Colfax Abbey >> Could you complicate your mind?

Colfax Abbey - "Feel"

(Prospective Records / TRG Records,1995)

The song title and vocal stylings could lead this to be considered some sort of shoegaze-emo hybrid.  The pummeling drums and passive-aggressive guitars inflict a surprising amount of ear damage.  I can't overemphasize how dazzlingly creative and amazingly stupefying the guitar tones on this album are; it just might be the holy grail of tone in my book, along with stuff like early Verve, Hovercraft, early U2, early Sand Rubies, and Poem Rocket.  "Shanesong" in particular is just incredibly intense and dark, while retaining plenty of shoegaze DNA.  At a time when almost every true shoegaze band had abandoned its sound in favor of more dad-friendly '60s/'70s-oriented pastures, you have to hand it to Colfax Abbey for doing its uncompromising thing, and doing it with tons of panache, which means charisma.  I think I said almost the exact thing about Volplane a few months ago, come to think of it.  If anyone ever saw the Fax Abbs live, I'd love to hear about it.

I bought this CD, Drop, in 2001 or 2002 after hearing the band touted on the Blisscent mailing list, and I was blown away by it right away, as I was in a phase of worshipping stuff like Catherine Wheel, Verve, and Slowdive.  (Coincidentally, Verve's 1992 single "She's A Superstar" had a b-side called "Feel," compiled on their amazing self-titled EP later that same year.)  Every song on the album, except for one or two, is a perfectly-formed gem.  Listen to and/or download sample mp3s of every song here.  The band bio on that page says "And then from out of nowhere... Colfax Abbey. Four pieces of an ultra sonic puzzle. Droney guitars swirl around aural landscapes into a never ending infinity of ethereal delight. Colfax Abbey will thrill and delight all audiences young and old as they take the air around them and bend it into trance inducing guitar pop that takes you into the other side and beyond. From the heart of Minneapolis, the dynamic drumming of champion beat master Rob Walsh, the throbbing bass of Troy De Groot, the neo-psychedelic twists and turns of guitar of Mark Margosian, and the hypnotizing vocals of Christian Rangel come together to create a sonic assault of beautiful noise."


This band was from Minneapolis, was on a subsidiary of Twin / Tone Records, and had a name apparently borrowed from Bram Stoker's Dracula.  So you might think they're a shitty plaid-clad Soul Asylum clone with goth overtones, but luckily that type of band will never exist.  Half of this album, including "Feel," was recorded at The Playground studio in Chicago; the other half was recorded at The Terrarium studio in Minneapolis.  The Chicago tracks were produced by Keith Cleversley (Flaming Lips, Hum, Submarine, Morella's Forest, Spiritualized) and the Minn. ones were produced by Colfax Abbey & Ed Ackerson (of Polara).
Fun Fact: There's a "minus time" instrumental track hidden in the middle of the CD called "Drop," which is basically a lengthened and morphed loop from "Once In A While."  Well, it plays as a minus-time track in my car, but on my Mac it plays as just a hidden track at the end of song 5, which is "Silver."
I got their follow-up CD, Penetrate, the same year, but it's basically an instrumental space-rock album with four long tracks.  A few years back I bought their lone 7", "Chameleon" b/w "Silver," on eBay.  So I now have all whopping three things that they ever released.

Not much info is available about this band online, but this page has some interesting stuff, including a gorgeous acoustic radio performance of "Feel" which shows that it's a brilliant song even when stripped of all the guitar pyrotechnics, and also one of "Chameleon" (ditto).  Wow... Maybe more shoegaze bands should do unplugged albums?  Plus a pic of the Drop promo poster and a tour poster as the opening act for the Brian Jonestown Massacre.  He opened it by saying "Shoegaze monsters Colfax Abbey grew at such a fast pace once they got started, they went from opening in The 7th Street Entry to national tours in what seemed months. In concert, they perfected something I’ve never seen beforehand or since: even as the band was blissfully noisy & washed in droning sheets of sound, they were quiet, and you could carry on a conversation right in front of them. It was inviting & personal, yet very polished and produced sounding. Unique. Their two CDs & 7″ single are nothing short of beautiful."

Check out the wonderfully mutilated English by this overseas shoegazer:
"on the begining 'Snowshine' track i've been thinking this is like song from Nirvana (but its wrong)
i think Snowshine is the best track in this Album (agree or not... whatever!, thats what i thought)
for all over this track i feel dreaming, i dunno why"

I I took this pic of the beginning of my iTunes "bestGUITARtone" playlist on 6/14/06; you can see Colfax Abbey is well-represented:

I saw a young jazz singer named Sasha Masakowski twice at the Balcony Music Club in spring 2010.  I told myself and anyone else who would listen that she was gonna be a big star, and she's recently landed in a commercial (well, actually three different ones) by local lawyer Chip Forstall, who always enlists local musicians to do his theme song:

Also watch the version with just Sasha.  The "one man stands tall" line is clearly a joke, since you can see that CF is rather short.  The band members are hamming it up for the camera; rest assured that they do not do that in their real concerts whatsoever.  Apparently they all are graduates of UNO's jazz studies program.  Drummer Nick Solnick is an absolute monster, one of the best jazz drummers I've ever seen, at least when he's playing with actual drumsticks.  Sasha's bro Martin played bass when I saw them, but he's not in this commercial.  Their dad Steve is a local legend of jazz guitar.

I'm skipping a This Will Destroy You concert tonight at Siberia.  I saw them last summer in Baton Rouge, and they were good, but I don't know if I need or want to see any of these loud-soft-loud-soft post-rock bands more than once from now on.  And at $12, the cover is very high for a relatively unknown instrumental band.

I mentioned that I saw a local band called The Honorable South do a free in-store CD release party at Euclid Records a few days before Xmas, attended by about two dozen people.  Well, they're on the cover of the new issue of Antigravity zine:

I saw In The Heat Of The Night for the first time tonight, since I will fervently watch anything with Sidney Poitier in it.  I recognized the line "Where whitie ain't allowed" at about the 100 minute mark, since it was sampled in Abecedarians' song "Where Whitie Ain't Allowed" on their 1987 album Eureka.

'Piggyback bandit' puzzles high school officials in Northwest

Rock is the new jazz.  Sorry, rock. - "A visit to the Billboard Hot 100 today yields only two songs in the top 20 that could be argued to be “rock.” Maroon 5’s “Moves Like Jagger” (#13) sounds utterly not like rock (dancebeat bass drum, the tinge of auto-tune, a chirping synth hook), and Gavin DeGraw’s “Not Over You” comes a little closer though it seems more like a pop throwback tune than anything with a genuine edge. Further down the chart there’s a little country and one indie-rock hit (Foster the People’s “Pumped Up Kicks”) and that’s about it. The Black Keys in position 67 are pretty much the flag-wavers for “rock” in early 2012."  For what it's worth, I turned on MTV this morning.  They were showing a bunch of those teen mom shows in a row, so I scanned ahead to see when their next music-related show was, and there literally was nothing music-related the entire day.  They saw fit to air multiple episodes of That '70s Show, though.  This news is probably shocking to no one, which says it all.

Planets with similar climates: Drop Nineteens - "Delaware" (1992), Volplane - "Wash Away" (1997), Sunny Day Real Estate - "Snibe" (2000), Glide - "Water Falls" (1992), Verve - "All In The Mind" (1992), Catherine Wheel - "Texture" (1991).


CDs currently in my car: Band Of Susans - Veil, Temple Of The Dog - Temple Of The Dog, Slowdive - Souvlaki, Isaac Hayes - Hot Buttered Soul, Black Box Recorder - Passionoia, Massive Attack - Mezzanine, some mix CDs