Pixies are a hard band to catagorise. They played pop songs about biblical stories with surf guitars, grunge dynamics and interspersed Spanish lyrics. The result is frequently astounding, and always interesting. They lend themselves very easily to being the cult band they've become. Here's some reasons why...
Cocteau Twins' "Garlands" was released in 1982 on 4AD. It's a dreamy post-punk journey through the ethereal world of Elizabeth Fraser, Robin Guthrie and Will Heggie. Eschewing a drummer, the rhythms are entirely drum machine creations, giving the tracks a dispassionate backbone on which swathes of reverb drenched guitars and Fraser's wails are placed. The artwork is quite representative of the sound of the album, a fever dream in industrial architecture with a ghostly atmosphere.
This year's record store day saw a load of tasty releases from great bands, and brought well-received punters into our independent shops. I managed to pick up a Rekords Rekords 10" with one track each from Queens of the Stone Age, Alain Johannes, Desert Sessions 7&8 and Mini Mansions. I considered buying Kings of Leon's reissue of the Holy Roller Novocaine EP, but £19 seemed a little too much to spend on vinyl in one day.
Holy shit, are you in for something fucking good. The legendary Keith Morris, originally the singer in Black Flag and later of the Circle Jerks put together this amazing band with the drummer from Rocket From The Crypt, Dmitri Coats of Burning Brides and Redd Kross bassist Steven Shane McDonalds. It's old school hardcore, think early Black Flag, Career Suicide, Cloak/Dagger, that kind of stuff, but because it's Morris' it's also got original hardcore credentials. The whole thing's over in like 25 minutes and that's all it needs to smash your fucking face off. The artwork's by Black Flag co-conspirator Raymond Pettibon.
The stage is thick with dry ice fog, and behind there are surely several joints being lit in the crowd (much to the chagrin of the bouncers) filling the venue with the acrid smell of burning marijuana, fittingly for a band whose music owes such a huge debt to THC. Stoner rock as a genre pretty much began with Kyuss, drawing from psychadelic influences of the late sixties like Hendrix and the early seventies reefer-influenced proto-metal exemplified by Sabbath's "Sweet Leaf" and it's been over 20 years since they got the ball rolling in the Palm Desert, California (leading to the alternative genre title of desert rock).
