[You can hear Sohrab’s music here, here, or here.]
At one point I’d pulled out recent records that various friends have made, as I thought it’d be nice to give a nod to fellow travelers (Contractions, FACS, Grey Hairs, Green/Blue, Mint Mile, Paramount Styles) still at it in this eternally rewarding and thoroughly absurd pursuit of making music. Then I considered it might be more representative of what I listen to if I picked out albums from different genres of music. As I flipped past the Bangles effervescent self-titled EP from ’82 to get to Jorge Ben’s A Tábua De Esmeralda, my favorite if not gentlest Ben, though you really can’t go wrong with any of the first 16 or 17 of his LPs (an insane feat even by, I dunno, Duke Ellington standards?), my eye caught the stack of records I’d listened to most recently and had yet to put back. Truth being valued at an all-time low these days, I figured I’d bet the odds and just go with what was already in front of me. So here are the 6 records [footnote] In case you want to run through these records all at once, here’s a Spotify playlist Sohrab put together for us.[/footnote] I’m about to tuck back into their alphabetized bunkbeds . . .
J.J. Cale, Really (1972): Do you like J.J. Cale? I feel like he gets unfairly lumped in with some unflattering company due to his elbow rubbing with Slowhand. As if it’s music for dudes whose domestic lager bellies carve out a ketchup-catching crease in their Lou Gramm/Asia/The Guess Who/Foghat monster jam tour tees. And, sure, there’s some guitar wangling that could be accompanied by the classic, dyspeptic, fret-tickler face. But it’s J.J. Cale’s voice that sets the tone. And often his songs are just single riffs that percolate for a few minutes in a state that’s simultaneously woozy and articulate. There are few things I enjoy listening to after, yes, midnight more than a tune like “Right Down Here.”
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Neu!, Neu! (1972) : For rockers of a certain age it seems like there’s music made before having heard Neu and then everything that follows. The perfect 10 minutes that is “Hallogallo,” which opens this album, sets a pulse for floating into the astral plane. It’s as if you’re suspended at the horizon line while the sun slowly sets over some distant ocean. But what I love about Neu is that the gearshift is not only set for motorik monotony. For every cruise-control “Hallogallo” there’s a happily-lost-in-the-weeds “Sonderangebot” that wiggles and swells and bzzznrrrffs for 5 minutes. It’s a transporting soundtrack to familiar stories that never repeat themselves.
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Richard Hell & The Voidoids, Blank Generation (1977): Late to the party on this one. I got caught up in the hallway chatting with Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd, not realizing that just over the threshold, causing a real ruckus in the kitchen, were Ivan Julian and Robert Quine. The electric guitar is a curious instrument. Often misused as either a brutality-dispensing cudgel or in very corny displays of masculine gallantry in 20th century suburban mating rituals, it turns out this apparatus can be exquisitely expressive in the hands of the right reject or urchin. Julian and Quine take familiar vocabulary from 1950s rhythm and blues narratives and literally strangulate the last bit of life out of them. It’s exhilarating. And the songs are catchy as heck, with Mr. Hell alternately snarling in the corner or strutting past with his chest bare and heaving with syllables.
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That Petrol Emotion, Manic Pop Thrill (1986): Sometimes album titles are poetic in their abstract relationship to the albums they adorn. Not the case here. As advertised, these 12 songs are delightfully crammed with hooks. The two guitar patterns intertwine over a throbbing rhythm section. And even when things slow down there’s a piercing urgency present. This record would be the perfect flip side to Echo And The Bunnymen’s Crocodiles on that C-90 you’re getting ready to mail to your cousin in Denver. Searing, capacious and endlessly melodic. While each of their later records have great songs on them, the production often falls into the trap of drums-and-vocals-BIG-n-LOUD, which maybe satisfied 90s alt-radio music director fantasies, but is the audio equivalent of what Pepperidge Farm does to baked goods.
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Träd, Gräs Och Stenar, Djungelns Lag (2016): Be forewarned: a bunch of stinking hippies occupy four full sides of why-nils here. All recorded live in Sweden and Norway in 1971/1972—no doubt the shows were herbal healing experiences for Scandinavian söner och döttrar exhausted by decades of sleek, minimalist design. They let it all hang out here. Mouth harps, fiddles, tambourines, a choogle of riffage riding wild into the North Sea on a Crazy Horse. I’m not into hippies, though. I’ll gladly gorge myself on food coop tabouleh while I shake my fist at the man, but the Grateful Dead overcook their bulgur wheat into a soggy mess and all the baggage that’s nestled into the matted fur of those rainbow dancing bears on the bumpers of Tesla Model 3 luxury sedans is just too much. So why is Träd, Gräs Och Stenar exceptional? I’m not sure how, but they manage to sidestep the cliches. Like Dead Moon or Fugazi or Can or late-period Talk Talk, they have created their own inner language and listening in feels voyeuristically exciting. Then before you know it you’re lost on a tangent and twenty-odd minutes have passed. I got to see them play last year and it was affirming in the way that seeing The Ex live is affirming. Zero affectation, zero rock’n’roll silliness, zero ego. Pure, universal id.
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X, Aspirations (1980): I think the first Australian punk bands I heard were The Celibate Rifles and Lime Spiders. Or maybe the Hard-Ons? Then The Birthday Party, for sure. It wasn’t til later that I devoured The Saints, The Scientists, Radio Birdman, let alone Feedtime or The Victims. For some dumb reason X, like the first Sunnyboys album, totally escaped me until maybe 10 years ago. I’ve tried to make up for lost listening time by playing this record as often as possible. It lurches, it cracks, it ducks and jabs. The rhythm section impressively predates what I could easily mistake for being an early 90s band on Touch and Go. But the guitar has that unmistakable, period-perfect rock’n’roll, chugging downstroke and slightly out-of-tune Chuck Berry note buckling. Meanwhile the vocal has a growl that sticks out like the arm on a Heisman Trophy, sweetly countered by the occasional deadpan backing vocal. This is the record you might find me jumping on my parents’ couch in my underwear to.
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