Swirlies >> She's got a gun in her drawer that's meant for me

Swirlies - "Park The Car By The Side Of The Road"

(Taang! Records, 1992)

I wrote this post last September & October, but for some reason never got around to posting it.  So since I'm doing Massachusetts bands, here it is.  Sorry for the 2-month delay since the last post.

By the way, my mp3 hosing service, DivShare, has a new policy: "All your files will stay online as long as they are viewed at least once every 30 days. (Upgrade to keep your files online forever.)"  So it looks like most of the songs on this site will be deleted gradually, since I doubt anyone downloads or streams them very often.

Swirlies are the only band that I know of that has a song called "Chris R." (my name), but this song is much better. If there is ever a noise pop box set on Rhino -- Yes, I love saying "If there is ever a [genre] box set on Rhino..." -- this song ought to make the cut.  And its title could even be used as the name of this box set, since operating a motor vehicle while listening to such angular riffage could be dangerous.  Apparently the band named itself after the prank of putting someone's head in a toilet and flushing it.  I only recently learned that a melvin is a particularly severe type of wedgie, so I guess highbrow rock outfit the Melvins were named after that.  The name of this blog is a lyric in a song that's named after a wrist-abrasion technique.  Smashing Pumpkins are named after a prank in which you smash someone's pumpkins.  Bands... They're so funny!

The first time I ever heard of Swirlies was in a review of Modest Mouse's Interstate 8 EP in Alternative Press in fall '96.  I immediately bought that M.M. EP just because I assumed that any band that sounded like a band with the name "Swirlies" must have a really swirly, unique, shoegazey sound.  Yes, I bought a CD in large part because I liked the name of a band to which they were being compared in a review.  (Gotta love those pre-internet fumblings...  People these days have no idea how easy they have it.  One can now literally become an expert on some obscure old band in 20 minutes by just reading up on the right websites.)  That rationale turned out to be not quite accurate, but I'll still vouch for the quality of that Modest Mouse disc.

Jumping a year forward... In fall of '97 I decided to finally get into the Swirlies, after having heard about them in AOL's indie rock chatroom quite a bit that year...
October: I bought their Brokedick Car EP for about a dollar at a booth at the French Market in New Orleans and was fairly impressed.  (This purchase was overshadowed by the fact that I also bought You Am I's stunning Coprolalia EP from the same seller on the same day.)
November: I saw Syrup USA, a band helmed by former Swirlies singer Seana Carmody, at the Mermaid Lounge.  The crowd was about 10 people and it was freezing outside, but the Syrup still rocked out in a cutesy sort of way.  Syrup USA had a very keyboard-based sound, not the fuzzy noise-pop of Swirlies.  I even bought a t-shirt and both of their 7"s.
December: I bought this CD, Blonder Tongue Audio Baton (named after a guitar pedal) for my sister for Christmas.  I kind of soon "borrowed" it back and I don't think she ever really dug it.  The noisy guitar textures made me sit up and say "Dayumn," even though I was a huge Sonic Youth, MBV & Dino Jr.  fan and I had thought that genre was tapped out.  Swirlies obviously proved me wrong.  Anyway, Swirlies' heyday was a little before my time, so I never got to see them.  After Seana left the band, she was replaced by a soundalike named Christina Files, and uh, well, I don't like to sit here and give band bios unless I have some cool factoids to add, so you can go read an exorbitant amount about them on any number of fine websites.  If Swirlies hadn't been so in thrall to the early '90s slacker ethos popularized by Pavement, Archer Of Loaf, etc., they could've really been great.  They probably have the worst cover art of any band ever, aside from Pavement, and some irritatingly pointless song titles too.  In fact, my favorite Swirlies song overall is "Jeremy Parker", but I name-specific song titles annoy me so much that I couldn't allow myself to post that song.

This one goes out to the local band Glish, who apparently arrived at a similar sound as that of Swirlies without all members even knowing about them, or at least without trying to emulate them.  This could be compared to the biological concept called convergent evolution, a prime example of which is the similar appearances of the green tree python (Morelia viridis) from the Indo-Pacific and the emerald tree boa (Corallus caninus) from South America, which each evolved separately to sit in trees and be green while waiting for prey to pass below.

So, last month my sister got married and the band was Meschiya Lake and The Little Big Horns.  The first-dance song was the Cure's "Just Like Heaven."  Yes, it was weird seeing a female-fronted 1920's-style jazz band covering a Cure song.
In other musical news: The weekend before that, I went to Jazz Fest and caught Fleetwood Mac, Frank Ocean, and some Terence Blanchard and Stanley Clarke / George Duke.  Saw Pure X (chilled-out desert pop) + ArchAnimals (angsty emocore) at the Circle Bar.  This month I saw a typically kickass performance by A Place To Bury Strangers, opening for Japandroids at the Spanish Moon.  Also saw an incredibly fun and strange performance-art-y headlining set by Prince Rama at Circle Bar.  (The opening band, Spaceface, ended with a cover of David Bowie's glam classic "Moonage Daydream.")  Also saw a few songs at the AllWays Lounge by a promising band called Jane Jane.  They have recently relocated to New Orleans and shortened their name from Jane Jane Pollock.

In May and June I missed lots of concerts: Broken Water + Glish at someone's house called the Stripped Mall; Twin Shadow + Elliphant at Maison; Glish (opening for Coliseum) at Circle Bar; Faun Fables (headlined over Jane Jane but played first for some reason); Des Ark at the Big Top and at the Spanish Moon; the Record Raid on Piety Street.

Planets with similar climates: Mystery Machine - "Shaky Ground" (1992), Sonic Youth - "Silver Rocket" (1988), My Bloody Valentine - "Feed Me With Your Kiss" & "(When You Wake) You're Still In A Dream" (1988), Glish - "Future Things" & "Swings" (2012), Polvo - "Bend Or Break" (1992) & "High-Wire Moves" (1995), Pond - "Sideroad" (1995), Sebadoh - "Rebound" (1994).

Currently obsessed with: Sacred Grinds coffee house.  It's the size of a closet, but has some of the best food and smoothies in town, and two of the best baristas ever.

R.I.P. Maple Street Books Mid-City and Maple Street Books on St. Claude Ave.  Both closed on June 28th.  Not to be rude, but wouldn't it have helped if they had changed their names to fit into their respective neighborhoods?

Juno >> When you turn off the alarm, I turn on you

Juno - "Leave A Clean Camp And A Dead Fire"

(DeSoto Records / Pacifico Records, 1998; Modern City Records [France], 2001)

This song really has it all: A ridiculously long, atmospheric intro, cool guitar textures galore, rocket-propelled drumming, a tsunami of psychedelic axe-mangling, and of course a monster climax to end all climaxes.  And only four lines of of lyrics in ten minutes.  And three guitarists.  Do the math.  You can see by the genre tags I used that this band was not exactly easy to pigeonhole.  I've always wondered where that word came from.

Due to the stealthy escalation of tempo, there is an 85-90% chance that you'll get a speeding ticket if you listen to this on ye olde American highway, so it's better to listen to it at bingo nite or any other time you need a quick pick-me-up without caffeine.  In order to stave off insomnia, I avoid caffeine after noon.  Juno covered DJ Shadow's "High Noon" on a split EP with DeSoto labelmates The Dismemberment Plan.

I first heard about Juno in a Jade Tree Records mailorder catalog in early '98, and almost ordered a 7" by them.  I read reviews of this album, This Is The Way It Goes And Goes And Goes, around the time it came out in '99.  But I didn't buy it until spring '03, when the Wherehouse Music (formerly Blockbuster Music) on Tchoupitoulas St. had a going-out-of-business sale and I snagged dozens of used CDs.  (That's the only time I've ever seen this CD for sale in the used bins in the 13+ years since it was released, since almost no one who buys it is dumb enough to sell it.  If you ever see it used, do not hesitate to open your wallet.)  Articles about the band always mention singer Arlie Carstens' former career as a pro snowboarder, and the grisly accident he sustained which forced him to focus solely on music.  His loss, our gain.  The review of the album in CMJ by Kelso Jacks said "Juno crafts its music slowly.  However, the brilliance of this album more than compensates for Juno's less-than-prolific nature.  The band relies on the powerful interplay of three guitars to churn up an expansive whirlpool of textures.  Juno's blasting, six-string complexities mimic everything from airplanes to waterfalls to banjo plucks.  Unfettered by convention, these Northwesterners follow their sonic muse without paying mind to the clock, allowing sweeping, 10-minute epics such as 'Leave A Clean Camp And A Dead Fire' to unfold with the kind of passionate aggression that makes potentially self-indulgent duration a moot point.  The brutal rhythm section adds to and controls the thunder using carefully measured accents and punctuations.  This raucous din is topped off by guitarist Arlie Carstens' intelligent, surreal utterances, which are processed through a fuzzbox to complete Juno's wall of intensity.  Truly worth the wait."  That's basically a clinic on how to write a compact and informative review, by the way, though he should've mentioned more than just one specific song.  (I omitted one discography-related sentence near the beginning.)  It concludes: "Marketing Data: A summer tour is possible, though Carstens is currently recovering from spinal cord injuries, the result of his severely being injured in a snowboarding accident, earlier this year."

Great live clip at an unspecified venue in an unspecified year:

Also check out the sublimely haunting murder ballad "A Listening Ear", featuring co-lead vocals from Seattle chanteuse Jen Wood.  It has some of the coolest slide guitar I've ever heard.  A band called The Sea, Like Lead named itself after the album's closing song, "The Sea Looked Like Lead."

This Is The Way It Goes And Goes And Goes was not originally released on vinyl, but in 2001 a European tour edition on double LP was pressed on a French label called Modern City Records.  Juno's live shows are the stuff of legend.  They never played in New Orleans, sadly, and believe me, I sat around staring out my window for several years, pining for them to come by and Junoify my city.  I guess Europe was a lot more inviting to them.  The only other three-guitarist band that I actually listen to on a regular basis is Band Of Susans.

2001 gatefold double LP with two different colored records; pic courtesy of discogs.com

Juno's stature in the indie rock community is such that a documentary film was made about their recent comeback, but I don't know if it ever came out, and its website appears to be in mothballs.

Fri. Oct. 5: Despite having some sort of sinus infection or cold, saw Merchandise and Glish at the Big Top.  It was kickass, and each band played the songs I wanted to hear, though it was evident that Merchandise's (very charismatic) singer was wasted off his ass.  More on this show in an upcoming post!  Oh yeah, I donated a book called For The Vegetarian In You to the NOLADIY / An Idea Like No Other guys so they could add it to the Iron Rail library.  And I requested that they order me a copy of the new Possession EP by this Portland band called Arctic Flowers.  Wandered around Frenchmen St. afterwards, mainly to catch the end of a photography exhibit called Velado by Melissa Stryker at Scott Edwards Photography Studio & Gallery.  The photos had naked ppl and were printed on huge aluminum sheets, but in my opinion were not as racy or scandalous as the artist probably thought they would be.  Here's the front and back of the postcard that made me decide to trek to the exhibit:

No, that's not Stryker in the pic.  I saw a few songs by a crazy funk / party band called Yojimbo that was playing at Maison.  Their singer / trombonist is a super-energetic, bespectacled redhead, and I was stunned to see she was wearing this bootleg Sonic Youth Sister t-shirt that is commonly sold by shady sellers online.  I got mine on eBay about a decade ago; I think I gave it away to my internet girlfriend Michelle, whom I am no longer internet dating.

I took some video clips of Yojimbo, if only as proof that the singer had this shirt on.  I didn't go inside due to it being packed and me being sick, but the open door and huge glass windows made it easy to see & hear inside.  This girl, Carly Meyers, will be a superstar.  In between jumping up and down as if on a pogo stick, playing her trombone pointed up at the ceiling, and laughingly wiping sweat from her face with a towel, she guided the crowd in holding up a blanket and urged them to "Get in the love tunnel!"  I found a great Merchandise show poster (a big one, different from the small one shown above) on Frenchmen, so my night was complete.

Sat. Oct. 6: Went to the Bridge House thrift store and bought some sweet books and NIN's The Downward Spiral on CD ($1), then played hoops at that Annunciation Street court.  One of the dudes was LSU's point guard in the late '80s / early '90s.  He was a stocky redhead who could fill it up from outside.  I mentioned that I went to LSU basketball camp in 1990.  Watched some of the #4 LSU vs. #10 Florida football game with my sister, then we tried to go to the Botanical Garden.  She was impressed by the raw power of "I Lived My Life To Stand In The Shadow Of Your Heart" by A Place To Bury Strangers on the drive over there.  NOBG was due to a wedding, so we walked around City Park and did some obnoxious stuff.  Came back and watched LSU lose in pathetic fashion.  I had lost track of my The Downward Spiral CD long ago, and was blown away by how fresh and visceral it still sounds.  I still have the promo postcard that Interscope sent me when the album came out, and my friend Warren and I listened to it all the time in the mid-'90s.  I had kind of swept the album under the rug of my mind as I got into better music over the years, but songs like "Reptile" and "Mr. Self-Destruct" are just inimitable and stand up to any sort of highbrow scrutiny.

Sun. Oct. 7: This was a pretty interesting day.  A cold front blasted through, bringing the temp. down by about 20º from the previous day's high.  I helped to stake some Chinese pistachio trees on Metairie Rd. with some Parkway Partners people.  I was wearing my red Drew Brees practice jersey since he was gonna try to break Johnny Unitas' streak of 47 straight games with a TD pass that night, and the NFL wisely made sure it was against the team that let Drew go, the Chargers, a team that is so inept that it actually got the name Chargers from the fact that it was founded by a credit card ("charge card") magnate.  Then Em and mom and I went to the zoo; Em said "Oh my God" so many times that mom and I had to tell her to limit it to one time per exhibit, but she couldn't even do that.  Then we ate at this pizzeria called Slice next to Whole Foods, then went to Whole Foods, then went home to watch the first half of the Saints game.  Drew got the record early with a pass that literally hit Devery Henderson on the numbers and in stride.  That means "The ball flew through the air and hit the receiver on the chest, and the receiver did not have to alter his running motion."  Found out that the Godspeed show already started, since the dumb promo postcard and poster had the wrong start times on them.  So Em and I drove over to Tip's, knowing that we had missed the opening act, G String Orchestra.  Luckily Godspeed were in peak form, beginning with a long (10-minute?) ambient drone, the one at the beginning of "The Dead Flag Blues" but unfortunately omitting the ominous dude talking about cars on fire, a thousand lonely suicides, etc.  Minimalistic film clips (sometimes just words) were projected behind them throughout the show; they also did this when I saw then in March '03 at TwiRoPa.  I was disappointed at a few downsized elements: The band was down to only one female member, and no longer had any cello; the venue was smaller than last time; the merch table was way smaller, with only the (brand) new album for sale (and only on vinyl), plus some t-shirts.  These are minor complaints, because it was a really challenging and uncompromising concert, the kind most "post-rock" bands wouldn't even dare attempt.  Even by GYBE's standards, the buildups were extra-long and the climaxes were done with a great flair for layering.  Mom texted me to say the Saints had won; I texted back "Fuck yeah."  Near the middle of the show a dude passed out and hit the ground with a huge thud right behind us, and had to be escorted out.  (This was nowhere near as cool as when a guy slashed his wrists outside a Humpers / Neckbones show that I caught in '97 at Monaco Bob's.  That show continued after only a brief pause, by the way.)  The finale was just incredible, with two of the greatest pieces of music I've ever seen, set to a backdrop of a factory on fire.  I'm pretty sure the last thing they played was "World Police And Friendly Fires."  There was no encore, despite lots of cheering.  Efrim didn't say a word to the crowd, despite the fact that he was practically a stand-up comedian at the A Silver Mt. Zion show in Feb. at One Eyed Jacks.  To celebrate the fact that her computer had not been stolen, despite being parked with one window totally down, we went to this bar called Ms. Mae's up the street.  It was as lame as my sister told me it would be, though I played two Interpol songs and Catherine Wheel's "Black Metallic" on the internet jukebox.  Some guy in a just-bought Godspeed (or G String Orchestra) shirt juked some Pelican and Russian Circles.  Uhh... No comment, Beavis.  A charismatic 59.9 year old art teacher at Tulane sit right down at our table and hit on Emily right in front of me, and kept claiming he had met us before.  So we had to eventually make a daring exit, which prompted him to desperately ask us "Are you guys on Facebook?"  "No, sorry."  We were, as the saying goes, so done with that.

I stupidly trusted the door time on the postcard rather than the door time on the ticket, hence why we missed the opening band

Sorry for all the pics in this post.

Planets with similar climates: Plexi - "Peel / He" (1995), Catherine Wheel - "Ferment" (1992), Kitchens Of Distinction - "Blue Pedal" (1992), The Sound - "New Dark Age" (1981), "Missiles" (1979) & "Whirlpool" (1985), The Church - "Chaos" (1992), Unwound - "For Your Entertainment" (1996), Pantera - "Hollow" (1992).