Run the Jewels (2013)

Here's yet another example of my most favouritest favourite thing ever for which I somehow failed to get the memo. Specifically I've still been thinking of El-P as the guy from Company Flow and was somehow unaware of the existence of Run the Jewels - now on their fourth fucking album - until a little over a year ago. It's because I'm old and I dislike the internet, music radio, streaming, kids kicking a football against my fence, and most rap magazines seem to be a complete waste of time these days, from what I can tell.

Run the Jewels came as quite a shock when I first heard them, and it's taken me a couple of days to acclimate, having finally bought myself a copy of this, their first album. The production couldn't really be the work of anyone but El-P, and yet the beats, the rhythms, the rapping border on trap music, albeit a more lyrical version; and by trap I mean the slow, low rider bass and hi-hat jittering along like some tweaker with rapid fire lines delivered over the top. It's a long, long way from El-P's roots in semi-abstract agit-prop over a chugging rhythm that always reminded me of Nocturnal Emissions; but on the other hand, he's always been eclectic, always tried new things, and I seem to recall him hanging out with Dizzee Rascal for a while. As an artist who wouldn't want to be a part of any club that would have him, I imagine he got tired of the indie ghetto, the inverted snobbery of the underground; and even with Run the Jewels being the success it has been, if the sound seems less startling on the same playlist as Lil' Yachty, the material is still thematically uncompromising, even if there's nothing quite so hard and harrowing as Patriotism, or Habeas Corpses or For My Upstairs Neighbour.

The more I listen, the more I appreciate the contrast with and contribution from Killer Mike; and the more I recognise the qualities which have rendered the work of El-P so distinctive, so essential: the grinding b-movie synth, the friction and dirt, the paradoxically epic scale invoked in combinations of broken noises, the arrestingly weird images ingeniously wrapped up in unfamiliar rhyme schemes, particularly on Sea Legs.

Trying not to walk crooked while this anchor's dropped,
But I've been out on them choppy waves,
And it's hard to say,
Where this land begins,
And that water stops.

I still don't know what any of it's about beyond that it's taking no prisoners and this time around the shout outs go to Ice Cube and Spice 1 - which is something I never thought I'd hear - and they clearly had a blast making it.

Still boldly going where no man etc. etc.

The Men with the Golden Gonads Play the Men with the Golden Gonads and Other Misses (2022)

What follows will inevitably be completely biased given my friendship with both the late Tim Webster, who formed the Men with the Golden Gonads, and Prez, who plays organ on this record. I first met Tim at the tail end of the eighties. I was unemployed and thus spent three or four hours a day in the Gruts cafe in Chatham. Tim had a guitar workshop on the opposite side of the road and employed Tim O'Leary - who took the photo of the Frankenstein monster on the cover, presumably spawn of the aforementioned workshop. Prez, formally Prasun Amin, was also a Gruts regular, as was Billy Childish who produced the album.

Anyway, we lost Tim Webster a couple of years ago, which remains upsetting, although he's thankfully well-remembered, and his legend is now fortified by this astonishing collection. He was a very busy individual back when I knew him, and seemed to be in about three or four regularly gigging bands, Johnny Gash being the main one at the time. I remember him mentioning the Men with the Golden Gonads but didn't even realise it was necessarily anything with which he was directly involved, much less that Prez had been recruited.

This is the Medway Delta sound, but distinctly the Webster variant - sharing beat music, rock 'n' roll, and rockabilly influences with the Milkshakes and others, but with all that raw punk rock energy channelled into something which, if not exactly smoother, is certainly less abrasive for the presence of a horn section. It's been called trash, probably thanks to the Cramps, but I've always felt a bit uneasy about the term, it being an often misleading label which drips with lazy irony in the wrong hands; and Tim Webster - arguably the realest motherfucker you could ever wish to meet, if you'll pardon the vernacular - was about the good stuff, not trash, and certainly nothing artistically cynical. The quota of covers on this record does not constitute a knowing wink to the camera. As with his earlier group, the Sputniks, there has always been something family friendly about Tim's music - aside from the nautical terminology, obviously - an element of the variety show but never at the expense of energy. Accordingly we get at least a couple of telly themes, notably the one from Hawaii 5-0, but delivered with a joyful fury which blows the Shadows and their like right out of the hall. Elsewhere we touch upon old school soul and even driving go-go on Ride Your Pony, yet at no point does this feel like some recreation or revival. Billy Childish has countered accusations of musical revivalism by pointing out that if it still works, then you may as well do something with it, which The Men with the Golden Gonads demonstrates to powerful effect because the sound is such that it feels as though the band are actually bashing away inside your house.

The raw power of this record is the same as you hear on anything by the Pistols or the Hamburg-era Beatles or whoever; and Tim was very good with his hands, with engines, with machinery, and seemingly able to get even the rustiest heap of scrap running again, and The Men with the Golden Gonads benefits from the same craftsmanship and attention to detail, and I doubt any tremolo twang has sounded quite this powerful, at least not since Link Wray was last open for business. Should you have somehow failed to understand the appeal of rock 'n' roll as it once was - because it's 2022 and youth culture is now a complete waste of time - this record will answer any fucking stupid questions you may still have.

Available from Spinout Nuggets unless they've all gone.

Anzahlung - What You Think is All You've Got (2022)

Let's hope that either there's more where this came from or that the pandemic lasts long enough to oblige a follow up, I wrote back in February 2021, and it seems that the secret chiefs who control the universe from behind the scenes didst heed my call, for here we are again, very much enjoying second helpings from Joe 91 and the Shend. It's the same sort of deal as before - distortion, repetition, gas-powered synths, and all recorded inside a broom cupboard (all of which should serve as a recommendation); and yet it's different, expanding on what went before, even more cinematic in places - keeping in mind that we could be talking Screen Test as much as we're talking Ben Hur or Chariots of Fire. Joe's music - assuming it's mostly him - is evolving into a sort of electronic future nostalgia, Just William on the moon or something in that direction, having moved further and further away from any of the more more obvious influences. At a similar remove from more or less everything else ever, the Shend continues to explore the depths of that same rabbit hole which provided such succour to Lewis Carroll, Thomas de Quincey and the guy who wrote all of those Tarzan books; and unlike all the chancers who habitually get it wrong, he's perfected the art of serving up riotous absurdity with an absolutely straight face, even a single tear in one eye, notably on Junkers, a song about an aeroplane which breaks your heart without it ever being entirely clear quite why.

Amazing.

+DOG+ - The Miracle Ending is Laughter (2022)

I've been listening to this for a couple of months without being quite sure what to make of it, possibly because it's a beautifully produced vinyl album rather than the customary CD, and I generally listen to each under different conditions. Previous releases having been on compact disc, +DOG+ has been something I tend to experience on headphones while I'm out and on the move with a CD Discman. Listening at home through speakers, as I'm now doing, is a surprisingly different affair, emphasising qualities I usually miss - unless this is a significant departure from previous releases.

Most obvious is that The Miracle Ending is Laughter seems an almost ambient work and far less in your face, despite retaining the familiar sound of broken electrics, mains hum, and acoustic interference. Whether illusory or not, this shift in focus facilitates greater appreciation of the sonic textures involved, here abstracted from the customary assault; and Time is a Funny Thing, which additionally makes use of a drum kit borders on free jazz in terms of mood. Distortion aside, +DOG+ seem to make use of a great many sounds and effects which might ordinarily have fallen through the net as everyone else races to embrace the loudest, most piercing feedback and noise ever to burst an ear drum - electronic hum, the interference of an old condenser mic held too close to a television screen, the static pop and click of a failing transistor; although before we completely turn into Pierre Schaeffer, A Lost Season comes as a reminder of what it's like to be run over by agricultural machinery. The Miracle Ending is Laughter may superficially sound like a number of other things inhabiting the noisesphere, but even with these bare recordings rendered plein air sans echo, reverb or what have you, there's a cumulative effect, something at least as hypnotic as picking at a bandage when ill, and which is almost psychedelic or folksy by some sense - which is probably why their artwork often reminds me of bands such as Pink Floyd, an impression underscored here with the lavishly rustic gatefold cover.

One day I'll make sense of all this, but in the mean time The Miracle Ending is Laughter is beautifully confusing.

Heartbreakers - LAMF (1977)

The New York Dolls were once quite important to me, and have remained so, impressions to the contrary stemming only from my making time to listen to other things because spending your entire life obsessively listening to just one band is fucking nuts, obviously. Despite which, I never got around to properly hearing the Heartbreakers until this year, even though I liked everything I'd heard and was pretty sure they would be right up my street. I plead poverty and there once having been so many records I liked at any one time that I never could have bought them all.

Anyway, this being reissued reminded me of its having existed and so here I am. The reissue was inspired by someone having found the master tapes and given the thing a decent mix, because apparently the rest of you have been listening to the shit version all these years. That's what it says on the cover. I haven't heard the shit version, although the announcement reminds me a little of claims regarding the muddy quality of the first two Dolls albums, both of which sound fantastic to me, so who knows?

LAMF is an older, slightly wiser, less hysterical Dolls captured at about three in the morning after the weirder drugs have mostly worn off, just before everyone gets their second wind. Some bloke on the internet described it as the greatest rock 'n' roll album of all time, which seems fair, despite it not being Machine Gun Etiquette. Listening to this, it's not difficult imagining the Heartbreakers sharing a stage with the Pistols and the Damned. It's bluesier, definitely New York spawned, and pops and crackles with a breezily spiky energy that probably shouldn't be possible given how much arm candy was allegedly involved.

Honestly, every last song is pure spun gold, although the review probably could have been left at features Born to Lose because I'm not sure you even need further information, and I don't even want to think about the sort of person who would. The Heartbreakers were the opposite of ELO, and I don't know if there can be any higher recommendation.