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By Peter Lindblad
Inevitably, with the avalanche of releases in 2022, some great records – including compelling reissues and blazing live extravaganzas – were going to fall through the cracks. Deserving of attention, the following LPs are finally getting their day in court, so to speak. Their testimony is riveting, and it’s the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
The Damned – A Night of a Thousand Vampires: Live in London (earMUSIC)
Welcome to The Damned’s nightmare, where Captain Sensible and company sell their souls to Alice Cooper in an elaborately staged hurley-burly of underground carnivalesque mayhem. It’s a wildly entertaining bargain, campy and fun, a heady Halloween bash for the ages with a vampiric Dave Vanian serving as ringmaster.
Grisly mock murders and blood-sucking rituals are acted out with dazzling panache by the burlesque daredevils of The Circus of Horrors and fiends from TV’s “Hammer House of Horror,” as the punk-rock originators dust off some of the classics. Captain Sensible and company transformed London’s Palladium Theatre into a grotesque funhouse on the night of Oct. 28, 2019, blazing through a setlist carefully chosen for the occasion in a vivid supernova of color and grotesque violence splashed across a stunning 2-CD live set plus Blu-ray package. Vinyl options are available without the concert film, but the whirlwind combination of gaudy visuals and The Damned’s sonic fury and exhilarating drama must be seen and heard.
Experience dark, gothic readings of “Beauty of the Beast,” “Tightrope Walk” and the prickly rose “Absinthe” that envelope and mesmerize, as “A Night of a Thousand Vampires: Live in London” is reanimated by the careening “Wait for the Blackout” and “Plan 9 Channel 7” and sweeping, guitar-fueled epics “Standing on the Edge of Tomorrow,” “Curtain Call” and “Eloise.” Real venom surges through a nervy “Neat Neat Neat” before morphing into a chilling cover of Bauhaus’ iconic “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” whereas a jaunty “Grimly Fiendish” – burnished with blaring horns – and a surprisingly muscular reimagining of The Doors’ “People Are Strange” are positively festive and buoyant. And The Damned played on.
Grade: A
Rebecca Pidgeon – Parts of Speech Pieces of Sound (Toy Canteen Records)
Timed perfectly, the arrival of Parts of Speech Pieces of Sound occurred just as the buzz over the renaissance of Rebecca Pidgeon’s iconic art-pop muse Kate Bush – thanks to the cinematic placement of “Running Up That Hill” in the supernatural Netflix hit “Stranger Things” – was dying down.
Celebrated 2022 albums like the lush and captivating Dance Fever, from Florence and the Machine, and Zola Jesus’ dark, mesmerizing Arkhon, as well as Weyes Blood’s all-consuming And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow, all drank deeply from the creative wells of Hounds of Love and The Kick Inside, while Pidgeon’s atmospheric, widescreen ambition was realized on an LP inspired by yoga studies and vivid dreams. She’s comfortable in such imaginative environs.
An actress who’s shared the screen with Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Sarah Jessica Parker, Gene Hackman and William H. Macy, Pidgeon revels in immersive, verdant sounds and exotic textures, as the dreamy, piano-strewn siren song “The Blue Lagoon” seduces and she channels the wild innovation of Bjork in the windy tribal rushes of “Svayambhu” and a more mysterious “Tiny Room.” Gossamer classical strings swirl around “Silent Sound” and “I Say Your Name,” and the cacophonous “Rudradeva” sounds like Fleetwood Mac’s “Tusk” on acid, with “Savasana” and “Clouds are Clearing” living in more prayerful and meditative spaces. Wonderfully enigmatic and whimsical, Parts of Speech Pieces of Sound establishes a new sensual world.
Grade: A-
Kevn Kinney – Think About It (Self-Released)
Pulling off to the side of the road, Kevn Kinney changes vehicles for Think About It, his first solo album in almost a decade. Getting out of Drivin’ & Cryin’s gnarly, amplified Southern rock ride, that band’s inward-looking leading man takes the reins of a buggy of folky, jazzy noir, and elegant Americana, the 2017 loss of eccentric co-conspirator Col. Bruce Hampton still weighing heavily on his mind. He’s not in any shape to drive.
Rummaging around a curio cabinet of genres, Kinney is by turns reflective and playful on the star-studded Think About It, as former Sugar bassist and producer/engineer David Barbe helps gently build the pliable scaffolding for Kinney’s introspective elegies. In attendance, also, are R.E.M.’s Bill Berry and Peter Buck, Drive-By Trucker Brad Morgan and Sturgill Simpson compatriot Laur Joamets, who accompany Kinney’s mostly spoken lyrics with artful restraint and easy languor. In the title track, they all sink deeply into the velvety noir and darkness of Leonard Cohen’s humanity, while “The Innocent” wades into creepy late-night jazz waters, and “Wishes” and “Half Mast” luxuriate in Lambchop’s lush country intimacy.
Crafty piano and rubbery bass back the whimsical beat poetry of “Shapeshifter Grifter,” swinging to vintage, up-tempo ‘40s and ‘50s bebop as Kinney goes gleefully off script. “Down in the City” is a greater departure, revisiting Jethro Tull’s heyday with its flute and woodsy, progressive-folk musings. Mining more familiar territory, Kinney indulges in the jangly indie-rock of “Stop Look Listen Think” and “Another Scarlet Butterfly,” both casting homespun, golden hooks like fly-fishing anglers. Kinney’s mounted another trophy for his wall.
Grade: B+
A Place to Bury Strangers – Exploding Head (BMG/Mute)
In his wildest dreams, Phil Spector couldn’t possibly have imagined erecting the tortured, screaming walls of dense, scratched-up industrial sound – streaks of phantom melodies floating through its congested air – on Exploding Head, the visceral, mind-blowing sophomore album from noise-mongering post-punks A Place to Bury Strangers. A howling, disorienting maelstrom of screeching, pummeling intensity and haunted, disembodied vocals drenched in acidic psychedelia, it’s been reissued and remastered and stuffed with extras to coincide with its 13th anniversary.
Even more alien, subversive and tornadic than you remember, the experimental and constantly mutating Exploding Head remains as violent and dangerously bleak as Suicide and as wickedly tuneful and harrowing as early Jesus and Mary Chain. Batten down the hatches for wild, swirling electrical storms “Ego Death,” “Everything Always Goes Wrong” and “Deadbeat,” as “Smile When You Smile” catches a shoegazing ride to nowhere with Swervedriver. The bobbing, brooding title track is darkly reminiscent of Joy Division, whereas “Keep Slipping Away” and “I Lived My Life to Stand in the Shadow of Your Heart” – two scorching, head-swimming versions of the latter are included here – accelerate into seemingly bottomless voids.
The whole album comes on like a tsunami of immersive, sonic savagery, as the relentless “Hit the Ground” and “Girlfriend,” the latter swimming in dreamy noir with the equally infectious “Don’t Save Your Love,” are as unsettling as they are compelling, while “The Light” serves as a rumbling, echoing dam barely holding back a flood of angry distortion. They are among the bonus tracks in a fiery package that should be checked by bomb-sniffing dogs before opening, as are covers of favorites by David Bowie, 13th Floor Elevators and Love & Rockets that are beaten to a pulp. Exploding Head remains an utterly confounding, mesmerizing masterpiece.
Grade: A-
SMALL – Decathexis (Triphouse Records)
Therapy sessions are supposed to remain private. Decathexis, the cathartic grunge-punk incendiary device constructed by fiery and feral riot grrrl newcomers SMALL, tosses doctor-client confidentiality out the window to reveal how a shrinking violet learned to let it all out and take back her life after ending an all-consuming, toxic relationship. Breaking up is hard to do.
Led by singer-guitarist Samm Severin and co-founder Olive Lynch, both former stand-up comedians, SMALL explore the push-pull dynamics of male-female sexual politics as searing guitar riffs, crashing drums, tense bass lines and untamed, passionate vocals growl and spit ugly truths in a primal scream of anger, deep longing and soul-baring candor. As angular and kinetic as Sleater-Kinney, only rougher and dressed in a hair shirt of wild distortion, SMALL swoops in for the kill on the “Coyote” and “Open Casket,” both relentlessly stuck in overdrive, while “Crumbs” and a writhing “C.C.” are dark, ominous rumbles and the slashing, high-octane “Rosemary” speeds off in a fit of rage and a cloud of dust, hot tears running down its face.
A gripping listen, with its prickly growl, nasty hooks and a tidy, concise track list of only eight songs, Decathexiswhizzes by, embodying the very definition of its title – meaning “a process of dis-investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object or idea” – as it severs ties with its source of pain and bewilderment. The question is, how does SMALL move on?
Grade: B+
No. 2 – First Love (Kill Rock Stars)
Neal Gust has been playing second fiddle to the late, great Elliott Smith long enough. Before unraveling, their shared powers’ arrangement had a good run in the underrated Pacific Northwest indie-rock outfit Heatmiser, and while Smith went on to breathy folk-pop glory, garnering an Academy Award nomination for “Miss Misery,” Gust settled down with No. 2 in the ‘90s. He’s reconnected with his First Love.
While bemoaning the inability to learn from past mistakes and chronicling self-destructive downward spirals with refreshing, cutting honesty, Gust has no intention of surrendering to depression, as First Love lights a cherry bomb of guitar-tangled, bittersweet power-pop and big-hearted, melodic alternative-rock purges. It flirts with Matthew Sweet’s Girlfriend in the blissfully strummed “Model of the Universe” and a sharp, stabbing “Get in Line” that stumbles into vistas of golden, amplified radiance. Learning to fly with ascending Foo Fighters’ riffs, the pounding, circling epic “I’m On a Mission” is empowering, exploding with life-affirming possibilities, with the low, resigned rumble that introduces “Ravers in the Sky” morphing into expansive choruses and sighing vocal harmonies – the wonderfully crafted First Love thriving on immediacy and a mix of massive and subtle hooks. Gust’s songwriting tools still work.
And yet Gust can’t understand why he continually sets up obstacles to thwart his own progress on “Night After Night,” ensnared in light coils of clean, electric guitar. Inviting psychedelic fuzz covers a thudding, gnarled “Time’s Up” and a racing “You Might Be Right,” suggesting that slightly trippy sounds might help the medicine of unapologetic confession go down or at least clear away the secretive melancholy that clouds “No One Needs to Know.” Writing lyrics from a queer perspective, Gust also has a fondness for classic-rock tropes, planted like Easter eggs throughout First Love, and the summery, nostalgic “A.O.R.” is a mellow, coming-of-age love letter to ‘70s radio and carefree youth. Let the impermanent good times roll.
Grade: B+
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