Clutch – Strange Cousins From the West

Weathermaker (2009)

Clutch, those grizzled Maryland rock veterans, have been kicking out various forms of jam since the early 90s. Their sound has taken in post-hardcore, aggro-stoner and retro boogie rock. Which makes us wonder: which Clutch will turn up this time?

It’s pretty impossible to dislike Clutch, unless you dislike rock itself. Firm cult favourites from their debut (‘A Shogun Named Marcus’ is an underground anthem) and even before (Legendary label Earache released the ‘Impetus’ EP), they brought the mid-90s stoner/space rock as magnificently as Kyuss and Monster Magnet. And, as lynchpin of the former, Josh Homme, has carved out a second career in QOTSA, Clutch, like the sea, seem eternal in their restless power.

After nearly losing it at the end of the 1990s, with the unfocused Jam Room, 2001’s self-explanatory Pure Rock Fury saw them fired up once more. Strange Cousins From the West is their fourth since then; the latest in a run of consistent quality. And, while the quintet (since 2004) have consistently evolved – within their blues-hardcore template – this latest one sounds oddly familiar.

Rarely does a post-Nirvana band release nine albums, discounting the weekly releases from various distortion-pedal crews. So it should be unsurprising when the songs on said ninth album are reminiscent of past glories. Especially when those glories are worth revisiting. Yes, those snaking, catchy-yet-complex riffs, recent-historical urban mythologising and vintage sound point to one thing: career-high The Elephant Riders (1998).

Of course, if Strange Cousins… were as good as that, this would be an automatic 9. That it isn’t is no shame, as it would also mean it was superior to any QOTSA album after 2000. Or any Black Mountain album at all.

Clutch spoil us from the outset with, as Westwood might say, hit after heavy hit. ‘Motherless Child’ rolls in on one of the heaviest bouncing riffs since Entombed redefined ‘death’n’roll’ over a decade ago. If ‘Struck Down’s riff isn’t instantly lodged in your head like a psychotic lumberjack’s axe, then your dope-smoking has affected your short-term memory. ’50,000 Unstoppable Watts’ looks on paper like a song Dr. Brown might write, but he’d never have been this good at fusing science with Hendrix riffs.

Album highlight is the frankly bizarre ‘Abraham Lincoln’. As if Akimbo’s shark attack concept album last year wasn’t surreally elegiac enough, Neil Fallon and co. bring a gross-years-tardy tribute on a slow, martial beat and ever-awesome matching guitar and vocal melody. This isn’t wacky stuff, though: these boys mean it when they tell his assassin: ‘no grave for you’. Even odder is the fact that this is ostensibly a call-back to 1995 song ‘I have the body of John Wilkes Booth’. Talk about setting a president. Sorry.

The musicologist in me is ever-uncomfortable about white men bringing the blues-rock. And looking backward for inspiration. It’s also frustrating that the band insists on such a clean guitar sound. While it’s undeniably accessible to the curious, the playing suggests a heavier sound would be infinitely more satisfying. Like, say Andy Sneap’s work with Iron Monkey, or Steve Feldman’s with Unida.

However, this isn’t the dull Black Keys. And Strange Cousins… is sufficiently imaginative to work. The heaviness? It’s still more energising than Wolfmother, Kasabian, the Enemy, or whatever passes for big rock these days. If you like the riffs and weirdness, get this listened.

Om – God is Good

Drag City (2009)

How minimalist can a band get? On its second album recorded by bare bones engineer Steve Albini, the hip-sludge veteran band find its duo halving, in an apparent attempt to find out. But ex-Sleep man Al Cisneros does have a little help from his friends.

Om made their name after the death of stoner doom legends Sleep by doing what they do best: heavy riffs, and lots of them. Self aware if nothing else, their debut was named Variations on a Theme. But post-metal, like any chrono-centric sub-genre, ages rapidly, and what was once cool can soon find itself sounding hackneyed. Just ask Jesu.

Om is aware of this pitfall. The sludgy, repetitive riffing of the earlier albums has fallen by the wayside, seemingly sloughed off as a butterfly might forget its past as a caterpillar. That’s not to say this is as bright or beautiful as such description might evoke. In fact this is more of a moth: refusing to draw attention to itself; at home in the must and dusk of the dimmest recesses.

As with your average moth, there is subtle variety and intrigue in current Om’s earth-tone and darkness. The songs are shorter than they were on the first pair of Billy Anderson-produced records. Where once was no small amount of trepidation at slogging through another twenty minutes of riffs, there is now a healthy curiosity as to where Om will take us.

That is not to say Anderson is not a great producer (he’s sorted Melvins, Neurosis and 7 Year Bitch at their peaks). It’s also not to say there is no twenty-minute song on here. Unlike recent albums from Emeralds and James Blackshaw, the epic on this album is not the best. ‘Thebes’ has a repetitive charm, but its faux-mystical lyrics and vocal reliance on the root note mean it grates if you don’t play its game.

The record really picks up on the other three songs. They are a combined fifteen minutes, and the journey on which they take us is far more satisfying. The middle-eastern themes on here, while preferable to High On Fire‘s Middle Earth aesthetic, are sonically fine while never threatening authenticity. The music generally is fantastic.

Mostly sounding only like Om, and like no Om in the past, there are some nods elsewhere. There is philosophical similarity to recent Earth, in that both bands have sacrificed bludgeon for trance-through-clarity. The sound on God is Good is clean, with a deep mix full of interesting instrumentation. There are even pipe-based moments that could have featured on Ghost’s fabulous Hypnotic Underworld, from 2004.

As this decade ends, hopefully more bands take a leaf out of the books of Om and Earth. SunnO))) are certainly carving their own path, but there are too many me-too bands, making like an albatross round the neck of once inventive metal. Noisecore imploded at its peak, like a dying star, a decade ago. Can the post-metal masses please get their coats and shuffle out the door while a shred of dignity remains?

Future Islands and Ear Pwr


Royal Park Cellar, 13 September 2009

It was just another low-energy Sunday evening in the half-local, half-student Royal Park pub. Few engaged with the balding pool tables, and the karaoke machine thankfully held a dignified silence. But, in the pub’s cellar, a number of creative characters were setting about lighting up the evening’s too-early dusk with performances that were engaging and inspiring.

After a respectable local opening band (a guitar and cello pairing whose name must have disappeared into the ether), the stage was set for Ear Pwr, based in Baltimore. At odds with its common perception, from The Wire, of a metropolis populated entirely by pushers, users and bent government officials, are a loose crew of exciting poppy noisemakers. Chief among these would be band of the winter Animal Collective, but just bubbling under are Ponytail and – yep! – Ear Pwr.

While the stage may have been set for this pair, they rarely actually stood on it. Setting up their table of machinery and gubbins, Devin and Sarah opted to set the noises, beats and loops running, before dancing, meandering and staggering about the room. It was a creditable performance: there may only have been ten people in the room, but if their energy was in any way diminished, it certainly didn’t show. Main vocalist Sarah bounced around while singing her electro-nursery rhymes from their brilliant album, about beams of light, title track’s Super Animal Bros. And, err, ‘future eyes’ – though sadly not the addictively exuberant ‘Sparkly Sweater’.

Devin, when he wasn’t setting his musical plates spinning, was wrapping the microphone cord around himself, wrapping it around Sarah, providing on-and-off vocal assistance to Sarah, and writhing about on the cellar’s rather unpleasant floor. They departed after a brief, and rather thrilling, set (not only were Ear Pwr the support act, but their summer highlight album is only half an hour long), but promised to return in November. At that point, their new EP – and new drummer – should be in place.

Having never heard Greenville, North Carolina’s Future Islands (now also based in Maryland) before this evening, I was in for a scintillating surprise. After the childlike, if drug addled, glee of Ear Pwr, trepidation met the headlining trio of thick-set men with synths. By the end of the opening song, your reviewer was an enthusiastic convert.

Future Islands’ album, 2008’s Wave Like Home, is an intriguing blend of well-written synth songs and super-camp vocals. While it’s a solid album in its own right, it gives little indication as to the ferocious talent of singer Samuel Herring. Looking for all the world like Jack Black’s stunt double, he also sounds superficially like the camp-heroic Tenacious D frontman. It soon becomes clear, though, that Herring is a singular talent. He rips his own songs a new arse, a combination of Tom Waits’ gruff personality, Mike Patton’s ever-present air of pastiche, and Henry Rollins’ aggression and brilliant shape-throwing.

While self-effacing about his talking prowess, Herring makes for a charismatic frontman, winning the now-full room over with his chat and singing alike. He worked up a furious sweat early, and it’s not hard to see why: he sings hard. He reaches deep down within himself, and pulls out a level of vocal intensity not seen since Carla Bozulich brought her inimitable brand of beautiful, guttural fire and brimstone to a Leeds church last year. When he prefaces ‘Little Dreamer’ with the words ‘this was a happy story… but now it’s a sad story’, you believe him. Especially as he leaves his still-beating heart throbbing away on the floor, for all to see.

Whether the song was ‘Beach Foam’ from the album, or ‘The Happiness of Being Twice’, from this year’s ‘Feathers & Hallways’ single, Future Islands never stopped entertaining. The bassist was occasionally inspired in his playing, but both he and the synth player were essentially there to ably back Herring’s cabaret emoting.

Future Islands are currently working on their new album. Though both they and Ear Pwr give off an air of piss-take at times, the new material should be interesting, at least. If Ear Pwr can flesh out the faux-naive charm of Super Animal Brothers III, and Future Islands somehow manage to harness the power of their force-of-nature singer in the studio, the next year should belong to Baltimore.

Ear Pwr

I’m off to see this lot tomorrow. Technically today, in the calendar sense, but really tomorrow. In the sleeps sense. I had meant to review the Ear Pwr album for Fact, but unfortunately didn’t get round to it after returning from Iran. Anyway, their album has the same name as this song, and is brilliant, in that high-energy, funfunfun AWK/Captain Ahab/Be Your Own PET kinda way. And it’s quite a short album. 16 tracks (some segues) in just over half an hour means you can listen to it before dinner without spoiling your appetite. Boomkat tends to have it cheap, so get it bought.

I found out on Friday that they’re playing my town on Sunday. They’re only the support act, but it should be an enjoyable occasion. Watch this video to get an idea of what they’re about. My only source of trepidation comes from the fact that they appear to be a couple of ironic, cooly-cool coolsters. The kind of people who’d be more at home playing the Faversham, that home of the faux-cool in Leeds. And it’d be a shame if they were super-ironic 80s bandwagon jumpers, as that’s totally not the idea I get from their album.

The music is sweet and energetic, and not at all 1980s. It’s dance music that rocks, and the singer (called Sarah?) sings with a naive enthusiasm that’s really catchy and joyous. So I’d rather the latter description to be the case than the ironic one, but I’m not sure it’s possible to be in a band nowadays and not be taking the piss to some extent. Maybe I’m cynical, I don’t know. They’re from the same area as Ponytail and Animal Collective, so maybe that means something. They’re relatively unironic for the kind of music they do. Anyway, hoping to enjoy the gig; hoping the headliner is good; hoping to write it all up at some point. Suspense!