Pure Bathing Culture >> You know it's your time, you're the one

Pure Bathing Culture - "Pendulum"

(Partisan Records [U.S.] / Memphis Industries [Europe],  2013)

It's a huge honor to present this song.  I first heard it in summer 2k13 on Sirius' XM U station.  I was immediately floored that an unknown new band could barge out of the gates with such a masterfully-crafted song.  (Though I secretly wondered if Pure Bathing Culture was Memoryhouse under a new name...)  And the opening jangly guitar chords made me think it was a cover of the Go-Betweens' brilliant "Streets Of Your Town" (see video embedded below), but luckily it turned out to be an entirely new song by an entirely new band, and it blew me an entirely new mind.

This truly should've been a massive radio hit.  If you're a fan of production like I am, you'll revel in every little detail of this song as it leaps out of the speakers with unmitigated authority, and it will truly be stuck in your head for the rest of your life.  I'm sure the band's manager or publicist is a nice person, and was smart enough to choose to work with such a talented band, but he or she needs to be replaced immediately.  In America's current musical climate, in which completely hookless, soulless songs by the likes of Vampire Weekend, Arctic Monkeys, and Arcade Fire are becoming hits or semi-hits left and right, it should be pretty easy for any trained squid to finesse this song onto playlists nationwide.  Obviously it did get onto Sirius, which is quite a taste-making entity, but the only times I've heard it on WTUL were when I requested it.  In fact, a DJ last fall played it back-to-back with "Streets Of Your Town," at my request.  I also got KLSU to play it last fall at my request.  It was on some sort of regular rotation on Sirius XM U, because I heard it several more times there.  In fact, Sirius was so devoted to this band that they hosted a live in-studio performance / interview session in September.  I recorded some of it, mainly because the lyrics to "Pendulum" were a lot easier to make out in the live version.  Watch it here.

Here's the Go-Betweens song I mentioned above.  Check out how similar the opening guitar part is to that of "Pendulum":

Note: That's the "big-budget" version of the video; there was also a more low-key original version that focused more literally on the streets of an Aussie town.  So, if the Go-Bees were able to get TWO videos made for their killer song, how come Pure Bathing Culture didn't even get one? Refer back to the criticisms I had for PBC's management...)

Download an interesting remix of this song called "Pendulum (Women's Hour Edit)" for free here.

Stairway left after bombing of Aleppo, Syria by the Assad regime. This reminded me of a pendulum.
(Posted by Tumblr user miymintimatmazel; photographer unknown.)

Planets with similar climates: The Go-Betweens - "Streets Of Your Town" (1988), Puro Instinct - "Slivers Of You" (2010), Cocteau Twins - "Heaven Or Las Vegas" (1990), Memoryhouse - "Heirloom" & "Sleep Patterns" (2011), Spiritualized - "Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space" (1997), Wild Nothing - "Through The Grass" (2012), Slowdive - "Alison" (1993).

Tiffany Anders >> There was a time when we saw eye to eye

I can't believe it's still California Month, tremor #59:

Tiffany Anders - "Runnin' From No Place To Nowhere"

(Up Records, 1998)

This is surely Tiffany's best-known song, since Up Records' website offered it as a free mp3 for around a decade.  I first heard this song on an Up Records sampler CD called Up Next in early '98, and immediately pegged her for indie stardom, like Cat Power with more dramatic pipes.  Info about Tiffany Anders is hard to come by online, but apparently she was born and raised in L.A., then moved up to the Northwest for a while, and now lives in Cali again.  I would have to guess Loretta Lynn is one of her idols.  Her mom, indie director Allison Anders (Gas Food Lodging), used to take a teenaged Tiffany to punk shows in L.A.  Some critics have been outright hostile in regards to Tiffany's singing ability or lack thereof, but I think her voice is just dandy, and easily one of the most distinctive I've ever heard.  And I have to wonder if Cat Power's "Keep On Runnin'" was directly inspired by "Runnin' From..."

This song was recorded at some studio called Bob's Place in Amherst, MA, but I think it still qualifies for California status.  Those high-pitched backing vocals are by none other than J Mascis, who had a bit part in Gas Food Lodging and did much of its soundtrack.  Tiffany's next album was produced by PJ Harvey (allegedly after Tiffany handed a demo tape to PJ on a New York City street), but garnered just as little attention as her debut EP did.  Unfortunately, she has apparently not released anything in the last ten years.  Cue sad faces across Indie Nation...

:(

Today I randomly stopped in at a new place on Freret called Dat Dog, which only serves hot dogs.  I got one with Guinness beer cooked into it, on a perfect sourdough bun.  They were loudly playing "music" by the Strokes and the Killers, so I made sure to eat outside.  But I give them points for playing it on an actual turntable.  Then I went to the Mushroom and spent about 3 hours listening to used CDs on their Discman, and bought many, and picked up around a dozen free ones that they were giving away by the stairwell.  Coincidentally, they had Del The (Tha) Funky Homosapien's first album on used CD (see previous post), so I gave it a listen, since I'd been wanting to hear it for almost 20 years.  It was pretty disappointing.  Cue sad face with three eyeballs.  (Update: Nevermind; I found out I had already rated it 1 star out of 5 on Rate Your Music a while back.)

Planets with similar climates: Cat Power - "Keep On Runnin'" (1998/2003), Neko Case - "Hold On, Hold On" (2006), Rainer Maria - "The Imperatives" (2002).

American Music Club >> Now I wake up and I don't have any gravity

California Month continued, tremor #28:

American Music Club - "Sick Of Food"

(Alias Records, 1991)

Well, this is probably the most intense n' passionate vocal performance ever laid to tape.  You can keep your Cookie Monster death metal growlers and skinny-jean-clad screamo bleaters.  This song is closely related to another one from the same album, "Rise".

In summer of '05 I bought AMC's sprawling '93 opus Mercury on cassette at some thrift store and was floored by it, so I quickly set about buying lots more of their stuff.  I bought this CD, Everclear, on eBay that fall for a few bucks.  American Music Club are from San Francisco.  In 1991, Rolling Stone magazine named Mark Eitzel its Songwriter Of The Year, and it also put Everclear in its top 5 albums of the year.  I think it's an uneven album with a few great songs.

Before going out to the concert last night, I watched the second half of the movie Apocalypto with my sister.  Then we watched the beginning of Mysterious Skin, since she has had a crush on Joseph Gordon-Levitt since seeing seeing him in a restaurant.  Yikes.  It was so disturbing that we couldn't even keep watching it.  I told Emily it reminded me a bit of Gummo, which she hasn't seen, so I showed her some weird Gummo clips on YouTube.  (Spaghetti in bathtub scene; chair wrestling scene; tapdance scene; swimming pool scene.)   Das Racist were pretty dope, though they unfortunately didn't do "Hahahaha jk."  The film clips they played were very surreal and generally hilarious.  Danny Brown was emulating Andre 3000 pretty blatantly, but with lots of explicit lyrics that grew a bit tiresome.  Despot is a short white dude.  I wore my NBA TV t-shirt.  Here's a pic I took which miraculously squeezes in all seven of the dudes doing a collabo at the very end:

L-R: Dapwell (Das Racist), Heems (Das Racist), Despot, Kool A.D. (Das Racist), Danny Brown, DJ dude, Danny's hype man texting

We stayed out till about 3:30 AM, stopping at the Saint and then at the Balcony Bar.  A punk dude was karaoke-ing NSync's "Bye Bye Bye" at the former establishment.  We played some Faith No More, Interpol, Das Racist, Kreayshawn, Verve and Pixies on the "internet jukebox" at the latter, and I got a huge chicken calzone and a Guinness Draught.  Someone at the bar was loudly talking about how 15 of her friends were currently pregnant, down from a recent high of 22.
I made a mental note to get up at 8, so I woke up at 7:59 without an alarm clock.  (I'm really good at that.)  I lent a Rahsaan Roland Kirk CD to Bruce, the security guy at my sister's apartment, and he said we should play hoops soon.  I cruised by Harold's nursery (plant store), then went to Chalmette.  Later bought a mint copy of Miles Davis' Get Up With It on double LP at The Mushroom, mainly for its mind-blowing first track, "He Loved Him Madly."  I asked Chris at The Mushroom why he wasn't at the D.R. show, and he said he was, so we talked about it.  I noticed Justin Warfield's first album in the $3 used CD rack and recommended it to him.  Ate some food and fed my lizard.  Bought two artsy foreign DVDs at a pawn shoppe.
At 4PM I had a very strange and unnerving incident on the Luling bridge, wherein I was tailgated aggressively by a big silver Ford pickup with a totally black-tinted windshield, which had sped up onto my tail going way over the speed limit.  Rather than accelerate, I maintained my speed and flicked him off.  He tailgated me down the lengthy cloverleaf off-ramp, then he finally flashed red and blue lights and pulled me over.  It turns out it was two narcotics officers in an unmarked vehicle.  I know this because they were wearing shirts that said "NARCOTICS" in big yellow letters.  The driver, a Jersey Shore-esque would-be bodybuilder, bellows at me and asked me if I knew who I was messing with.  I asked him "Why are you flexing your arms?," which didn't go over too well with him.  After I laid out my case that he was drastically speeding in a construction zone that probably had cameras, I watched him go back to his truck and converse with his buddy in my rearview.  I think they realized I'd beat them in court, and any video footage of what they did might cause them to get in trouble.  So Jersey dude gives me a ticket for Careless Operation, which is pretty much the mildest offense there is.  "I could've given you 5 different citations, but I'm just giving you one."  So I can't complain too much.  To make a long story short, I was the only person driving the speed limit over that bridge, with everyone else going at least 10 MPH too fast, yet I was the only one who got a ticket.  Amazingly, Das Racist had a running joke about "narcs" at the show last night, in which they claimed they could sense that some people in the crowd were narcs.  (Presumably a joke about the paranoia of potheads?)  So of course I deal with narcs for the first time in my life about half a day later.  Weird.
Anyway, the moral is that I now know how quickly and easily one can be intimidated into signing a document that one knows is unfair.  I used to scoff when I would hear about prisoners who signed confessions after, say, 10 hours of nonstop questioning, but I won't do that anymore.

This morning I snapped pics at my sister's apartment of two paintings I've given to her:

The first one is about 2x2.5', depicts coconut palms (Cocos nucifera), and is the first palm painting I ever did, in Sept. '09.  I think it has the best fronds I've ever done, and it sucks that I'll never be able to top those.  The second one is big, like 2'x3', depicts date palms (Phoenix dactylifera), and I think I did it last year.  That one is, aesthetically, my favorite painting I've ever done.  I don't paint from photos, I just freehand from my head based on my growing, studying, pruning and photographing of various palms over the years.  I have a strict rule about never painting green fronds, and hopefully The Man won't ever coerce me into breaking it.

Planets with similar climates: The Sheila Divine - "Back To The Cradle" (2002), Hüsker Dü - "59 Times The Pain" (1984), Idaho - "You Are There" (1993).

Idaho >> There is snow covering your blankets

California Month, tremor #19:

Idaho - "If You Dare"

(Caroline Records, 1995)

In my previous Idaho post ("You Are There"), I mentioned that their later stuff was much less bombastic, and this song is perhaps the most stunning example of their quiet side.  The interesting thing is that the band got larger on this album in terms of members, but its sound got smaller and more delicate on most of the songs.

A profound amount of information about this album, whose title is a slang term meaning "inebriated," derived from the poor sailing techniques of drunken mariners, can be found here.

Magazine ad, with a lyric pulled from "No One's Watching"

Promo CD; singer / guitarist Jeff Martin on left

California Month is taking over the world: Yesterday I heard Film School's "Heart Full Of Pentagrams" at Guitar Center, which was the first time I've ever heard anything by them on any sort of radio station.  And GC was founded in, yup, Los Angeles.  But it seems like they have more samplers / drum machines / keyboards for sale nowadays than guitars.... Sign o' the times.

A Hyla cinerea (Green tree frog) getting some shade on my Serenoa repens (Saw Palmetto) yesterday:

Planets with similar climates: American Music Club - "Big Night" (1987), Red House Painters - "Down Through" (1993), Low - "Shame" (1995).

Liberty Horses >> And it's a long reign in the long rain

xxx Liberty Horses - "King Of A Rainy Country" xxx
† (Rough Trade / Rhino Records, 1992) †

I bought this CD, Joyland, on a total whim for a dollar two years ago, because it was on Rough Trade and because the band name and song titles seemed pretty evocative.  Yeah, I use that word a lot... I like things that are evocative.  Provocative things can be good, but evocative things are always good.  I learned that this band evolved out of an '80s Britpop band called The Bible, who apparently had some cult classic songs in a Smiths-esque vein back then.  So I checked them out, but wasn't too impressed.  The band featured Neill MacColl and Calum MacColl, brothers of famed chanteuse Kirsty MacColl; sister Kitty MacColl also sings backup on two songs on the album, including this one.  The lead singer's voice has a beautifully fornlorn quality without sounding too much like an old wizened mariner or something.  I love how he never specifies what country the protagonist rules, so I can pretend that he's singing about my rainy part of the U.S.  Every aspect of this song is flawless, but I think its secret weapon is the seductively propulsive, and deceptively funky, bassline, which steps to the forefront at the 2:45 mark.  I think that if this song had come out 5 years earlier, rather than in the dance- & grunge-oriented early '90s, it would've been a huge hit.  Amazingly, this song was not even released as a single.  Wow.  Nice job there, Rough Trade.  Hence I am doing what they failed to do, which is to publicize this song and make it into an international sensation.

Here's a review by Martin Aston of Q magazine, printed on the back of the promo version of this CD: "Formed by ex-members of pop sophisticates The Bible, Liberty Horses' leading lights are Neill and Calum, sons of Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, brothers of Kristy [sic].  Their tradition of sombre, bittersweet folk ballads runs deep through Joyland.  The irony starts as early as the album title; Neill's world-weary timbre only accentuates the frayed despair expressed throughout.  It's an everyday urban love-it-hate-it daymare, then, and it's beautifully expressed.  Fraternal harmonies, arresting lyrics, and a band that really swings too; Joyland is a joyful exorcism all round."


Literally a few minutes after posting this entry, I found the video for the single "Shine," which I never knew existed until minutes ago.  (It's not on YouTube.)  It's my first time ever seeing what the band looks like, in fact.  It takes a while to load, but here it is, another LH song that was a hit in an alternate universe:

From Kim Jong-Il Looking At Things

Planets with similar climates: Crowded House - "Weather With You" (1988), Tears For Fears - "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" (1985), The Smiths - "The Boy With The Thorn In His Side" (1986), The Church - "Tear It All Away" (1981) & "Ripple" (1992), The Comsat Angels - "Be Brave" (1981), The Go-Betweens - "Streets Of Your Town" (1988), Peter Gabriel - "Red Rain" (1986).


Currently repotting: Some Medjool date palm seedlings and a dwarf Key Lime tree
About to repot: Some Tabasco pepper seedlings and an Arizona cypress ('Carolina Sapphire' cultivar)