Olivia Tremor Control, BRMC, and being a weird teenager

No. 1358: Olivia Tremor Control - Black Foliage Animation Music Vol. 1

I always get frustrated with myself when I go a whole month without diving back into this series, but you know, life happens—which in this case meant spending the better part of two months trying to strengthen a firewall against AI bots. The future is here and good god it sucks.

Did things suck this much in 1999, when Olivia Tremor Control released Black Foliage? I don’t think they did, but there was doom on the horizon not too far down the road. Still, the ‘90s seems almost quaint in hindsight. Not that everything was amazing, but people are nostalgic for those days for a reason (even if some of the stuff they’re nostalgic for is questionable). I remember in 1999 there being a kind of surplus of disposable pop culture—I lived near The Wherehouse (R.I.P.) that, in addition to CDs, sold lots of glittery stickers that said stuff like “Don’t go there!” and “I’m a princess!” and obviously that never went away, but at the time it stood out to me as being a bunch of hideous garbage. Plus the Backstreet Boys were back. Where had they been? No idea! But the late ‘90s seemed plastic to me in a way that was more off-putting than in the early half of the decade. (The ‘90s, as my wife and I have discussed, was also a decade that was horny but not sexy.)

But at the time I was getting sucked into weird lo-fi records like this. The Elephant 6 collective isn’t talked about as much anymore, though there was a recent documentary, but essentially it was a loose group of artists, mostly from Athens, Georgia, who played psychedelic music that felt more aligned with music of the ‘60s and ‘70s than the ‘90s. The most famous group to come out of that was Neutral Milk Hotel, plus there was also the Apples in Stereo, Gerbils, The Minders, Elf Power—even of Montreal, who kind of changed course not long after that. Olivia Tremor Control were at the center of that scene, and they made a couple of the best records of the bunch, and this is one of them.

Black Foliage is somewhere between lo-fi fuzz pop, ‘60s-era psychedelia and sound collage. In the spirit of recent stunts like The Flaming Lips’ Zaireeka, intended to be played on four CD players at once, this album had a companion record of sonic accompaniments to flesh out the sound of it. I never actually tried that, but there’s a lot going on here regardless. There’s musique concrete experiments, a recurring melody in various forms, all kinds of weird sonic trickery. But the songs? The songs are amazing. “Black Foliage (itself)”, “A Sleepy Company,” “A Peculiar Noise Called ‘Train Director’” (they all have odd titles)—all amazing. Great melodies, yet there’s very little about anything here that you could say is straightforward.

I got some other friends into this band, but by and large I was an outlier in being a 17-year-old who listened to fuzzy psychedelic sound-collage pop, at least in my high school. And I was perfectly fine with that. Rating: 9.3

Listen: “A Sleepy Company”

No. 1359: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - B.R.M.C.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s debut album hit me in a big way back when I was around 19 years old. From the moment they arrived, the band were hit with frequent comparisons to the Jesus and Mary Chain, which was really only true of a couple songs. Their hazy rock songs had more in common with the neo-psychedelia of groups like Love and Rockets than JAMC, at least to my ears. But sure, when you hear “Whatever Happened to My Rock ‘n’ Roll,” yeah, I kinda get it. Still, it felt like there was a built-in hipster backlash in a way that for some reason didn’t affect the Strokes, despite the fact that that band was at least as derivative, if not more so but your mileage may vary. There was even someone who wrote on a Raveonettes poster, “JAMC theft done right.” Which I assumed was a jab at BRMC. But also not necessarily super flattering to Raveonettes?

But I loved the hell out of this record at the time, and upon revisiting it in 2018 or so, I found it held up magnificently. I actually feel like maybe they were about a year ahead of their time, because once Interpol showed up, that dark, gloomy sound became more in vogue. Because despite a few more hedonistic rockers like “Rock ‘n’ Roll” and “Spread Your Love,” much of the album was a lot darker and weirder. The first song I heard was “Red Eyes and Tears,” and its swirl of psychedelic guitars instantly enchanted me. “Rifles” has an eerier, harder edge to it, while “Head Up High” is gorgeously mesmerizing in its layers and vocal harmonies. 

The band’s subsequent albums, though pretty good to varying degrees, didn’t hit me quite in the same way, though they’re still active and recently toured with The Cult and Zola Jesus. (They also told the Department of Homeland Security to fuck off when it used one of their songs without permission. This stupid fucking country and our stupid fucking goverment, I swear…) In fact I kinda wanted to go to one of those shows just because, despite none of them being my favorite band or anything, I was pretty sure it’d be a hell of a lot of fun. Revisiting this record most certainly is, despite its strange gloom, one that the hype train and media landscape never quite knew what to do with. Rating: 9.1

Listen: “Rifles”

No. 1360: Just Mustard - Heart Under

It’s an interesting coincidence that I end up writing about this record today, when Just Mustard have announced a new album. I’d first heard their name years back when a friend of mine mentioned them casually that they were kind of a cool band, despite the name. And I’m pretty sure I thought “Just Mustard, what a terrible name” and never listened to them. But then during lockdown when I had nothing better to do than listen to tons of music, I did, and stood corrected!

They’re an Irish group that plays a style of music somewhere between gothic rock and shoegaze, they’ve opened for The Cure and thus received the Robert Smith seal of approval, which should automatically mean that they’re worthy of listening. After all, all the bands that played their Pasadena Daydream festival were fantastic. (And I’ll have another one of them in the next batch.)

Their second record, Heart Under, took what was great on their first, all manner of whooshing guitar effects, noise rock weirdness a la Gilla Band (also Irish!) and hazy post-punk darkness, and just polishes it up enough, with a few proper pop hooks for good measure. It’s extremely up my alley, and that same year they were touring with Fontaines, D.C., whom I also got really into at the time. (More on that soon!) That I missed that tour when it came through D.C. (not Richmond, boo) is kind of a failure on my part, though it’s not like we can see every show up the road in D.C. Still, I’m kind of kicking myself for missing that. Oh well, next time. Rating: 9.1

Listen: “Still”

No. 1361: Arthur Verocai - Arthur Verocai

Given my affinity for Brazilian music, it’s a wonder it took me so long to get into Arthur Verocai. This self-titled 1972 album was the only album of his own he’d released until 2002, and most of his career was spent producing other artists, like Gal Costa and Tim Maia and doing arrangements for Jorge Ben and Erasmo Carlos and Som Imaginario, a jazz fusion/prog group whose records are expensive and hard to find (someone do a reissue campaign!). So in that sense, he’s a little like the Brazilian David Axelrod. And that sort of thing really perks my ears up.

This album’s been through several phases of rediscovery and revival over the years, first with a 2003 reissue that coincided with his return to releasing his own music. And then a 2016 reissue from Mr. Bongo, who put a lot of classic, cult funk, jazz and samba music back into circulation. This album is a combination of all three, something like a ‘70s detective show with lush string arrangements and the intricacy of bossa nova. He’s not the best singer in the world, but it doesn’t really matter, because everything here sounds phenomenal. Just a groovy, lush, if somewhat brief set of headphone candy that I can’t get enough of. So now the next step is to get more of the records he produced or arranged. Fingers crossed those Som Imaginario records get a new pressing one of these days. Rating: 9.3

Listen: “Pelas Sombras”

No. 1362: Various Artists - Cameroon Garage Funk

I don’t buy a lot of compilations. In spirit, I love them. In practice, I don’t have a lot of reason to fill my collection with them, especially compilations that are filled with songs from albums I already own—for obvious reasons. Which is one reason why I started to really appreciate the Analog Africa label. Despite the name, it’s actually a German label, but they specialize in obscure African recordings, plus some Latin American music for good measure. And this comp is one of the reasons why they won me over so completely.

Cameroon Garage Funk is, true to its title, a collection of funk records from Cameroon in the ‘70s for the most part (a couple in the ‘60s, including one that sounds more like Afro-Cuban jazz, which is also just fine by me). The “garage” part comes in with the rawness of the sound—a lot of these are sort of like lo-fi Fela Kuti and Ebo Taylor, and sometimes even wilder than that. Like the opening track, “Africa Iyo,” which opens with this gnarly oscillating buzz effect and then jumps straightaway into a furious funk that I just can’t get enough of. The energy level goes from frantic to cool, and the arrangements are sometimes just meat-and-potatoes guitar-bass-drums funk, lots of saxophones, and sometimes an ethereal presence of vibraphone or something along those lines. It’s a lot to process but a lot to love, and none of these songs are on any other album you’ll find, which is in part why it’s an essential.

There’s something of a cliche of a middle-aged dude obsessed with vinyl and buying up a bunch of world-psych-funk comps and reissues, and yeah, I guess I’m that guy now. But I’m totally fine with that if it means getting to hear more records like this. Rating: 9.2

Listen: “Africa Iyo”

No. 1363: Candy - Heaven Is Here

My friend David first tipped me off to Candy, whose first album came out in 2018 and was one of the gnarliest hardcore albums I’d heard in some time. Heaven Is Here is even gnarlier, with more overt industrial and electronic elements, which is a thing that’s happened a bit in some hardcore circles in recent years, but the band’s better at it than Code Orange. (Or I should say, they do it in a way that I enjoy a lot more; Code Orange is pretty successful, so “better” is subjective I guess? But also one of that band’s members toured with Marilyn Manson recently, so perhaps I shouldn’t be so diplomatic.) 

That fusion made me kind of obsessed with this record when it came out, and it seemed like a lot of industrial-metal records were kind of making their way into my library (none of them better than the Uniform & the Body record I wrote about recently, but still…). And my tastes in hardcore tends to be kind of polarized: super straightforward, still-ripping-off-Black-Flag-and-Bad-Brains stuff to more outside-the-box, chaotic weirdness like The Armed. (Maybe they’re more post-hardcore. I dunno… doesn’t matter! I don’t really care.) That said I’m not that big a fan of Turnstile. They’re pretty good, but the alt-rock stuff doesn’t floor me. Shrug. 

I listened to this a bunch when it came out but went a couple years without hearing it. The obsession’s waned, but it’s still a bonkers, intense album. No question about that. Rating: 8.9

Listen: “Hysteric Bliss”

No. 1364: Kolumbo - Gung Ho

This is a record I got as a freebie and it’s a super fun one, great for dropping on the turntable when you’re making a batch of daiquiris or something. Kolumbo is a contermpoarary artist, a guy from New York who makes polyester exotica that feels less like classic Martin Denny records than a ‘70s-era revival of them, if that makes sense. It’s filtered through several layers of kitsch, but it doesn’t come across as insincere or ironic. Though I wouldn’t call it particularly innovative, since it is pastiche after all, but the way he goes about it is somewhat novel and, really, it doesn’t matter all that much when the results are this fun. Every time I put it on, it feels a little like I’m on vacation for an hour. Rating: 8.4

Listen: “The Key Club, 1976” (fun fact: I did a search to try to find out if the Key Club referred to a real place, and Google assumed I was trying to find out about swingers parties)