Rare or Unreleased 49: Poverty in My Heart for the Marketing Exec

What kind of beast are the Black Angels? They stand for many things easy to despise: They promulgate shameless time warp nostalgia—in their case, idealisation of a one-dimensional, cartoonish idea of the '60s. (Songs even reference the Vietnam War, ferchrissakes.) Like good children of postmodernism, they appropriate the art and image of more famous or street credible artists of the past in order to further their own career. (The band name was derived from a song by the Velvet Underground, and they use an iconic image of Nico as their logo.) Their lyrics are often embarrassing—more like a sequence of rhymes than actual poetry, with little substance to indicate any of them are older than 13. Nico it ain't.

But despite their corny yet perfectly po-faced «turn on, tune in, drone out» psychedelia revival schtick (employing Native American imagery, presumably to automatically render the whole thing somehow «spiritual»), the Black Angels' first slew of self-produced EPs and albums combined primitive rhythms, scuzzy bass grooves, sultry tremolo guitars and tambourines like rattlesnakes, occasionally punctuated by neck hair-raising screams, making for eminently danceable rock'n'roll that made you gag for the sex and drugs to complete the equation. For all the bullshit image bullshit, the music was great. Devoid of silly little pop hooks, it had a slightly menacing, creeping underbelly feel, lurking beneath the rhythmically hypnotic swagger. It's so hard to find music to dance to that isn't yet another fucking celebration of this, that or the other, or just pacifying and diverting and completely irrelevant to any human emotion with grit. Live, the Black Angels made you want to grab whichever person was immediately next to you and fuck them up against the nearest wall. They had balls. (The band, I mean, not the person you may or may not have been fucking up against the wall. But with that soundtrack, who cares? Buy copies of Passover and Directions to See a Ghost and hear for yourself…)

For their third full-length, the Black Angels enlisted a producer. (The guy behind this.) The result—last autumn's Phosphene Dream—isn't as raw, is a bit more uneven, but at least it's more varied, expanding upon what could easily have become a formula.

There was a promotional push where you could pre-order the album. You got a couple of mp3s at once, then a little later the digital album as you waited for the CD in the post. After the release date, however, four other versions of Phosphene Dream were unveiled, each with its own set of bonus tracks—none of which came with the version purchased directly off the band's website. iTunes' edition featured two bonus tracks («Melanie's Melody», «Ronettes»), Amazon's another («My Boat Is Sinking»), ShockHound's yet another («At Night») and Napster—where you have to buy an additional subscription just for access—offered an additional two («Choose to Choose», «Raindance Song»). In all cases, the bonus mp3s were only made available if you bought the entire album. That's four copies of Phosphene Dream (not counting the regular edition perhaps already purchased in other record stores or on the band's website). If you have a US credit card, that is—most of these «exclusive»/«deluxe» versions aren't even available elsewhere.

It's a puzzling marketing ploy that's becoming more and more common among indie labels. The artist is exploited and the music lover fucked, just so that a few distributors may cash in—marginally. Worse than unethical—there are more important things in the news—it's stupid.

For the Black Angels, it was a continuation of an unfortunate trend that began with their sophomore album, which was similarly pushed before its release date with an offer any obsessive completist couldn't resist: pre-order it and you got an exclusive, limited edition EP. An EP that may currently be purchased through the group's website, just like any other CD. I'm looking forward to the episode of «Mad Men» where they invent the use of the words «exclusive» and «limited
edition» to move product. It would've been in the 1960s, judging from the Black Angels…

In any case, if you're miffed or feel gypped by the Black Angels' shifty record company Blue Horizon (which doesn't even have a website), here's a little something to cheer you up:

«The Man's No Angel, Not Even a Black One»

Net Nuggets 18: Black Angel Psych-out!

The Black Angels aren't particularly innovative—although everyone harping on about how «'60s retro» they are obviously can't be too familiar with the artists of whom the Angels are supposedly so derivative. The Velvet Underground, 13th Floor Elevators and Pink Floyd never sounded like this. No '60s band did. Said artists may have been more innovative, but musically at least, none of those bands possessed the bottom-heavy balls of the Angels; none could muster the nasty, gutsy grooves that they summon up. (You can't dance to VU or the Floyd…)

The '60s psych and garage revival is getting a bit tired—the cliché no less corny now than in 1967—but with the Angels you don't get any of that clever and sloppy punk kitsch or earnest flower power whimsy that's getting so grating these days. No, this is the spirit of rock'n'roll—a good mix of fuck-off fun and lose-yerself death trip transcendence. For all their negligible lyrics and nostalgic rhetoric—that «Turn on, tune in and drone out» Pop Art PR schtick—at least they're not cerebral. This music is sex & death. And if you're not sure whether that's a good thing, you of all people really need to hear this:

The Black Angels: Radio & Rarities (2004-2008) [.zip]

1. Better Off Alone
2. The Sniper at the Gates of Heaven
3. Deer-ree-shee
4. Bloodhounds on My Trail
5. Black Grease
6. Doves
7. Ronnettes
8. Civilization (with Roky Erickson)
9. Syd Barrett Blues (by Christian Bland)

«Better Off Alone» was recorded for Texan student radio KVRX, whereas «The Sniper at the Gates of Heaven», «Deer-ree-shee», «Bloodhounds on My Trail», «Black Grease», «Doves» and «Ronnettes» were all recorded for Seattle radio station KEXP. All these songs are available in far better audio quality on solid studio albums Passover and Directions to See a Ghost—except «Ronnettes», inexplicably a rarity (that, incidentally, is worth the price of admission alone).

«Civilization» is the Black Angels backing original 13th Floor Elevator Roky Erickson! How's that for street cred. It makes Black Angel Christian Bland—whose first solo recording (the blues about Syd Barrett) was issued by French label Dead Bees—less questionable for writing a song about the Pink Floyd firefly, in the first-person. But Bland's home rec guitar noise trades his house for the cosmos. Stellar.

The Turner Music Prize 2008

I was burning CDs for this guy—impoverished and starved for new sounds as this wandering stranger was when I first took him in—compiling playlist after playlist that all seemed, ironically, to contain only '60s music, when it dawned on me that he must think I suffer from a bad case of Obsessive Compulsive retro Disorder. Suddenly, I was gripped by a fear of becoming one of those people who grumble about no valid music having been made after 11:20pm on 6 December 1969.

So, beginning in 2007, I started keeping tabs on newfangled music by adding to a playlist freshly released songs whenever one caught my grubby little ears. About this time last year, I was going to send an end-of-year compilation to this hapless victim of mine, but I proved too lazy, and if other people wanted some new sounds as well, I wasn't about to send out three-CD sets every which way.

The bloke's name was Turner—and to my knowledge still is, even though he just got engaged (congrats, Dave!)—and there's a prestigious (if ludicrous) annual art award called the Turner Prize. So here you go: The first disc of my 2008 round-up of great music—my out-of-touch guide to modern sounds, all designed to impress upon some fellow music lover that I am not a crackpot!

TURNER MUSIC PRIZE 2008, Vol. 1 [.zip file]
[Download disabled.]

2008 was a p-r-e-t-t-y good year—in music. Hell, it was pretty damn great. A lot of moody noise was recorded, and on some days as I listen to the music on this first volume, I daydream that it was all to vanquish the inanity that besets our beleaguered world. Then I got a job working on the Norwegian pre-contests anticipating the international Eurovision Song Contest.

1. The Black Angels: «Mission District»
Their ’60s psychedelia/Native American drone’n’roll schtick is a tad corny, perhaps, but the Black Angels have bottom. There’s groove and balls, two qualities there's a desperate shortage of in contemporary rock’n’roll (the combination of which is even rarer). And DAMN! is that scuzzbucket fuzz bass nasty!
From Directions to See a Ghost

2. Endless Boogie: «The Manly Vibe»
I don’t know what’s going on «in the basement,» but listening to this pub blues rock gone horribly wonky, I wouldn’t go down there if I were you. (Actually, I would—and especially if I were me.) I don’t know if «Manly Vibe» refers to some sort of masculine essence or just a butt-plug. Whatever it is, I’m feeling (practically smelling) it. This is bearded, sweaty, bear music—what Kings Of Leon would sound like if they weren’t such pubescent pussies, but bald and furry and subjected instead to something David Lynch wouldn’t touch…
From Focus Level

3. The Fall: «50 Year Old Man (pt. 1)»
«I’m a 50-year-old man / What you gonna do about it?» Whoever said rock’n’roll is a young man’s game? Just because most rock’n’rollers slink off into irrelevance after a couple of albums doesn’t mean everyone has to follow the precedence set by Sirs Mick, Paul, Elton and Cliff. On this monster, rock’s foremost maverick coot, 51-year-old Mark E. Smith, slobbers and rants about the advantages of getting to that age where it only makes sense to give the whimpering ageism of obsessive mortals two crooked fingers up: «I’m a 50-year-old-man / And I like it / I’m a 50-year-old man / I’ve got a three-foot rock-hard-on». No wonder he likes it! (This track is an edited excerpt from an 11-minute-plus opus that degenerates into a banjo ditty. I thought it best to keep it short and sweet—unlike that three-foot erection.)
From Imperial Wax Solvent

4. TV On The Radio: «Halfway Home»
Hand claps! And «ba-ba-ba-ba-ba»s!
From Dear Science,

5. Goa: «Au dessus des nuages»
GLORIOUS NOISE! Everything about this track is primal. If they'd had video games back in the Stone Age, this is what they would sound like. Grit yer teeth and enjoy!
From Goa 3

6. Dan Friel: «Ghost Town (pt. 1)»
Imagine what all the pop hooks that have persecuted the populations of this planet could have sounded like with a little bit of drugged-up disco balls? Thankfully, you need strain your imagination no more; here’s a little taste.
From Ghost Town

7. Portishead: «Machine Gun»
Sadness, anger, loathing, hopelessness and a sense of foreboding; respect to those very few who aren't only able, but willing to stare down depression long enough to convey it. Portishead announced, shortly before the release of their long-awaited and hotly anticipated third album, that it would be a bit of a «fuck you» to all the chill-out muzak their insipid imitators have long since turned into a widespread genre afflicting anyone wishing to go out for a cuppa joe. This track's a destroyer, alright, merciless but righteous!
From Third

8. The Notwist: «Alphabet»
A weird rhythm and bits of noise scattered here and there, with a static, psychotic, high-pitched synth drone throughout and something that could be a skipping CD broken up with intermittent jazz drumming. These fragments and more come together to form a whole that is, inexplicably, frail and vulnerable—some kind of magic trick.
From The Devil, You + Me

9. Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band: «13 Blues for Thirteen Moons»
Where to start? The tense strings? The releasing noise? The funky drumming? The sexy riff? The plaintive vocal, stretching into a hoarse indignation, the vocal cords cracking with anger to the point of silence? Upon hearing this band—the heirs to Nina Simone’s badass activist attitude—most recording artists should and surely would hang their heads in shame. «No heroes on my radio!» yells Efrim Menuck, something I’m trying to do my bit to correct by putting this piece on here—one of the foremost musical accomplishments of 2008. (No «indie rock creeps» with personal stylists and sycophantic press here, castrating the legacy of early '80s post-punk for the teenage demographic.) Q: How do you spell «relevance»? A: S-I-L-V-E-R-M-T-Z-I-O-N.
From 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons

10. Megapuss: «Sayulita»
«Dancing whore / Dirty floor…» (Could easily have been the other way around.) This song makes me want to curl up into sleep, the sound of being too tired to feel depressed gently, distantly guiding you into the weird and wonderful world of dreams, where the miracle of consciousness, and so reality, unravels and is revealed in all its unfathomable illogic, taunting the pretensions of science and rationality (if you could remember such things). And just as you no longer have any awareness of self, nor any understanding of the senseless imagery you’re not apart from, but merged with in this non-place where nothing carries meaning nor bears any consequence, you recognise just about the only intelligible words falling out of Greg Rogove’s lazily sorrowful mouth—the mutterings of someone talking in their sleep suddenly clear now, tender, and content at last, as it sings the wishful thought: «I am where I want to be…»
From Surfing

11. Larkin Grimm: «Blond and Golden Johns»

I’ve been accused of all sorts of witchcraft and told that I am a perverse and disturbing influence, and have been kicked out of churches, schools, hippie communes, and the town of Skagway, Alaska…

So says Larkin Grimm, one of those people who's All Woman. Eerily backed by Fire On Fire, «Blond and Golden Johns» may or may not be inspired by Grimm’s time spent with the prostitutes of Bangkok: «I got no hooker’s heart of gold / My hooks are sharp, my heart is cold.» Say what you will about her intensity and unconventional perspective, in a worldful of crooners passing themselves off as sensitive singer-songwriters and menstrual folk girlies dabbling with «eccentricity», how refreshing it is to hear an artist with a different vision—one who takes risks, who has an edge, who gives things a slant, who sees it her way (not yours). Finally. She has arrived. «This mouth has wrapped around something / More delicious than the songs I sing…»
From Parplar

12. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: «Hold on to Yourself»

Well, cities rust and fall to ruin
Factories close and cars go cruisin’
In and around the borders of her vision
She says, «Oh woah woah woah»
As Jesus makes the flowers grow
All around the scene of her collision

Oh, you know I would
I would hold on to yourself

It’s in the middle of the night
I try my best to chase outside
The phantoms and the ghosts and the fairy-girls
On 1001 nights like this
She mutters, «Open sesame,» and Ali Baba and his forty thieves
Launch her off the face of the world

Well, you know
One day I’ll come back
And I’ll hold on to yourself
You better hold on to yourself

Aw, babe, I’m thousand miles away
And I just don’t know what to say
’Cause Jesus only loves a man who bruises
But darling we can clearly see
It’s all life and fire and lunacy
And excuses and excuses and excuses

Well, you know if I could I would
Yeah, I would lie right down
And I’d hold on to yourself

From Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!