesus and Mary Chain, Brian Jonestown, and their granddad- dys roxy Music, Bowie, New York Dolls perhaps, and maybe the Stones a little bit. It’s all just a tad over the top for me to take seriously. These guys can write a stellar hook, as you might know if you’re familiar with their fuzzy skuzzy previous work, but it makes this reviewer pine for something far less polished, far less keyboardy, far less new wave, less calculated, far less derivative, and more raw. It’s in the hooks. Perhaps it’s that the tying variable between all those references I’ve mentioned is that wonderdrug, bullshit creator, cocaine. Car commercials, disco clubs, Hot Topic mall soundtracks, strobe lights, all the stuff Greco sings about. (That’s not too inside is it? Greco’s a household name, right?) all these wonder- ful images come to mind and in that same spirit, about half way through, this thing all starts to bleed together into re- ally dense well-polished monotony and never really catches up to how almost-outstanding that opener is. “She Splits Me Up,” is catchy enough, a very possible radio hit surely, but it wouldn’t perk up many ears if it did make the radio. It kind of sounds like the radio.
There is one little bonus: the singer graced the cover of Flag LIVE once when he was in the far more caustic Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower. That’s kind of cool, right?
— Frank Chipotel
— Frank Chipotel
Two very strong, well-produced albums here. In the case of robin Dean Salmon, strong traditional country by way of Billie Joe Shaver (though it might just be all those Jesus refer- ences) in which the steel guitar plays like a champion battling against Satan for the player’s soul throughout.
And Salmon’s deep baritone is perfectly suited to carry such heavyweight country gospel. Truth & Salvage sound like the Band mixed with the Grateful Dead and the beautiful wa- tercolor sunset and palm trees and Joshua trees that line the cover tell you all you need to know about where these dudes with trucker hats and jean shirts are coming from.
It’s a slippery slope, and “La dee da dad a da / La dee da dad a dee / Talkin bout you and me / and the games people play” sang over the bongos whaling is a little too on the side of cheeseball for me. Still, there’s absolutely no chance these guys don’t slay live. It just sounds like party time.
With Salmon, it’s full-on reverence gospel mode all the time. The only break from song titles like, “Angel on My Side,” “Devil Inside,” “If Your Dreams Could Fly,” and “Keep Me Strong”
is the mighty fine, “Drinking Jack with Jimmy,” and if you don’t know what that one is about, you’re probably not going to dig Salmon country. If your name was Salmon, would you
Kid Little
Let Yourself Go
Burger Records
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Kid Little is Kid Kevin from San Pedro and he’s created a short album of classic rock anthems. Classic rock in the sense of ramones and Cheap Trick, not the shlock one hears on the
Robin Dean Salmon
Blackbird
Horn Records
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Truth & Salvage Co.
Pick Me Up
Angelus/Megaforce
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>> Continued on 34 >>
thenoise.us • the NOISE arts & news
• october 2013 • 33
b Ugh
bb Eh
bbb Solid
bbbb Gold bbbbb Total Classic