Dante Vs. Zombies

I have no idea how long this CD was sitting in my pile, though it came out, apparently, in April, so I am certainly not claiming any "there first" rights. It is one of the uglier CDs I've gotten in a while (see below), and also packaged in one of those minimal gatefold CDR cases. Looked like shit..really...and my standards are low.

So I put it on, thinking I could spin it once and recycle it (yes, I know, six months late, I've been busy). And the thing is, it's pretty crazy. It sounds just like Starlite Desperation.

There's a reason for that, actually. It's got two guys from Starlite Desperation in it: Dante White-Aliano and Jeff Ehrenberg. I'm pretty sure Dante is the "Dante" part...perhaps that makes Ehrenberg a zombie?

Anyway, it's very flashy, glammy, decadent R&R, swathed in reverb and powered by the kind of sexy bass that sounds like the string is falling off. (Which string? The low one is the only one I hear.) White-Aliano is prone to silly, nearly-Seussian lyrics, so that the singing sounds like a particularly feral, virulent attack of the rhyming dictionary. But never mind, fun stuff.

New mix

I made a mix of stuff that I’ve been listening to lately, mostly for reviews and interviews. Here’s a track listing:

Katjon Band “Red Flag” This Jon Langford and Kat from the Ex in a sort of one-off collaborion.

Wilderness “Strand the Test of Time” I'm interviewing these guys for Copper Press by email sometime soon...no idea what to ask them.

Fabulous Diamonds, “Untitled” Fantastic no waver duo from Australia, check out the detuned sax at the end.

Palms, “Monte Alban” Really hard-to-classify, trans-continental duo with a new-ish album out on Rare Book Room, which used to be mostly a studio but somehow turned into a label.

Starlite Desperation, “We Don’t Do Time” Fuck yeah, rock and roll.

Jay Reatard, “Painted Shut” See above.

Boston Spaceships, “Two Girl Area” Pollard with a pretty damn good band sounding exactly like himself...a good thing in my book.

Mogwai, “Batcat” The loud one on their new album.

All the Saints, “Fire on Corridor X” New psych-grunge-heavy band from Atlanta that got signed to Touch & Go while I wasn't looking.

XX Teens, “Round” Hmmm...already fading on this one, but I do like the drums. Anybody else thinking "Keep them Separated" by the Offspring?

Giant Sand, “Muck Machine” My fave track off proVISIONS with that loopy, bloopy bass line.

Hush Arbors, “The Light” This is one of the louder, more rock-oriented tracks off a really beautiful new freak folkish outing from Sun Burned Hand of the Man's Keith Wood.

Woven Hand, “The Beautiful Axe” My favorite Old Testament prophet/Joy Division fan, Dave Eugene Edwards...off his new album Ten Stones.

Boduf Songs, “Spirit Harness” So quiet, so devastating.

Larkin Grimm, “Ride that Cyclone” Omigod, just interviewed this woman, Michael Gira's latest find, here backed by his other new band, Fire on Fire...crazy, dark bluegrass sort of.

Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan, “Back Burner” Also talked to Isobel finally, who said that the guitar lick at the end of this piece (Dave MacGowan BTW) is her very favorite sound on the excellent Sunday at Devil Dirt.

Here's the link:

Crazy glam rock and spooky whispers

Here are two reviews of albums that could not be more different...well, maybe they could, but they're pretty different. Loud stuff first, quiet stuff later.

From Dusted:

Starlight Desperation
Take It Personally
Infrasonic

Take It Personally is the Starlite Desperation’s third full-length, and their first formal outing since Violate a Sundaewas released by Capitol’s Cold Sweat imprint in 2004. The songs, apparently, had a long gestation period. You can hear a couple of them on a WFMU radio show from 2004, DJ’d by Dusted contributor Mike Lupica. Three of the best cuts – "We Don’t Do Time", "My Violin" and "I Lost My Bees" – made their first appearance on a tour-only CD called We Don’t Do Time.

Despite the evident time lag, there’s nothing stale about this CD. It’s fresh, taut and ferocious, its garage rock primitivism in uneasy equilibrium with glam-tinged flash and posing. Consider the riff on "I Lost My Bees," the bass muttering, the guitars off the rails like "Peter Gunn" gone mad. The sense of darkness, the echo, the drama all remind me of the Wipers, but there’s a lush theatricality in these tunes at odds with post-punk’s minimal aesthetic. For a good 30 seconds, on the 12/8 blues, "I Love This!!," singer Dante Adrian sounds exactly like Freddy Mercury, all flourish and preen above gritty guitar vamps.

The rest


Here's that radio show



And speaking of WFMU, why not tune in this afternoon and listen to Stephen Stapleton of Nurse with Wound? How? When? Info here.


And a video of "Spirit Army" live in Columbus last Halloween.


And on a completely different note...here's the new one from Boduf Songs, a hushed, acoustic folk (sort of) solo project from Mat Sweet. (Not Matthew Sweet, BTW.) He's got a new one out on Kranky, reviewed in today's PopMatters.

Boduf Songs
How Shadows Change the Balance
(Kranky)
US release date: 30 September 2008
UK release date: Available as import

by Jennifer Kelly

And even when we fall, we sigh, we sigh, we sigh

"All of my heros died in one day, all of them fallen away,” whispers Mat Sweet, the sole proprietor of Boduf Songs, as his third album opens, keeping slow time on acoustic guitar. “Swinging from nooses, wrists open wide.” It’s a shocking image, a violent, inexplicable verse, yet couched in such gentle sonic terms—a strum, a sigh, a wash of cymbals—that you may not hear it for what it is at first. There’s a thread of unease running through these eight minimalist reveries, a hint of supernatural dread, and yet also serenity and loveliness. They are so quiet that you really have to listen—no car CD, this one—but once you do, you are drawn in to a mysterious other space.

The rest of the review

There are a bunch of Boduf Songs, packaged up in a zip file .