I keep all my shit here, but don't you dare call this my home

Gone Dead Train - American Buffalo

I know fucking nothing about this hey. And I hate the term 'alt country'. Some of them were in that band Order of the Dying Orchid. Apparently they were around sort of 05/06, changed their name to American Buffalo, split up, couple of the dudes are now in a band called the Cinnamon Band.

All I do know is I can't stop listening to this shit.

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=f0af379cc9071c941686155677bb268588ca1e7dea60a69b

humming to a dead song

Welcome the Plague Year - s/t LP and extra songs

Recently I've been feeling pretty fucking old. And realising that I care about the 'screamo' thing and the way it's changed and shifted over the course of the last nine or ten years because it was the first hardcore thing that I was in almost right at the start of. To have actually been, I dunno 'there', whatever that means beyond listening to the records (not much probably) to see the way it's changed from this violent, urgent spasm of hardcore that was pissed off with everything else in hardcore, to this thing it is now is what's making me feel old of course.

Movements in punk rock always begin with that initial urgency that's probably never going to be re-created. They are, after all, usually a reaction to a time and place. But they can set a template within which some amazing music can be made. Calvary weren't reacting to the same things Rites of Spring were, but they took what was established and built their own thing off it.

When the Welcome the Plague Year record came out I checked it out, thought 'hey this is really' cool and didn't listen to it that much. Combination of a couple of things really; crappy car stereo and just not being in the mood for that sort of music anymore. A friend said at the time 'we're all getting a bit burnt out on chaotic screamo' when talking about how good this record was and yet how he didn't really listen to it. He was right.

I still play shows with 'screamo' bands and in that hessian $kramz whatever scene. To some extent. But I feel like there's less to identify with there than five years ago. Not so much a matter of no substance as...different substance I guess? I don't know I've always been more about lyric sheets at shows and long photocopied essays in LPs than wacky song titles and vague or confusing art statements (not that those two don't have their own appeal). In fact I look at the attitudes of a lot of people compared to when it started and I'm like 'but...you're the people I came to this music to get away from'. Arguing about it, I'm realising, is pointless. Instead of provoking discussion you're just accused of wanting everyone to think like you do, and being told to just 'enjoy the music' like the substance was somehow able to be seperated. Well maybe it is for people who have a different experience, that's cool. And in attempting to define the politics of a 'scene' or something I find myself sounding more and more like the crimethinc regurgitating punk fest anarchists I can't fucking stand.

So when you get old and a thing changes to this point, what do you do? I can understand why a lot of people move on, why noise music is so filled with people who grew up on hardcore punk. And hey we all always move on but, and maybe this is totally stupid and sad of me, I feel like I also need to hold on and keep doing the things I did. The format is established than you can work with in and hey you're not going to sound like the 'revolution summer' LP but you can at least be making music as passionate and intense, and as about something, anything, as that time and place that inspired you.

And bands come along and do that. This Ship Will Sink. Sinaloa. Majorca. Circuits. Quebec (the story of how I hated them up until the last few shows when I really paid attention to what they were doing, especially Tim's lyrics, is another post in itself). Takaru. Former Fucking Republics. Welcome the Plague Year are like that too. I have this feeling that maybe in five years people might realise how incredible this band really was, based off this collection of songs. This is one of those records that sounds like an ALBUM rather than a collection of songs. In fact when I only had the LP I wasn't really sure where one song started and another ended. The recording, the sound of it, the bits of noise and the lo-fi guitars and reverb drenched production all combine to lend an incredible atmosphere to the record. It's like some sort of apocalyptic crust record, or even Slint's spiderland, in that it's just plain fucking creepy. It's a scary, dark, heavy record that sounds like all the fucked aspects of 21st century human life that the two vocalists were singing about. It's like the soundtrack to William Gibson's future. It's a fucking unbelievable album, one I, you, we, should all listen to more.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?2iyy2cweyxi

godspeed you corrupted wolves in the throne room

http://www.encirclingsea.wordpress.com

new band me, rob and raddy are doing. Can download our first recording there.

first world problems.

It's amazing how quickly shit can start to suck. A few weeks ago everything was going super rad and I was like 'okay...what's the catch'. So maybe I brought it on myself haha. Either way suddenly everything feels really fucking bleak. I love playing in ex so why am I fucking up so bad every time we play? I hate my lyrics and the shit I say between songs and the way I can't play as well as the other guys are and yeah...fuck. Crushes are stupid too. Unrealistic, unrequited ones that I don't even fucking want. Why haven't I been able to accept the fact that a) I'm going to be alone anyway unless I meet someone blind or with some weird pathological attraction to ugly people and b) I'm much, much better off this way anyway? Shit. And gear worries. And my incredible paranoia acting up again so I'm there thinking that my band is seen as this huge joke to all the, fuck I dunno crusties or hesh people or whatever, all the people I've been around for so long and actually kinda consider friends or whatever; how I've always felt inferior and out of place and how I keep thinking that to them ex is 'dase's emo thing' (derisive sneer). And the fact that I've got three weeks of uni left and then I have no idea what the fuck I'm going to do. I know what I need to do (move out, work) but I'm so fucking scared. And me drinking and flying into super rages straight away that make me try to fight anyone who's a smug dick to me. And friends being in such horrible, messy, much worse places and I don't know what I can do for them. And the fact that plowing my car into concrete barrier on the way home keeps seeming like the easiest way to solve this all.

Balanced I guess against the fact that I know these days I'll never do something like that, no exactly where those thoughts are coming from and how to ignore them. And how different that is from a few years ago and how lucky I am to have survived those years.

And so what am I gonna do about it? Well I made a mix of all the embarassing music I'm sort of ashamed to admit is like my paranoia, self hatred depression music. Here it is.

1 Engine Down - songbird

2 Red House Painters - medicine bottle

3 Cat Power - good woman

4 Wrangler Brutes - sudden adult death syndrome

5 David Bowie - ashes to ashes

6 Billy Bragg - levi stubbs tears

7 Feist - lonely lonely

8 Fleetwood Mac - the chain

9 Five Eight - she's sleeping (I hate this version btw, demo is way better)

10 Frodus - 6/99

11 Pygmylush - dreams are class

12 Unwound - october all over

13 Dinosaur Jr - raisins

14 The Hal Al Shedad - ivan's devil

15 Small Brown Bike - the outline of yr hand

16 Steve Von Till - willow tree

17 Afghan Whigs - my curse

18 City of Caterpillar - maybe they'll gnaw right through

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?qog0xwtjgxf

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?tgmwjghbwlq

the 90s, lulz - part 2: cabin fever

ENGINE KID - 'BEAR CATCHING FISH'

Featuring XGreg AndersonX who would later go on to fame as that guy who isn't Steven O'Malley in Sunn / one of the first people convicted and executed for crimes against the climate at the UN environment-crimes trials of 2037 for irreparable damage done to mother gaia via the continued exposure of petroleum products, specifically the manufacture of unnecessary editions of coloured vinyl on Southern Lord records (gatefold sleeve 4xLP remix available for preorder now).

You know what? I don't remember this being this good. I must've heard some other kind of era Engine Kid because this shit is actually pretty cool. Rev records post hardcore rock stuff, chuggy but with melody and a fair degree of Slint/Touch and Go worship in parts. Worth a listen at least, even for the excerable cover.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?hmounyiojfz

the 90s, lulz - part 1: grandfather clock.

Roosevelt's Inaugural Parade - Discography

I've mentioned on here before that I was reading about a lot of bands in well thumbed copies of status and second nature during the time they were around, but my only real exposure to them was through the occasional mixtape and the comps that came with a lot of those zines. Then came the internet and downloading music (for me only in the last year or so. Haha yeah. Lame). And I could finally listen to some of those bands I'd always pictured as being so amazing and so far away from whatever high school angst I was stuck in. A lot of it is music I would hate if a band were playing it today, unless I had some connection to it where I could judge it by some arbitrary standard as 'sincere' or some shit. But yeah. A lot of that music belongs in the time and I enjoy it as that. Otherwise known as 'haha...the 90s...um, yeah'.

Next few posts are going to be devoted to those kinda bands. Including this one, whom I never actually heard until recently. Roosevelt's Inaugural Parade. I think they did a demo, 7" and a split 7" with someone. Noisy, heart on sleeve 'emo' hardcore, very earnest and sincere. Reminds me a bit of Car Vs Driver except they have the sung, Ashes-steez female vocals. Contrasted against the noise of the music and the other vocals it sits really well. Good listen.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?zmyfonnhmzd

october all over

Unwound - Leaves Turn Inside You

Finally make it out of bed several hours after you first woke up. Stand in the shower for what feels like hours after the timer's run out, head leaning against the stall, eyes closed, not thinking about anything, not noticing the hot water pounding against yr back. Pull on the same jeans and jumper you've been wearing for weeks over cleaner underwear and shirts (a friend of mine once referred to it as a 'depression suit'). Drive to work by the same route you take every day, so on autopilot you can't even recall any details of the journey. Work for hours, always returning to fix mistakes because you seem unable to concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes at a time. Waste time posting inanities on the internet. When yr mind wanders try not to annoy yr friends by texting the same inanities. Try to push away the feelings you know are no good for you; you'd rather have a friend than romance besides who would ever feel that for you (but still catch yrself wondering as you're going to sleep what it'd be like to be in her arms). Wait for everyone else to leave the office. Eat some horrible and questionably vegan takeaway for dinner. Try to study over dinner. Read the same paragraph fifty times. Go out, maybe see yr friends and escape it for a few hours. Maybe not feel it and leave after one band, wishing you could pull yrself out of it to talk to people and enjoy shit. Go back to the office. Write down lame attempts at profundity to try and describe this feeling in songs that will never get written because you don't play guitar much. Try to get more work or study done. It takes four hours longer than it should because you can't concentrate on anything. Drive home on autopilot. Think about these travels like you'd shoot it in a movie: soundtrack of hastily strummed guitars that you think of as 'shoegaze' or 'krautrock' even though neither description is really accurate, but, you know, like that scene in Lost in Translation with the MBV song. Get home in time to sit on the couch with law and order on in the background, trying to draw or play guitar and coming up creatively bankrupt. Go to bed late enough to ensure you won't be out of bed until midday again the next day. Repeat.

That's been my life for like the last month or so, off and on. This record has been the soundtrack to it.

I can't say much about Unwound. They started in 1991 and broke up ten years later. They played that music that was the whole mix of post hardcore and indie and whatever. They used cheap guitars, effects and crappy solid state amps that would cut out in mid-song and switch back on when smacked with a flat hand or headstock. This record (their last) was made over two years at their own studio. The drummer was phenomenal and any time some guitar store douchebag is like 'girls just can't play rock drums man' play them 'scarlette'.

I've got no real reference points for this band. They're pretty fucking definitively 90s sounding to my mind but I slept on them up until like two years ago. This shit would have been life altering to me had I heard it in highschool when I was discovering bands like this. As it is now I've got a whole amazing back catalogue of a band that seems incredible in some way I can get from bands that are around now. And as I said this particular album has been the soundtrack to that weird, metronomic, repitive depression lifestyle I've had for a while now.

Enjoy.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?mjzqmzyrwyi

process of weeding out

the sweat descends

I was going to post some big thing about the cylical nature of depression and loneliness and how like medication that helps me with depression makes me feel shit about my body therefore causing me to isolate myself from people and potential romance but really the whole thing could be summed up in this picture:
some crappy recordings are up on http://www.myspace.com/thisisntfknpostrock . dunno if this is ever going to be a playing shows deal or just a making songs with my eight track deal.

I don't think I could have it better in terms of awesome things going on yet hate and my self and situation more right now. Oh well.

...and I wouldn't do that

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?ltmtznznmay

Expect 'taters demo for yr downloading pleasure.

the tale of 24 hour coles being suckas that can't handle the science I drop on them

So I stopped at the 24 hour Kmart/Coles megaplex on my way home from work about 2am this morning. And there was some problem with their registers, making everything run slow so it was taking like literally almost a minute to process each item. Yeah that doesn't sound like much but think about it for a second. Scan item. Count to sixty in yr head. Scan next item. Couple this with people's need to buy forty boxes of discount catfood and a packet of skittles at 2 fucking am on a sunday fucking morning and you begin to understand why a somewhat substantial backed up queue had developed, stretching all the way back past the registers and curling up into the health food aisle. And my frustration is probably better related in first person:

"It's 2am, I've been at work and had a shitty night, I just want to pay for this fucking soyghurt and go the fuck home to bed. But now I've gotta queue up. Okay, no one's fault really. Maybe people could be a little bit more organised and have their shit sorted to pay while they're waiting the ten minutes to scan their groceries instead of suddenly deciding they forgot the baking sugar. Maybe the jerk with the two full trolleys could let the guy with the single two pack of soyghurt through ahead of him, but whatever. Nothing you can do, no one's fault.

***

"Okay it's now 2:20am and there's still three people ahead of me. I'm starting to get annoyed despite myself. And why's that fucking security guard staring at me? Jesus christ the songs on the radio are fucking annoying in here.

***

"Oh hey it's 2:30 and I'm paying for my yoghurt. Sweet. Shit, is that Jack Johnson on the radio? Or one of those other criminally bland 'surf' music guys. Surf? Gimme a break. Dick Dale would call all you guys pussies and piss on yr feet, then give you a look all like 'yeah, what are you pussies gonna do about it?'. Anyway..."

So as I'm about to pay I realise the thing that's been annoying me most about the muzak (it was Ben Harper by the way), is the dude behind me in the queue singing along at a volume really not appropriate full of the stoned, chronically unemployed and sociopathic loner types at that hour of a monday morning. I turned around and said (smiling, mind you, with a total 'aw shucks we've been here for ages aint that a funny thing cor blimey you gotta laugh don't you guv'nor' kinda way) 'aw man, if you keep that up you're going to be first when I come back in here and shoot the place up in a minute...'.

Cue to, five seconds later, me being frogmarched out of coles by the security guard and given a lecture about 'making threats'.

Okay okay, look, I realise that this is like leaving unattended baggage in an airport but HE WAS SINGING ALONG IN PUBLIC IN AN ANNOYING VOICE. Plus I was joking. The cashier laughed goddamnit.
Nah I'm not annoyed, I realised that facon jerk had to do his duty, because it's hard life and all working the crucial midnight to 9am sunday shift in Burwood, I mean we're talking like mean streets of downtown Fallujah type shit...but it was kinda hard to keep a straight face as he lectured me about 'threatening violence to people'.

ladies let me tell you a bit about myself; I've got a dick for a brain...

The Afghan Whigs - 'Gentlemen'

Following a fucking devastating and cruel breakup about five years ago I was reading Nick Hornby’s high fidelity, when I had this sudden like, 50,000 watt lightbulb above the head moment of insight and realisation. I identified with the Rob Fleming, the recently dumped main character in the book, absolutely. In all his desperation and cheap shots and petty revenge, I absolutely felt like that dude.

From what I remember the Afghan Whigs aren’t even mentioned in that book, but I’ll get to that…

Flash back to the mid 90s and first seeing these guys on rage: I hated this band the first (and many subsequent) times I heard them. Singer Greg Dulli’s posing and sleazy-rock affectations really rubbed me - first a straight up pissed hardcore kid, later ‘empowered’ and incredibly confused by all sorts of sexual politics stuff – up the wrong way. Because I didn’t realise it was schtick. I saw him in the video for debonair, taking drags from a cigarette in between lines in the chorus and didn’t get that this affectation that was pissing me off was precisely that; an affectation. The video for the title song to the record exudes self-conscious ‘cool’ and sleaze to an even higher degree, and it really harshed my buzz. These days I look back at it and I feel like it’s kind of taking the piss out of that whole Urge Overkill/Pulp Fiction 90s vibe as it revels in it at the same time.

And revelling in the contradictions and it’s own ambiguities and weak points is pretty much a theme for this record. Which is I think why, returning more than ten years later to a band I once hated, I finally get it. Hey I wasn’t a bright teenager, I didn’t get subtlety. And this record has really only made sense to me in recent months and weeks, throwing all sorts of things I’ve done in the past – much like that moment of sudden identification with Hornby’s protagonist – into a new light.

When I realised back then how much I was echoing Fleming’s behaviour in the book, stumbling from hope to catastrophe with as many calculated below the belt hits as I could chuck in, I fucking hated myself. Well I hated myself already, that breakup coincided with a downward spiral into a few years of utter hell for me mentally, and my behaviour during that time fuelled the virulent self-loathing that kept me wanting to end myself. I was being petty, shitty and unfair. It was all my fault and going against everything I believed in; every aspect of my life, from politics garnered from feminist theory classes and crimethinc inspired bullshit to the way I dressed was reflecting in on my own self hatred.

These days I realise, well, yeah, some of these are a reflection of patriarchal society or whatever but also people do get bummed when their ex goes out and fucks all their friends after she dumps you, and I didn’t have to be cool with it. I was allowed to feel shitty without being some inhumane sexist monster. Of course I don’t blame punk politics for that, just my own naïvete in the interpretation, and the all consuming self hate that will turn anything against you it can that is a hallmark of the clinically depressed.

So while I still think Hornby’s anti-hero is kind of a dick, well, who isn’t in that situation?

Afghan Whigs vocalist Greg Dulli is a flat out dick. At least if this record is anything to judge him by. And he knows it, he acknowledges it…and he doesn’t care. Maybe he does hate himself some for it but he also recognizes at the bottom of the pit there’s a certain perverse pleasure to be taken in exploiting yr situation and acting on yr basest instincts; lashing out to hurt people just because you feel hurt, and so on.

Apparently during the writing and recording of this record Dulli and his partner were both cheating on each other, Dulli apparently with multiple other women. Their relationship was still stumbling along however, entering that fucked up zone when ‘love’ can become all about controlling and hurting the other. And it’s justified because you’ve existed so long within that space that the logical course of action, of getting the fuck out, isn’t the clearest option that hindsight would prove it to be.

Old mate Greg portrays himself throughout this period as in it for how much arse he can get. In be sweet he sings of being trapped in the relationship because ‘she wants love and I still want to fuck’. In the intro to the song he tells the ladies that he ‘has a dick for a brain’, and while he might speak of the shame, of knowing what, or who, he is, he isn’t crying out for help. He seems so apathetic or disaffected, that cigarette smoking cool blue eyed soul guy from the debonair video that he played throughout the course of the band, that he realises he’s a piece of shit but just can’t bring himself to care. He’s in it for the fuckin’.

And man is that what this record’s about or what. I like to refer to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers blood sugar sex magic as ‘the most utterly unsexy record about fucking ever made’. Gentlemen is perhaps one of the most disturbing records about fucking I’ve ever heard. Not disturbing in a graphic goregrind kind of way, but disturbing in the sense that it gets inside the twisted power politics of a dysfunctional relationship. The title song itself is like the perfect description of hate fucking, crass and vulgar in it’s lurid detail (‘I stayed in too long, but she was the perfect fit’) and violent and hateful in it’s intent (‘and we dragged it out so long this time, trying to make each other sick’). The overall air of the song is kind of like the feeling you get with the hateful, immediately before and after breakup sex when there hasn’t been a clean break, and emotions, shitty, ugly ones, are involved. The song is sordid and dirty, setting out for the cathartic violence expected in the act and instead finding only the shame and headfucks that are the inevitable result of such situations.

Dulli plays the arsehole dude well throughout the record. In when we two parted he refers to his partners own pain and depression at their situation with condescending pity, feigning ignorance as to what’s going wrong when he clearly knows what’s up. But like Hornby’s Rob Fleming, he’s going to milk the situation for all the emotional point scoring he can get. And he’s aware of it, aware that his lady knows it’s all an act, full of sneering sarcasm that he’ll still never admit, just to twist the knife a little more.

Yet we get to the song my curse, sung by Marcy Mays of the band Scrawl, the only non-Dulli vocal performance on the record and, perversely, the most intimate moment. Though that’s apparently not through some kind of next level smartarse calculation on the band’s part. I’ve read (as much as you can believe this shit) that old mate didn’t do the vocal on the song because it was too painful for him to actually sing. And you can kinda see why as he drops the arsehole act for a second and reveals his actual heartbreak.

A few tracks on and the record ends with an instrumental that really seems to build up and go nowhere. Everything is left somewhat unresolved. No happy endings. No closure. Just like real life.

I’ve always believed the kind of rock journalism crap that I just wrote here is utter bullshit, especially when it over-analyses a record and reflects on all the implications that probably weren’t there being deliberately planned out by the composers. No one thinks about their music as much as some dick who writes about it for pitchfork does. But listening to this record a lot I’m coming to understand that maybe the ideas some see implied are in their psyche at the time and therefore make their way into the recording somehow. I dunno.

But it’s no surprise, if I think about it for a second, why I suddenly only appreciate this record now. As a teenager I hadn’t had the experiences that would put me in a place to ‘get’ it. Things like the major label ALTERNATIVE ROCK production really put me off (that said, the guitar sound’s better than I remembered), and the bass tone. Fuck I hate musicmans, I really do. And just the general polished vibe of the record. And now at 27 when I decide to check it out again, with the things that have been going on in my life recently, I suddenly got it and got why all these people loved gentlemen.

It’s not an age so much as an experience thing in the way that you’ll relate to certain music at certain times I guess. I’d already had Jawbreaker’s dear you, The Red House Painters and Elliott Smith as soundtracks to other heartbreaks. And while this time around I’m far from heartbroken, actually perhaps because of it, this record makes a fuck of a lot of sense to me. Maybe it won’t to you. Or maybe you’ll hear it go and ‘dude…totally’.

By the way this is far from out of print but it’s a major label record so whatever.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?c13nmla0vey

The Afghan Whigs – ‘gentlemen’ Elektra Records, 1993

If I were Going / Gentlemen / Be Sweet / Debonair / When We Two Parted / Fountain and Fairfax / What Jail is Like / My Curse / Now You Know / I Keep Coming Back / Brother Woodrow(Closing Prayer)

crust bird knows many mystic, secret things

DUUDE MOUNTAIN

Whole set from a show at the Oldbar a couple weeks ago we played with Truth From Facts, Black Level Embassy and the Dacios. Alain from TFF recorded this (see link in previous post for their recordings, they're fucking mindblowing, seriously) for us. I'm at work and haven't had a chance to listen but I'm assuming it's pretty rad. Done with a HDR recorder chucked up on top of a PA speaker. May be subject to the weird pizzeria acoustics of Old Bar. Will definitely be subject to my voice breaking and awkward breaks between songs as we have to retune.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?zlkyxhiozwn

I Never Really Liked Metallica Anyway, But Seriously, Fuck You Lars

Spacewizard

Power Dresser

Dopelord (with the Atomic Bong)

Crust Bird's Mystic Saga

Dude Mountin is Rad Dude (gigantic caveman floor tom) and Beard Mountain (amplifiers).

...this one's gone to pieces, this one's fallen apart

EX SPECTATOR - set from decolonise fest.

Photo by Lena, recording by the very very awesome dudes from the very very awesome Truth From Facts [http://www.truthfromfacts.org].

This is Expect Potaters playing at Decolonise fest, 24th January 2009. This show was so fucking rad dude. It was like 45 degrees inside the warehouse (no shit, tin roof, no insulation, hot day) so our guitars kept going out of tune, which meant lots of tuning breaks, which meant me running my mouth too much on the microphone. But if I sound like I'm gushing, that's because I was...it was such a good show, such a fun weekend and the people who put us up were all such ragers.

It's only one big file, I haven't got anything at work to chop it up. I'll do something about that later in the week but hey. I'm pretty excited about it; the sound drops in an out a bit, we play pretty loud and the built in mic in the recorder Alain had didn't like that much; there's a big pause in one song where Kirk changes a kick pedal, and I played the sloppiest I ever have but fuck it, it was fun. Enjoy.

Oh and a special huge thanks to Alain and Truth From Facts dudes for recording this, then for going to the time to rescue the file after he lost it, fix it all up and send it to me. Ruling dude. And of course if they ever read this, Alex, Lena, Louise, Ryan and Stella for letting us stay at their house and letting us play in their living room.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?0jzmmzhbymz

Intro
You are not anything different
Angry ghosts of the war memorial
Senderos [Born Against]
Live without dead time [Sean’s vocals aren’t loud enough mix]
It’s complicated…[broken kick drum mix]
Pregnant sounds [Dase forgets the last part mix]
Young Arsenal [Torches to Rome, ftg Alex!]

Windschuttle’s Legacy

Our four track demo recordings done by Dennis and a whole bunch of videos from different shows by Tim and other people are on our myspace, http://www.myspace.com/exspectatorband

lay yr body on the day

The Shivering - 'and brand the ground with storm and song' collection.

There's a lot of good things to be said about constants: the things that remain what they are every time you come back to them. Especially when you're on the edge of some huge changes, and it feels like large chunks of yr life are already tearing off from the whole, in preparation for the moment they finally seperate completely and go crashing to the ground, to end up in a thousand splinters scattered about yr feet.

Whoa, heavy man.

I got into this band around about the last time my life completely fell apart. There's nothing amazing or special to them really, they're just a constant for me: I feel, I hope, that I will always enjoy this kind of melodic, rocking hardcore, 'emo', Guy Piccioto influenced shit, whatever. I don't really have any particularly meaningful attachment to this record or this band that I associate with that time, and I'm kind of thankful for that really because it did ruin some other music for me. I dunno, I just got into these guys when I went and saw my friends at the record store and was after something Rites of Spring-ish. This is what they pointed me at.

And Brand the Ground With Storm and Song is a collection of Shivering stuff that's not on their first LP, Behind Broken Eyes. That LP's a bit different, maybe a bit more mid-paced and mathy. This record, of songs mostly done as they branched out to a four piece, is way more revolution summer DC type shit. And you should know just from reading this blog how much I'm all about that. The Shivering prominently featured Spencer Rangitsch who (if I'm not getting this mixed up, it's a possibility) went on to be in the criminally brief Bullets In, and is now playing in Baader Brains. And other dudes but I've no idea what they're doing. It's cool hey. Nothing groundbreaking, sometimes misses the mark but a pretty fucking raging collection of songs. Particularly lay down (best riff on the record) and coda q (best change on the record). I like bands that let their vocals rip and don't give a fuck about them being in tune, but, don't get me on that soapbox. If you like that Calvary record I posted ages ago you'll be into this one.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?mkjznzdd2im

THE SHIVERING, 'AND BRAND THE GROUND WITH STORM AND SONG' (ALONE RECORDS AL054 (04'ish)

Of the Liars / Lay Down / Daniel / Brand the Lion's Mouth / Coda Q / Look Away / Concept of Place / Forged / With Disconnection / To the Ground / Weave / Holding Pieces / Through