Wolf Whistling

Best band going in England right now? WOLF PEOPLE, that’s who.

To really appreciate these guys you may have to rethink your relationship to so-called retro rock. Not unlike ELOPE and WITCHCRAFT from Sweden, London’s WOLF PEOPLE reinvent 60’s & 70’s sounds in ways that’ll get you believing it never faded away in the first place. The use of musical history here ain’t nothing like SHA NA NA’s silly 70’s/50’s shenanigans nor THE B-52’s camp 80’s/60’s fashion nor even OZRIC TENTACLES’ clueless 90’s/70’s cosmic pilfering. No, these are future-forward musicians who just happen to be coming of age at a time when lost older musics are a viable and indeed modern foundation for inspiring sonic newbuild.

I can’t take credit for discovering these guys. Mr. Nigel Cross, he of the amazing Shagrat Records label, hipped me to these guys a while back – thanks Nigel. As WOLF PEOPLE have been in holed up in Wales for the past few months recording their first full-length, I only recently got to see em do it live at cozy What’s Cookin’ in godforsaken Leytonstone. I swear I still ain’t the same since.

WOLF PEOPLE are a 5-piece who explicitly harken back to that oft-overlooked pinnacle of British music, when English whiteboy electric bluesrock was breaking out of trad American imitation in dozens of completely unexpected, uniquely inspired directions. Like bands of that original psychedelic era, WOLF PEOPLE riffs are rugged and bluebased but fold in jazzy/eastern influences seamlessly. Songs belie well thought out prog ambition, while band interplay demonstrates a deep love of complex rhythmic exploration. Full-on hardpsych freakouts are juxatposed with beautifully restrained vocals, and wildass improvs are tempered by a tense, measured decorum. A particularly English worldview shapes their thing, and it’s goddamn glorious to behold.

Yes the flute will remind you lunkheads of JETHRO TULL, while the bluesy riffs will have the more astute among you thinking Peter Green-era FLEETWOOD MAC or perhaps MIGHTY BABY. But what’s really going on here is 5 dudes at the absolute top of their respective games, inspiring/challenging each other to go one step beyond. The passion & fire stoking their train avoids any pat historical comparisons, and their singer – oh man! He is one haunted, soulful shouter fr sure.

Here it’s 2009, and you still got Brits capable of expressing themselves in ways that they, alone, will forever own. Seeing this enacted live was a true goose-bump raising experience. I can’t wait for the new CD.

WOLF PEOPLE – “Caratacas (Live)” (B-Music Migrating! Caustic! – Mutatable! Tour 7″, Battered Ornaments, 2008)

South Bay Comb Overs

Undeniably the modern world can be a cruel, precarious, ugly place. So ya just can’t blame folks for wanting to retreat to a bit: step back into familiar, less complicated times where smiles came easy, when doubt didn’t sour conviction, where belief was pure and beautiful. THE SOUTH BAY SURFERS remember such times very well. And whatever else you might wanna claim they do/don’t, THE SOUTH BAY SURFERS do believe.

I’ll always maintain that THE SOUTH BAY SURFERS aren’t a bunch of swell workaday guys with comb-overs at all, but the domestic staff who’d been on hand with mops & pails when THE CRAMPS lurched through their Gravest Hits at Napa State Metal Hospital back in ‘78. Or maybe fellas passed over as potential PANTHER BURNS after these SoCal boys tried to convince ol’ TAV it was a good idea to cover BLONDIE’s “Denise”. Not unlike THE CRAMPS/PANTHER BURNS, THE SOUTH BAY SURFERS reinvigorate our musical past with a spirit that stirs up weird Jungian memories us young ‘uns barely even knew we had. They’re living proof an extra chromosome can, given the right conditions, be a godsend.

That these cads can’t actually play their instruments and tend to work the squeakier cleaner, Ozzy & Harriet-side of oldies spectrum shouldn’t deter you in the slightest. It all serves to help me better understand where us terminally suburban white folk must trace our collective lineages back to. No I haven’t ever actually experienced them live – that is if ya don’t count rubbing shoulders with the gtrist browsing Big Bad Mamma Jamma vids in Mondo Video A Go-Go’s old San Pedro location. But I’d reckon they’re one of the only bands in the modern era who could’ve conceivably pulled off successful gigs playing with X, SUBLIME, and THE CENTIMETERS with equal panache.

Anyway I’ve still got their covers of “Lollipop” and “Rock & Roll Girls” off their lone 7″ 45 (Hot Rash Records, 1994) to spin over and over and over until my neighbours cry and my aspiring middleclass blues turn to giggles, laughs, and hoots of applause. Hey: if THE SOUTH BAY SURFERS don’t make you feel like smiling for a moment again, then no doubt you’re doomed to languish in some esthetic purgatory where COLDPLAY calls the shots forevermore. And that’s a particularly tedious whiteboy hell, fr sure.

Me I’ll side with true believers everytime. Whose gonna join me in giving em props for their righteous Paul Anka tribute?

Genesis of a Snot Nosed Kid

In the beginning, their was only the quiet tinkling of a child’s mobile swaying in the breeze above my crib. And though the earth was without form, the sound of church choirs harmonizing and my Louisiana mom playing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” on the piano could be discerned. Family witnessed this, and apparently said it was good.

And somebody said Let There Be Rock: and there was indeed rock. And the earth brought forth neighbourhood playmates, who made mention of things like KISS and THE EAGLES. And my parent’s copy of Jesus Christ Superstar (Original concept double LP, London Records, 1970) was discovered, and subsequently played to death. And it was so.

And I saw it was good.

But there went up a mist up from an AM transistor radio, and it watered my ears something fierce. And the songs were believed by me to have living soul. And their names were as follows:

1. GLEN CAMPBELL – “Rhinestone Cowboy” (Rhinestone Cowboy, 1976) Probably the first song I remember ever calling a favorite – it was a desperate choice when cornered and questioned by a precocious Jewish friend of mine about my musical interests circa ‘76. All I knew was that saying “Puff the Magic Dragon” wouldn’t make me look so hot; at least he didn’t laugh. Being from Dallas, I suppose it was easy for me to imagine what it might feel like to be a country boy with his feet in LA, like Glen. Today I don’t really approve of all this retro reevaluation of production-pop hitmen from the 60’s/70’s . . . but listening to Glen as a kid, in real time, as it was unfolding? Count me in, compadre.

2. FLEETWOOD MAC – “Don’t Stop” (Rumours, 1977) Me and my pal J. were inseparable for a couple years there in the late 70’s – we’d ride our bikes up and down the cliffs, explore uninhabited houses side by side, and rendezvous together with stolen matches to burn things deep in his backyard. But it was his family – dad always shirtless with waist-length premature grey hair, mom with bitter scowl and dangling cig, sis with fuck-it-all laugh and feathered rocker cut – that really tripped me out. My favorite memories of them were spent around the BBQ behind their house, when J.’s dad would drive his Lincoln Continental up onto the lawn, roll down all the windows, and blast FLEETWOOD MAC’s Rumours at full volume through the car stereo speakers. And oh my that party would start! J.’s older sis – totally hot in a pre-teen, 70’s rocker sorta way, dancing and singing along – she loved this one. So I loved it too.

You guys who don’t have any tangible memories from the 70’s . . . man I pity you.

3. CHEAP TRICK – “Southern Girls” (In Color, 1977) Close pal G., hip to rockin’ lightyears before me, played me this not long after it came out. I was in Heaven Tonight for weeks after. I longed to be stylish like pouty Robin Zander with his breezy hair and skinny, high-waisted pants, or downloose cool like Tom Petersson with his messy hairdo and fuck you expression. If I could’ve grown up into a teenager right then, I woulda somehow made sure this tune followed me everywhere I went.

4. STYX – “Renegade” (Pieces of Eight, 1978) What us little 8 yr old kids in the suburbs imagined punk rock sounded like, had we been aware of it, back in ‘78. All that quiet, a cappella minor-key brooding, and then Aaaaaaaaah! . . . the scream. Oh man. I admit everything after that was a major comedown, but so what! You’d just pick the needle up, drag it back an inch, and BLAMMO! be in the clouds for another 40 seconds or so. Me and G. would put on our buckskin fringe hacking jackets (please, don’t ask) and make up cool dance routines to this one – at least until his older brother would come in and for no good reason try to wrestle me to the ground. Still STYX, for one brief second, were it.

5. BILLY JOEL – “My Life” (52nd Street, 1978) An Armenian kid I knew turned me on to this and later Glass Houses, for which I thanked him dearly for a year or so. This is the closest I ever veered to something kinda/sorta annoyingly STEELY DAN sounding. But it was also the first rec I bought with lyrics included. Other than my couple-year fixation on BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN in ‘84/’85 and a similar period locked on NICK CAVE in the later ’80s, I’ve rarely paid this much to lyrics since. Can still remember every second of T. spinning this while I followed along closely with the lyric sheet . . . though I also clearly recall his wildeyed dad walking in and slapping the shit outta him for “misbehaving”. That kid had fucking great reasons to hate his parents.

Wolves in the Underworld

Caught Olympia, WA’s WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM earlier this week at the Camden Underworld, on the urgings of this black metal-loving coworker of mine and his righteous galpal. As I shy away from bands who use highly-stylized, unreadable fonts on their CD cover artwork, I’ve consequently missed out on nearly all this scene has offered up, pretty much since its VENOM inception. But as WOLVES are proud serfs in the feudal Southern Lord kingdom, this time I said hell yeah to going.

Openers POMBAGIRA – with diminutive chick drummer – gave extendo sludge the ol’ college try and came up well short, sounding more like a trail of gooey molasses that anything rhythmically compelling. I’ll admit doom is fucking tough to nail, so I’ll check back with them in a year or so. MIDDENHELM were much more together with a nutty black metal/battle metal hybrid – my pal commented that “these guys sound like early EMPEROR demos” if that means something to ya. But really: how serious can you take a singer who acted like Roger Miret of AGNOSTIC FRONT while wearing big white ear plugs onstage? Hey if I’m gonna lose some of my hearing, the least I expect is that the band is willing to do the same.

But WOLVES ripped everything/everybody else to bits in the place with a mere flick of their claws. All the little studio subtleties found on their latest Two Hunters CD – forest sound effects, female backing vocals, sonic separation – here were wiped away clean. In their place were even gnarlier twin gtrs (WOLVES are now a 4-piece) and a monumentally loud blastbeat wallop that flattened me like a pancake against the backwall. It was a heavy, multisensory experience. Their mix of brute physicality and melodious riffing bolstered a sweeping sense of grand tragedy, reminding this black metal newbie of nothing so much as THE SWANS, circa their Feel Good Now tour on the back of their great Children of God rec in 1987. But unlike THE SWANS’ Ted Parsons, this drummer wasn’t just stone pillar – he was propellor, helm, and compass on this ship, all rolled into one. Shit if all black metal was this musical, I’d be all over this stuff. See em live if you can, they’re channeling something powerful indeed.

Thanks to benn oudeman for the photo from the Underworld gig