#gotobeds

1.    Steve Gunn—The Unseen In Between (Matador)

The Unseen In Between by Steve Gunn

Over the last several albums, Steve Gunn has progressively outgrown the guitar slinger label, and made his mark as a songwriter. The Unseen in Between contains his best set of songs yet, arranged in shimmering, multidimensional ways that caused me to observe, “It’s hard to say whether Gunn is paring back or building out. He’s getting better at constructing songs that are as easy and as complicated as life itself.” “Vagabond” was my favorite song all year.

2. Mdou Moctar—Ilana (The Creator) (Sahel Sounds)

Ilana: The Creator by Mdou Moctar

The best guitar album of the year, the best live show, the best (and unlikeliest) link ever between North Africa’s desert blues, Jimi Hendrix and Eddie Van Halen. Moctar’s set at an unbearably hot, crowded Solid Sound festival made the whole ticket worthwhile; I couldn’t tell if I was swaying from heat stroke or from the hallucinatory power of the music or maybe some sort of weird amalgamation of the two. “I could live in this groove forever,” I whispered in my husband’s ear, but then Moctar ripped into an obliterating, left-handed, double-tapping guitar pyro-frenzy that lifted off into the upper atmosphere.

3. Dark Blue—Victory Is Rated (12XU)

Victory Is Rated by Dark Blue

A big barreling rock album, full of hollowed-out baritone plaints and freewheeling pinch squeals, Victory Is Rated caps an astonishing post-Clockcleaner run for frontman John Sharkey III. I wrote, “Dark Blue rolls over you like a freight train, a mass of shadowy, goth-y, gut-shocked overload that takes no pains to minimize itself.”

4. Uranium Club—The Cosmo Cleaners (Toxic State)

The Cosmo Cleaners by Uranium Club

My twitchy, touchy, sharp-edged, sharp-tongued post-punk landmark, this bonkers-good (and just bonkers) release from the sometime Minneapolis-based Uranium Club. The fast songs flick and punch and shock, but the long, dead-panned monologues (“Michael’s Soliloquy,” “Interview with the Cosmo Cleaners”) built paranoiac worlds hedged in with mayhem. Discomfort danced awkwardly on hot coals in “Definitely Infrared Radiation Sickness” and “Grease Monkey” proposed indecencies to a car. Said, me at Dusted, “Uranium Club is in a mad scrappy fugue state, rattling over rough tracks with wheels in the air. Cuts like “Flashback Arrestor,” with its boxy whiff of the Ex at double time, seem always prone to spin off out of control, yet land, after all that fury, on an absolute dime.” Crazy fun, punk of the year.  

5. Sleaford Mods—Eton Alive (Extreme Eating)

Let us remember 2019 as the year that I got to interview Jason Williamson and delightedly observed that he talks just like he sings, with long flat vowels, a chip on his shoulder and an undeniable poetic cadence only lacking a bass line to make it a song. Eton Alive works the spit and bile to a craftsmanlike finish, digging into consumerism, excessive drinking, and pompous rock stars with a casual malice.

6. The Gotobeds—Debt Begins at 30 (Sub Pop)

Debt Begins at 30 by THE GOTOBEDS

Such a great rock record, tight as a drum, but open-ended enough to welcome a whole bunch of my favorite rockers—people from Protomartyr and Silkworm and Shellac and Downtown Boys. Play counts say that I listened to these songs more than almost any others in 2019, and that makes sense. Why would you ever skip ahead? My review at Dusted concluded, “’Calquer the Hound,’ is a slow moving fist-fight of a song, punching hard but in no hurry, its down-slashed guitar chords close to ripping the strings off the instrument, its drumming full of headlong abandon, its bass anchoring but anarchic, a solid but unconforming foundation. The emergence of a sing-along chorus out of this hedge of sharp, serrated sounds is welcome, and if you didn’t know the Gotobeds, it might even be a little surprising. But this is the sort of trick this band is always pulling, embedding little bits of indelible tune in uncompromising bouts of aggression, and they’ve never been better at it.”

  7. Bill Callahan—Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest (Drag City)

Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest by Bill Callahan

These songs have been rattling around in my head since the summer, stopping in for a word at odd moments, resonating like conversations and feeling oddly true. This is not a fancy album. It’s got lots of silence in it between the spare bits of guitar, the disquieted hollow tones of Callahan’s voice. But it’s a beauty, that’s for sure, that evokes other beauties hidden in the everyday. What I said in my review still seems true, that is, “Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest is a quiet album that will tell you about the succession of small, resonant moments that make up a day, a month, a life. Sit still for that, soak it in and let it breathe, and you start to see the glow behind the ordinary, not just in Callahan’s album, but in the world itself.”

8. The House Guests—My Mind Set Me Free (Shake It)

Bootsie Collins and his brother Catfish shoehorned their stint as the House Guests into a single year (1971) in between backing James Brown and George Clinton, and aside from a couple of singles (see the youtube above) most of the music has been unavailable ever since. Shame that, but lucky we now have this reissue, because it smokes unbelievably hard. As I said for Dusted last August, “Funk doesn’t get much better than this, then or now or ever,”

9. Bill MacKay—Fountain Fire (Drag City)

Fountain Fire by Bill MacKay

My favorite solo guitar album this year (also loved Chris Brokaw’s End of the Night), Fountain Fire infused acoustic finger-pickers and electric jams with an eerie, spirit-stirring slide. I’m even going to risk two Hendrix reference in one essay with a little bit of my Dusted review: “The most striking track, though, is ‘Arcadia’ near the end, a buzz and moan and tremble of electrified sound that wails and shifts in feedback-sheathed fire. It reminds me of Hendrix’s ‘Star Spangled Banner,’ which is not a comparison I’d make lightly, but Mackay makes his instrument express joy and wonder and agony like a voice, only more so, with all the notes that hang around watching and normally silent sucked into his vibrating drone.”

10. Damien Jurado—The Shape of a Storm (Mama Bird)

This one crept up on me, as Jurado albums often do, gradually overtaking other, showier pieces of work and quietly insisting on being heard. It’s not as giddy and intoxicating as the Maraqopa series that Jurado made with Richard Swift, but rather simpler, plainer and delivered sparedly with just guitar and voice. But there’s a playful surreality in “Newspaper Gown,” and an aching transcendance in "Silver Ball," and the whole album is god-damn pure and beautiful. I wrote, “By grounding his work in the simplest of arrangements, using the shortest and most commonplace of words, Jurado evokes a world that is perfectly ordinary on the surface, but that vibrates with otherworldly resonances.”

The dudes in Gotobeds seem to think so. At a couple of points in opening track “Starz” (and something feels fore-ordained about that terminal -z), Eli Kasan vocalizes “I’m-a reach for the stars / I’m-a reach for them.” He doesn’t quite sing it, rather speaking it in a flat tone of certainty. It’s an assertion. The song as a whole trades in that ferocious but super-kool pose that a certain strain of noise rock from New York’s downtown scenes specialized in. Daydream Nation-period Sonic Youth, for sure, but also check out Live Skull’s cover of “Pusherman” or Unsane’s “My Right.”

The Gotobeds are a Pittsburgh band, so that NYC ethos isn’t native to their environment. Masterclass is at its best when the band settles into songs and lets go of the rocker posturing. “Goes Away” has a shambolic charm and a terrific riff, and the refrain to “Abasement” locks into a hammering groove that makes its palpable contempt a little less grandiose. Other songs are expertly crafted and well performed—see the playing on “Second Sight,” in which the guitar keeps finding itself in solos, a little ragged and more than a little ecstatic. But the song has the feel of an indie retread, a second helping of a musical meal, rather than the visionary glimpse of the future signaled by the idiomatic phrase “second sight.” The feeling may be an aesthetic marker for how far culture has come since noise rock’s mid-90s highwater mark.

We should be clear: this is a good record, with strong songs played energetically. But when noise rock was endowed with the feel of breakthrough and the excitement of rock that was going somewhere, the Clinton Administration was hollowing out social welfare programs and experimenting with trade initiatives that today’s populists spit on, whatever their ideological orientation. It doesn’t take second sight to see where those policies have brought us, here on the States’ current trajectory into fascism. It’s unclear what sort of response is required from culture, or from rockers that want to howl from the wilderness or punch up from the underground. But reliving past glories may not be the most effective tactic.

Or maybe we just wanna rock.

TSH: For your current record ‘Debt Begins at 30’, what sort of experiences and perspectives were you mostly impacted by in the lead-up to this release?

Eli: Most of life’s real shit happened to the four of us both cumulatively and independently. Death, divorce, debt, alcoholism, fatherhood, surprise fatherhood were all on the table before this record. It became a time of great reckoning for us, and one that I’m not sure how we’ll top. It did however come together as a group triumph: we’ve managed to hit the 10 year mark of some of us playing together (in various forms). We also managed to try to distil the feeling of adulthood and its horrors and high-points in a punk record.

TSH: You guys recruited a ton of guests to sing and play alongside you on this release, how pleasing was it to have collaborations leading to such amazing results?

Eli: Well, very pleased that you said amazing results – it still boggles our minds that we were able to pull this off. It always makes it more interesting when you can have some outside assistance from folks you admire so highly. It really began as a joke: we had Joe from Protomartyr sing on a song, the idea being when we would tour together, as we often did, that you would be able to hear that song live with the two voices. While writing this LP, we were all listening to trap mixes, Cary suggested guests on every song and I set about carving space for folks to contribute, both big and small. Every person asked said yes, sans John Sharkey who got busy and missed his deadline - though missed, the song made it out alive.

TSH: Also, which collaboration would you say was most intense and unique?

Eli: Hard to say, as I’m loathe to pick a favourite as they all contribute something worthwhile, though Victoria from Downtown Boys’ contribution is notable here because she was the only person who got a blank check to make something. I gave her the song and my lyric inspiration and told her to make her version, so that was thrilling getting such a killer vocal performance back of which we didn’t direct.

TSH: You’ve previously touched on having a preconceived notion of what you want the band to sound like. How has this outlook evolved over time?

Eli: Interesting question and not one I think we or I’ve ever kept top of mind here. Writing interesting pop songs with junk on top ala the Swell Maps was the only real lodestar, so we’ve maintained that through-and-through. Gavin (our bassist) did describe one thing helpful here: Tfp is our third guitarist and changed the sound markedly because he contributes to songwriting and has a different process than mine. Gavin described Tfp as liturgous and scientific in his chasing down iterations of song before “perfecting” the final product (he is a scientist professionally so this is not a stretch), and I’m much more haphazard to which he called “lightning in a bottle”. Harder to do every time, but a thrill when you do.

TSH: What’s the backstory regarding a track like ‘Bleached Midnight’?

Eli: Funny you ask about this track because it relates to the previous question. This track is all Tfp’s baby as he wrote the entirety of it. It came to us mostly fully formed (sans ending) and we had it earmarked from day one that it would bookened the LP. Alex from Protomartyr heard us playing it on tour with them when it was new and would request it off us, which was very kind. The other interesting thing to note here is that it on the surface lacks a guest contributor. I had writers block shortly before entering the studio, but I chanced upon a book written by a friend of mine. He lived with me off and on, and is a brilliant writer. The title and the chorus are his words – words about being addicted to heroin, but seemed perfect for my “war” story (war on the world, war on the self, war internally, etc.). Think the final track was 4 takes – we had it down.

TSH: Also, what sort of memories come to mind when you assess the track ‘On Loan’?

Eli: I can instantly picture the river by Electrical Audio studio in Chicago where I wrote ½ the lyrics. Writers block and nerves had rendered me useless writing the lyrics to it – I knew the theme was being out on loan as a counterpoint to the theme of ‘debt’. I think I had to sing it in like 20 minutes and I sat down and saw our overflowed ashtray - and wrote damn near all of it. We took a break and walked to the river to try and climb down into some weird tunnel (just for fun) and I wrote the end “the radios thrown in the deep // can’t let the dead see you weep // I want a future worth more than mine” and had to keep reciting them on the walk back to not forget them. Another one of Tfp’s solo writing ventures and a very fine one indeed.

TSH: How key has it been to be humorous and not take yourselves too seriously as a band over the years?

Eli: We take the music and writing seriously but not ourselves, I think it has helped us not develop into entitled assholes. Also, the sheer joy we get from writing and playing live I’d hope comes through since we aren’t people taking themselves too seriously – cause that shit is painful.

TSH: Does it feel at times like you’re competing with the best version of yourselves to get the best possible output?

Eli: More like I’m competing with the best LPs I own and their looking over their shoulder the whole time wondering how much of the store they’re gonna let me steal before stopping me. Trying to top your influences is a heady goal and one you likely will always fail at – but that failure is what makes the interesting stuff happen. I sometimes think the opposite of our best selves: in some ways we’re our worst selves when we’re in the band, having Peter Pan syndrome trying to avoid ageing, drinking heavily as a crutch, and playing loudly to cathartically escape whatever ails us.

TSH: ‘Twin Cities’ was shot entirely on VHS. When you think of 90s nostalgia and VCR reminiscences, what comes to mind?

Eli: That was a happy accident and one that makes sense for 30 year old dudes. Though I’ll quote Lou Reed that “I don’t like anyone’s nostalgia but mine” – I think it’s important to shut the fuck up about this point and I’ll tell you why: when I was a young buck working in a record store I had a friend always chiding us over our 80s hero worship. He would joke “you’re freaking me out! You’re dressed like you went to my high school and you’re buying all these records” – but when you’re a kid that perspective does not matter at all to you, so I try to temper my worst impulses to hate on the current trend of 90s revivalism. My opinion on youth culture is unimportant.

TSH: Speaking of VCR, what led to the following tweet ‘If I had a derby horse I’d name it “My Parents VCR”…

Eli: Haha! Twitter is great, it’s like a landfill, all my old thoughts go there to die, though I’m glad that trivial synapse registered with you, even though I have no idea what I meant by it…

TSH: Whilst on tour, how does the band like to chill out?

Eli: We’re preternaturally mischievous so we’re always getting into some shit to make each other laugh. I’ve had friends in different cities note that when we go somewhere together that “it looks like you like each other” which is something I didn’t realise was missing in other bands. Alcohol is a good lubricant in the van – passes the time. Our van has a high ceiling so you can kind of stand up in the wheel-well by the door - so we stand up and dance a lot. The driver gets choice of music and it’s too varied to note, however, we do have these strange ingrained rituals where when we get 20 minutes out from the venue we have to put on rap music and you have to drink a beer – brings the energy up. We have tons of these strange rituals that spring forth from nowhere and only make sense to us, kind of like a bunch of kids who grew up on a dead-end. If only Azzerad or Bob Mehr would contact us to write a book, we could fill that fucking thing with hilarity and tragedy.

TSH: What did you watch on your last YouTube binge?

Eli: It’s been mainly live Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave interviews and Scatman John’s ‘Scat-man’s World’ which is an insane video that Cary has me obsessed with. Watch it, it’s germane in the way it grows on you and you’ll piss your pants laughing at his scat solo!

TSH: Finally, what’s the most important dynamic you feel as a band you’d like to maintain heading forward?

Eli: Managing interpersonal bullshit to keep the squad getting along (which is fairly easy). We all like and buy new music and aren’t curmudgeons about the best stuff already being written, so I think that keeps us vital. Wouldn’t hire a member that didn’t do that.

The Gotobeds - “Twin Cities”

The collaborations are interesting, though, shedding a certain amount of light on where the Gotobeds sit along the spectrum of past and current punk rock ranters. “Slang Words,” whose words are spat by Protomartyr’s Joe Casey, serves as a prime example. The two bands met in the middle of this decade and found enough common ground to go on tour together in 2015. Casey sang in the chorus of Blood//Sugar//Secs//Traffic on the last Gotobeds album, and he’s back in the ferocious, chaotic “Slang Words,” a song whose bass and drums are particularly raw and powerful, whose guitars rattle like a monsoon pounding on a tin roof. The Gotobeds’ Eli Kasan and Casey trade shouted verses, each, in his way, hoarsely impassioned and end in a stakes-raising exchange of the phrase “Can’t stand the taste.” It’s like one of those acting exercises where a single set of words must be made to mean multiple things, where the whole spectrum of human emotions can be encapsulated in a brief, nondescript phrase. It gets you thinking that Protomartyr and the Gotobeds have a fair amount in common, the slashed out chords, the galloping drums, the brash hallucinatory spate of verbiage—and that as far as differences, perhaps, Gotobeds are better at the barbed-wire hook and Protomartyr more adept at electrifying the spew of words.

“On Loan” gets at the Protomartyr linkages from another angle, this time featuring Greg Ahee on guitar. It is, interesting, the most lyrical and laid back of these tunes. It’s here that you come to appreciate the Gotobeds knack for a melody; it’s slow and hummable, with little firestorms of guitar going off around it.

Tim Midyett from Silkworm also makes an appearance (like Casey, he was also on the previous album as well) in “Parallel” which has a bit of his old band’s radiant guitar work and wry, mordant stoicism. Sounds like a sausage fest, eh? Well, not to worry, Traci Wilson of Dahlia Seed and Positive No! guests in “Twin Cities” trading verses with Kasan in the disc’s jangliest song (which is still tense and irregular and pretty far from indie pop).

It is perhaps natural to focus on the guests, who add a great deal to this fine album, but the fact is that the Gotobeds themselves come off very well, too. “Calquer the Hound,” is a slow moving fist-fight of a song, punching hard but in no hurry, its down-slashed guitar chords close to ripping the strings off the instrument, its drumming full of headlong abandon, its bass anchoring but anarchic, a solid but unconforming foundation. The emergence of a sing-along chorus out of this hedge of sharp, serrated sounds is welcome, and if you didn’t know the Gotobeds, it might even be a little surprising. But this is the sort of trick this band is always pulling, embedding little bits of indelible tune in uncompromising bouts of aggression, and they’ve never been better at it.