#sub-pop

jaxers

This is some damn great power pop with old school influences on its sleeve (Byrds, 70s power pop, Dwight Twilley) but contemporary enough to identify itself as non-wholly-retro. Methinks it's also influenced by 'emo' and what passes nowadays for "punk" but (mostly) without the almost insulting (to this old school punker) saccharine teen stupidity of both genres. Good job, junior. I dig it. If you cut it on vinyl, I'm there.

I Know Nothing At All 02:33 lyrics

2. Every Little Thing 02:17 lyrics

3. ESTAO 04:05 lyrics

4. Tucked Inside My Head 02:57 lyrics

5. Submarine 01:47 lyrics

6. Peel 02:12 lyrics

7. Mental Math 01:25 lyrics

8. Always In Between 02:12 lyrics

One amp. One mic. One person. Countless hooks. That’s the Dazy formula. Since first releasing the single Bright Lights b/w Accelerate in August 2020, Dazy mastermind James Goodson has been writing, recording, and releasing new music like a man on the hunt to find the best pop hook, and he won’t stop until he’s put all of them into his songs. With the release of MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD: The First 24 Songs, Convulse Records collects all of the singles and EPs from Dazy’s first year onto one tape. And because Goodson can’t stop making things, there’s five brand-new songs up top to prove there’s plenty more in the tank.

Showcasing a unique set of influences, Dazy’s sound marries thumping drum machine beats, blasts of feeding back guitar, and sugar-sweet hooks into something that sounds like Godflesh covering Oasis—or maybe the other way around. With lean songwriting that recalls Teenage Fanclub but a home-recorded production style better suited for Big Black, Goodson builds a constant churn of abrasive, consuming noise and then makes it catchier than anyone else would ever dare to.

Out Of Body - Lame-O Records (2022)

OTHERBODY ‎- Lame-O Records (2023)

MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD ‎- Convulse Records (2021)

Bandcamp, Twitter, instagram.com, tiktok.com, linktr.ee

Screaming Trees: Buzz Factory (1989)

The Screaming Trees’ career is all-too-often simplified and compartmentalized into two, distinct phases: the first as an indie rock band signed to hardcore haven SST and the second as junior grunge messiahs signed to major label Epic.

But the fact is they were always a neo-psychedelic proposition -- one that evolved over time, to be sure, but whose fourth and final SST LP, 1989’s Buzz Factory, still sounds pretty consistent with their seventh and last official album, Dust, from 1996.

I mean that as a compliment ... highest praise, actually.

And in spite of its title and production courtesy of Seattle scene lynchpin Jack Endino, one simply cannot call Buzz Factory a direct precursor to the ‘90s grunge phenomenon in the same way as one can the late ‘80s works of Mudhoney or Soundgarden.

If anything, and ironically, Endino actually dialed back some of the buzz, fuzz and, yes, grunginess found on the Trees’ prior SST LPs while contributing to perfecting the magical dynamic between Gary Lee Conner’s ringing, wah wah-streaked power chords and Mark Lanegan’s wounded, weary moans.

This is evident on album standouts like “Too Far Away,” “Subtle Poison” and “Flower Web,” and both the opening “Where the Twain Shall Meet" (a classic Screaming Trees song by any definition) and the acoustic minor keys of “Yard Trip #7” saw Lanegan coming into his own as a lyricist -- here’s a taste of the former:

“Statue people move like dripping water; It's a nail into the cracking ice; You sleep with thoughts of a coming day; I drag behind on a frozen chain.”

And here’s a sample of the latter: 

“Quarter to eleven; On the day of my birth In the desert wind I would have a grin; That might shatter the Earth.”

Now, I’m not particularly enamored with “Black Sun Morning” (but like everyone else I wonder if its title inspired “Black Hole Sun”), nor urgent punk rockers like “Windows” and “Revelation Revolution,” but I dig the disjointed “End of the Universe” because it makes no apologies for being a dumping ground for remnant and disparate song ideas, stitched together.

That’s why hindsight shows that Buzz Factory wasn’t the final chapter in the Screaming Trees’ formative, accidental stumble towards a signature sound and mature, top-tier songwriting, but the first realization of Mark, Gary, bassist Van Conner, and drummer Mark Pickerel’s talents and vision.

The album may not have won as many critical plaudits, nor scored anything resembling a hit, seeing as both it and the band were still flying well under the mainstream radar, but, to me this long-player has the goods to compete in the same league as Uncle Anesthesia, Sweet Oblivion and Dust.

p.s. -- There’s a random interview snippet in between “Yard Trip #7″ and “Flower Web,” where the band is asked that eternal question, “If you were trees, what kind of trees would you be,” to which they are prompted to respond, “Screaming Trees!”

WOLF PARADE - Thin Mind

2020 Canada clear translucent vinyl pressing on Royal Mountain Records.

@thedollarcrate The boys are back, and they’re still great.

This is the Canadian pressing of the new Wolf Parade album Thin Mind.

It is NOT a Sub-Pop issue, but a Royal Mountain Records issue, and features the Canadian “Factor” logo on the back.

It features the “Tim Horton’s” sign on the front cover (all Canadians know what that’s about), which is different than the U.S. and European versions. It also comes with two sheets of gnarly stickers.

I was quite disappointed in the band’s previous effort Cry, Cry, Cry, only digging about a quarter of the songs.

This album is excellent, and is blazing right out of the gate with the fantastic “Under Glass”.

Mudhoney: Superfuzz Bigmuff EP (1988)

These times are ripe for Grunge nostalgia, and for all those seeking to wallow in the primordial muck of the ‘90s Seattle music scene, well, then, Mudhoney’s Superfuzz Bigmuff is your La Brea fucking Tar Pits! (*)

Released some 30 years ago, and almost three years ahead of Nirvana’s  Nevermind breakthrough, Mudhoney’s debut EP was famously named after two of the band’s favorite effects pedals (pictured above), so essential to their signature distortion.

Of course, there’s no small irony in the fact that these songs conveyed Grunge’s future aesthetic (as did photographer Charles Peterson’s iconic black-and-white concert photos) with such astonishing clarity, in total contrast to the intentionally dirty, muddy sonics abetted by these pedals.

Almost all of those fundamental alt-rock hallmarks are here!

From the soft/hard dynamics of “Need” to the raging post-hardcore maelstrom of “Chain that Door”; from the lysergic psychedelia of “Mudride” to the bass-powered slash-rock of “No One Has”; and from the plaintive mumblings-gone-apeshit of “If I Think” to the heretic sludge-metal of “In ‘n’ Out of Grace.”

Together, Mark Arm (vocals, guitar), Steve Turner (guitar), Matt Lukin (bass), and Dan Peters (drums), plus producer/engineer Jack Endino, collaborated to mix mud and honey into an unexpectedly tasty recipe.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, my copy of Superfuzz Bigmuff is a recent Sub-Pop reissue, not an original artifact, hence the nifty collectible poster.

* Yes, I’m aware of Green River and, yes, we could make similar arguments on behalf of their pioneering efforts, immediately preceding Mudhoney’s, but that’s another blog ...

Soundgarden: Screaming Life EP (1987)

By the time most of us made Soundgarden’s acquaintance in the 1990s, they’d been claimed by the Grunge movement and painted in flannel colors, making it difficult to separate the group’s late ‘80s, pre-Grunge recordings from future events, aesthetics, and marketing descriptions.

However, when I listen hard to Soundgarden’s first musical utterances on the Screaming Life EP -- and my colossal favorites, “Hunted Down” and “Nothing to Say,” in particular -- I hear the ultimate fusion of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, as channeled through a post-Black Flag, post-Hardcore perspective.

This is some of the heaviest music ever committed to tape, people, and don’t let genre definitions delineated by rock critics tell you otherwise.

Speaking of Hardcore, the blistering assault of “Tears to Forget” is obviously a textbook example; but I still don’t know quite how to describe “Little Joe,” other than, to borrow a Seinfeld script, as a sequence of “dry-heaves set to music.”

The foreboding “Entering” is much more to my liking, and Hiro Yamamoto’s closing “Hand of God” is beyond powerful: its music synched, as if by divine providence, to the sermon of an unidentified fire and brimstone preacher (“God smiled upon us,” joked producer Jack Endino).

“Now I would like friends if this evening ... We should stand there with all other of God's creatures on the curbstone And watch this march of time. Let us take our stand with them; And as we stand there I hear one of them whispering ‘He is a Hebrew sage”; He says ‘Vanity of vanities the whole thing is a vain parade’ ... It has no meaning.”

Any way you slice it, this was a remarkable opening statement from a band bound for glory, regardless of what musical genre they’re conveniently lumped into.

p.s. -- This vinyl reissue adds a bonus cut called “Sub Pop Rock City,” whose humor smacks contradicts much of Screaming Life’s mood, but would have fit like a glove on the next year’s Spinal Tap-silly Fopp EP.

Shabazz Palaces e Rizan Said actuam nas Musicbox Heineken Series em Janeiro

Shabazz Palaces e Rizan Said são os convidados da Musicbox Heineken Series no dia 25 de Janeiro. Shabazz Palaces, duo de hip-hop experimental formado por Ishmael Butler e Tendai Maraire, regressa a Lisboa em 2019. Em 2017, o grupo de Seatle lançou, em simultâneo, “Quazarz vs The Jealous Machinese” “Quazarz: Born on a Gangster Star“, duas edições com selo Sub Popque formam um díptico. Os dois…