RECORDSMusic Reviews - The Embargo IssuePublished June, 2010
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TONI BRAXTON
Pulse
Atlantic
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 Toni Braxton’s music is a half step above Muzak. It always was, and it always will be. She’s a super-hot babe—I get that—but who the hell is actually listening to her music? She’s not writing high-fructose pop jams like fellow “hottie” Beyoncé. Her principal audience must be middle-aged dudes who have a thing for sultry R&B babes, but who think a Beyoncé CD in their glove compartment might raise eyebrows. If my theory’s correct, I’m betting there are some wildly pornographic insert-booklet photos I missed out on by downloading this instead of getting the CD. At least I hope there are, or else the poor chumps who bought this got nothing.
FELLATIO KEYES |
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SCARFACE
Dopeman Music
Facemob |
More than a barf face, this one deserves a sad face. There was a time in my adolescence when the Geto Boys could break my trembling heart. Their music had that terrifying, portentous quality of the best rap. Their enduring influence on Texan rap is part of what’s made Scarface your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper. Unfortunately, like so many greats before him, success fatted Scarface, and now he’s reduced to parroting the same boring rap tropes we’ve heard a bazillion times before.
BEN REMARKABLE |
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HEALTH
Disco2
Lovepump United
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 I don’t get this dubstep thing. You hear one song that goes wom wom wom! and you’re like, “Huh, that’s kinda cool,” but then every damn song sounds the same. Whereas some people just make lame shit and then put a donk on it, there are a few great electronic groups who’ve moved away from the shittiness of only using push-button technology to produce robo-tunes. Pictureplane’s great. Crystal Castles rule. Small Black and Cold Cave are good. Tobacco is awesome. And of course, Health. This CD is remixes of Health songs by other people, some of whom I just mentioned as ruling. There’s something nostalgic about these songs in a way that isn’t laid on too thick or fakely. There’s a fun dancey-ness and a cold sadness. Synths that sound full and honest; rhythms that are uncommon and thoughtful. This is going to be a good summer CD for when the party’s fading and everyone’s either making out, passed out, or trying to figure out where their lives turned to shit. Yay, Health!
ORORO ABOBO |
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MORCHEEBA
Blood Like Lemonade
PIAS |
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FLYING LOTUS
Cosmogramma
Warp |
This guy did a pretty good remix of “A Milli” that made me think he might be more than “that guy who does bumper music for Adult Swim.” There’s nothing wrong with writing throwaway beats as your day job, but one would hope you’d put a little more TLC into a label release. Almost everything on Cosmogramma sounds like a Clark D-side: the sort of stuff that, surprise, would work perfectly as background music for bumpers on a late-night cable program.
HORSES |
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INDIAN JEWELRY
Totaled
We Are Free |
These guys rule. They sound just like you would expect from their name: primal beats that are simple and loud with crystally synths and warbly modulated vocals. This is taking goth back to a place I want it to go. What’s with all the triangles, Indians, and jewelry references in music these days? Humanity is one mass organism, and we all seem to receive the same ideas at once. That, or most people are just biters.
DODI DALESSI |
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During my first year of getting stoned, I was really into Morcheeba. I never made the plunge into full-on chill culture, but now every time I hear that girl’s fey, breathy trip-hop voice it feels like someone’s dug up a photo of me with a soul patch and velvet shirt hanging out in a room with a bunch of Buddhist crap in it. I can’t even begin to imagine how many stupid people were conceived to this shit.
MY FRIEND HORTENSE |
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VARIOUS ARTISTS
Local Customs: Lone Star Lowlands
Numero Group |
This comp of bar groups from Beaumont, Texas, is an amazing portrait of that part of the 70s before punk or even metal caught on, when “being in a band” meant you looked like a long-haired roustabout in your 30s and sang lite-bluesy Bread-esque odes to buying a house/having a kid/cheating on your old lady that sound like they were recorded in a jam session where everybody was sitting on their amps. If you’ve ever seen Lindsay Anderson’s O Lucky Man! you know what I’m on about. I call it “Satisfaction Rock.”
LUKE “THE HAND” ANDREWS |
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HARVEY MILK
A Small Turn of Human Kindness
Hydra Head |
I’m probably stupid, but this just reminds me of Sleep’s Dopesmoker played slower, with less stuff happening, in a less interesting way. I like this sort of thing, but guitars that go grun grun grun grun grun gruh grah grun grun can get as tiresome as that rockabilly dooba dooba bass line. I’ve already got my Sleep records. I’ve got my Eyehategod records and my old Harvey Milk records. This stoner/doom/sludge thing isn’t exactly a genre that encourages trying new things, so you could buy this or just slow down some other record to 16 RPM if you have an older record player that’ll do that.
TIM SONNENTEMPEL |
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THE ENDTABLES
S/T
Drag City |
If you’re the kind of punk who lives for Killed by Death comps then you should pogo your way down to wherever you get punked in the musical sense and grab a copy of this awesome little CD. It collects two EPs recorded in 1979 by this Kentucky-based band no one ever heard of, along with seven live tracks. The songs are lively punk songs (you know what punk sounds like), and the vocals are these cold monotone words delivered with slightly odd timing like the singer’s trying to keep up about half the time. It almost sounds like he’s about to cry from shyness. This is special stuff.
HAM GRAVY |
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FIX MY HEAD/ KNIFE IN THE LEG
Split 12-inch
Inimical |
Fix My Head are OK; Knife in the Leg suck—they have a song about how they hate record collectors and another about how they hate corporate sponsorship. I guess they have no real problems so they had to make a few up. Come on, you guys, just sing about how you hate your dads.
KNIFE IN THE DICK |
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CARISSA’S WIERD
They’ll Only Miss You When You Leave: Songs 1996-2003
Hardly Art |
My mom once overheard a conversation between two women where one of them asked the other if there were strings in some past relationship. Her friend responded, “Not just strings, there were strings beyond strings.” There’s a lot of strings on this record, and I hate them all. Guitar, violin, piano. Fucking strings. On Mother’s Day, my mom overheard two women in the grocery store. The first wished the other a happy Mother’s Day. The second woman said, “Thanks, happy Mother’s Day to you as well,” and then admitted that she didn’t have any children. Then the second one said that she didn’t either. My mom overhears funny stuff and she tells it back to me. That should be a CD. If I could replace this music with funny things my mom told me, I could be rich, or at least the world would know my mama’s charm.
SUSAN B. FANTASY |
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THE GOODNIGHT LOVING
The Goodnight Loving Supper Club
Dirtnap |
I kind of hate this record but I can’t help but like it. It’s so damn poppy that despite it expressing feelings that I am incapable of feeling, I still can’t help but tap my hooves in time with the grooves. I feel like Ren when Stimpy makes the happy helmet for him and it forces him to be happy and nice against his will. This is pretty great pop-country/folk-garage.
THE GRANDADDY OF ALL LIARS |
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NERVE CITY
Sleepwalker EP
Sacred Bones
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Nerve City has released records on a lot of the good small labels like Kill Shaman and HoZac so it was inevitable that they’d put out a Sacred Bones release. The title track is sad and cold but also motivating, evoking the feeling of going through the tasks of your day while struggling through deep depression. There’s a beautiful country twang to the guitar, the nervous fast pace of early punk, and all the echoes that you’ve come to expect from modern good music. This record balances prettiness and abrasiveness perfectly.
DANK BLOGS |
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MALE BONDING
Nothing Hurts
Sub Pop |
This is the kind of music I wish normal people liked instead of Dave Matthews. This record is full of fast pop-punk with the vocals wayyyyy in the background and drums up front. If you like driving music, then bike over to the store and get yourself a copy of Nothing Hurts.
BABO ELEWA |
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THEE OH SEES
Warm Slime
In the Red |
These guys sure do release a lot of records. I don’t mind, though. This one’s particularly good. The first song opens with some chirping birds and then slams you with poppy guitar janglings. Then it contorts into a different thing and keeps going. The first track is 14 minutes. Remember NOFX’s song “The Decline,” the 18-minute punk song that never ended? This song is a lot better than that shit. There’s agro-man music in here and wimpy goodness too. They got a song called “Everything Went Black” that has a marching beat, occasional guitars, and a pretty refrain. Interesting stuff is at work here.
ERNEST EARNINGS |
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THE REACTORS
“I Want Sex” 7-inch
Last Laugh |
This is a reissue of a great 1979 New York punk single that had an original pressing of 100 copies. The original has sold for up to $1,000, so this is a thing that people have been looking forward to. Killed by Death had this single on one of their comps but now you get to own a facsimile of the original single that’s cleaner than the KBD version. “I Want Sex” is a classic punk jam that all the kids love. The B-side is called “Seduction Center.” I guess the Reactors were horny guys.
LABORATORY BOBBY |
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WOVEN BONES
In and Out and Back Again
HoZac |
It’s fast, buzzing, punky rock with Johnny Thunders-style vocals. Nothing new, but nothing wrong with it either.
MIDNITE WRANGLER |
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VARIOUS ARTISTS
Housecore Records Compilation, Volume 1
Housecore |
This is a comp of bands on Phil Anselmo’s record label. Did you know he started a fire in his house as a prank on his sister when he was 15 and ended up burning down his own house? I wonder at what point in that prank did he realize that the prank was on him and his house? They should change the name of the label to Housefire. Enough dicking around. Pantera ruled. This two-CD set is no Cowboys From Hell but I still like it a lot. The first disc is all metal—Eyehategod and Soilent Green and shit like that. Disc 2 is mostly quieter and has some neat Mike Patton-y weirdness. There’s one song by the Sursiks that’s just an answering-machine message looped over and over while they build a song around it. I checked it out and the Sursiks did a whole album of songs they wrote built on top of answering-machine messages. I can’t tell how corny these guys are. I like corny shit. Call me Captain Cornball.
CAPTAIN CORNBALL |
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SUCKERS
Wild Smile
Frenchkiss
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The cover art features a portrait of a mandrill, the biggest monkey there is. Appropriate, since Suckers have been climbing the monkey bars of success and are quickly becoming the biggest monkeys in the zoo. I wish that the monkeys who came to their shows weren’t so dull, but what can you do? They make pretty and well-crafted songs that seem influenced by Bowie more than anyone else. Large songs that build with unfamiliar sounds, group singing, and slick changes. This music is destined for being used in commercials, and I don’t even mean that as an insult. I could see “Roman Candles” being used for a car commercial where someone’s having a bad day but then it stops raining and he picks up his multi-ethnic group of smiling friends as they head to the beach, no acne or deformities among them. It’s been so long since I heard a lavishly produced rock record that I liked that I don’t really know how to process this. Animal Collective bite the big one in my book, but MGMT’s last record was pretty good. These guys use less electro sounds than those guys and have more of a rustic folkiness to their vocal delivery. I’m going to get shit for liking this, I know it.
THE TOILET COBRA |
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THE HOLD STEADY
Heaven Is Whenever
Vagrant |
These guys are the new Dave Matthews. Same vocal delivery and everything. This is country rock for people with no problems.
CONNOR CONDON |
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EFFI BRIEST
Rhizomes
Sacred Bones |
Hey, all right, an all-girl band that isn’t “twee.” These guys are more Slits-ish or Kleenex-esque. They take their name from a book, or possibly the movie based on the book, about a young woman who gets married too young, believes in ghosts, has an affair, and gets completely alienated from everyone she knows. There are awesome disco bass lines and drums with intense wailing over them and other instruments sometimes.
RIZMO RAZMO |
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JOHNNY BLACKBURN & MARY LAUREN
Echoes of Love’s Reality
Bella Terra |
This is some good gravy, and my ears are mashed potatoes. I don’t usually get down with acoustic folk, but this is better than your typical Bob Dylan wannabe or acoustic-guitar girl. The first song is for flute lovers, and maybe I like flute because it’s an uncommon instrument in pop, or maybe it’s because my mom played it when I was little, but I love fluting. Such a beautiful sound. If you like delicate hippie pop in the vein of Donovan then get this awesome rerelease of a record that was available for a short time back in 1981.
ROMY OPPENHEIMER |
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SWEET TALKS
The Kusum Beat
Soundway
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This is some excellent Afrobeat from 1974. Sweet Talks was one of the most popular bands in Ghana and made music with fast African rhythms and other instruments that play jangling melodies. This record has more of an island-music sound to it than the music put out by Fela Kuti, which is generally a little jazzier. If the idea of 12 shirtless Ghanians running a musical train on your day makes you smile, then give this a listen after a while.
BLETCH BELSON |
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DEVO
Something for Everybody
Warner Bros. |
I wanted to review this CD but it’s one of those stupid restricted CDs that don’t play on computers and I got rid of my “discman,” oh, a decade ago. So I asked my friend Raff, who is an insane Devo fan, what he had heard about it, and this is what he told me: “I’ve only heard clips of the songs. I like ‘Fresh’ especially the ‘Cry-y-y-y-y-y-y’ part (they sound like apes), but it is a bit slick. I think ‘Watch Us Work It’ is the best song they’ve ever done! I also love the songs ‘What We Do’ and ‘Don’t Shoot.’ Those songs are VERY DEVO! For 50-somethings I think they still have something to say. Devolution will not be televised!” Thanks, nerd.
MEG SNEED |
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AARON PETA
I’m Not a Hipster
Self-released |
He’s got crates of this CD in his house, and his roommates keep on asking him why he pressed 5,000 copies of his stupid record. “It’s gonna catch on, guys!” It’s not going to catch on.
FLETCHER FELGER |
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VARIOUS ARTISTS
Lagos Disco Inferno
Academy LPs/
Voodoo Funk
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Voodoo Funk is one of the best music blogs on the net. Frank, the man who runs it, will take out ads in Africa and have posters made letting people know that he’s looking for records. He’s a record collector’s record collector. There are photos of him and his friends wearing heavy-duty painters’ masks while digging through warehouses that are overflowing with humongous piles of records, mining the mess for the very best. He brings it back to New York, digitizes it, and releases incredible mixes of African disco, soul, and rock ’n’ roll. I’ve been DJing music I got from him for years and this is his first real official physical release. It is the motherload of disco sung with foreign accents that drifts into traditional African melodies and sometimes includes delicate flutes or oddly intense lyrics. The production on this record is a lot stronger than whatever production is done on the mixes Frank posts to his blog.
CELULON THE MAGNIFICENT |
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 Anonymous, on Aug 24, 2010 wrote:
Hey Vice, can you review Living with Owusu & Hannibal next month so it’ll become popular enough to be on mediafire for me? thanks | | Anonymous, on Aug 23, 2010 wrote:
disco2 sounds like a baby shower soundtrack. then again i ended up getting pretty drunk at the last baby shower i went to | | Anonymous, on Aug 19, 2010 wrote:
8ball and mjg were around before three six mafia, dumb shit. lern2wikipedia. any hip hop or rap review you give henceforth is moot | | Anonymous, on Aug 18, 2010 wrote:
Good point, please review bands that aren’t just your friends or random crap bands. | | Anonymous, on Aug 18, 2010 wrote:
Does Vice always review albums that nobody cares about? There’s thousands of great albums floating around right now and the selection above is NOT under that title. | | Anonymous, on Aug 18, 2010 wrote:
update the review section, fags! | | Anonymous, on Aug 18, 2010 wrote:
Carissa’s Weird is embarrassingly bad music.
The whole Seattle music white kid indy music scene is so awful its unbelievable. | |
| alikamonster, on Aug 12, 2010 wrote:
yeah you are fucking alone on that you lame | | Anonymous, on Aug 10, 2010 wrote:
am i alone in thinking Pantera suck and dont deserve to be mentioned in the same paragraph with EYEHATEGOD. | | Anonymous, on Jul 23, 2010 wrote:
Know what’s weird? Devo’s review is under the "weird music" section and not under the "electronic music" section, despite having a drawing of a Devo member in the banner. | |
| Joeynaco, on Jun 30, 2010 wrote:
the bumper music on AS is sick, dont hate | | Anonymous, on Jun 27, 2010 wrote:
The Decline by NOFX is one of the greatest songs ever. | | Anonymous, on Jun 27, 2010 wrote:
(in reference to flying lotus review) ennio morricone did background music too, does that make him lame as well? | | Anonymous, on Jun 26, 2010 wrote:
ayo have y’all heard the new wavves it’s just bangin’ | | Anonymous, on Jun 25, 2010 wrote:
So did Nas FINALLY move to Africa? | | Anonymous, on Jun 25, 2010 wrote:
"Killed by Death had this single on one of their comps" KBD was never an organized thing. they’re all boots done by different people. | | Anonymous, on Jun 25, 2010 wrote:
i think the dave mathews/hols steady comparison is spot on...go to a show, and take a look at who’s around you | | Anonymous, on Jun 25, 2010 wrote:
How on earth do you think the Hold Steady sounds like Dave Matthews or country? | | Anonymous, on Jun 25, 2010 wrote:
You’re do hilariously far off on 8-ball and MJG that it’s hard to take anything anyone at your magazine ever says about rap seriously. 3-6 begged their way on early 8-Ball tracks (check out the Swishahouse records from the early - mid 90’s). You need to understand how influence works and what flows from what before you put yourself out on a limb. | | Anonymous, on Jun 25, 2010 wrote:
you couldn’t even review the devo cd? | | Anonymous, on Jun 25, 2010 wrote:
carissa’s wierd was great. your music reviews are not | | Anonymous, on Jun 23, 2010 wrote:
Whenever Vice reviews an all girls band they compare them to the Slits. Ridiculous | | Anonymous, on Jun 23, 2010 wrote:
I was hoping to see a vice opinion of b42d, but I guess it was wise for them not to touch it. | | Anonymous, on Jun 22, 2010 wrote:
Being willfully ignorant is so 2003.
8-Ball and MJG were legends in Memphis back when 3-6 was still called the Backyard Posse and Tommy Wright III and Playa Fly still did albums with Paul and Jay.
| | Anonymous, on Jun 20, 2010 wrote:
Health - Maniac Meat?
fail | | |
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