The Perfect Rat's "Endangered Languages"
No doubt about it, some of the most interesting rock music happening today is in the heavy arena: new sides by Sleep alumni High On Fire and Om, f’rinstance, rank among the best 2007 releases I’ve heard as this year winds down. The Kyuss bloodline’s been fruitful as well, Josh Homme’s Queens of the Stone Age having performed a similar function for “stoner rock” to what Nirvana did for “grunge,” albeit on a somewhat less earthshaking level.
I first heard guitarist Mario Lalli back in 2002, on an album by ex-Kyuss drummer Brant Bjork (Brant Bjork and the Operators on Music Cartel) that I reviewed for the First Church of Holy Rock and Roll. Lalli, whose regular band is Fatso Jetson, is also a veteran of another Kyuss offshoot, Homme’s Desert Sessions series of recordings, a floating crapgame in the manner of the Denton rock lottery. In 2005, another desert muso, Yawning Man guitarist Gary Arce, drafted Lalli for the sessions that produced The Perfect Rat’s Endangered Languages, a collection of heavy psych jamarama with occasional spoken word interjections by Saccharine Trust frontman Jack Brewer. Released this year on Alone Records in Spain, it’s available domestically via Cobraside Distribution.
Brewer’s no stranger to this poetry-rock stuff, having been an original participant in Ohio poet Dan McGuire’s Unknown Instructors project (with Saccharine Trust guitarist Joe Baiza and the Minutemen/fIREHOSE engine room of Mike Watt and George Hurley) as well as versifying over S-T’s challenging, thrusting, punk-funk-jazz jams since 1980. Here, he speaks verse by L.A. poets Steve Abee, Florence Raush Ehlers, and Dennis Cruz, as well as one of his own. The texts are a varied lot. Abee’s “The Saint of Lost Things” is an evocative nocturnal urban vignette. Ehler’s “Clouds” overflows with imagery as lush and expansive as the garden she describes. The apocalyptic voice in Cruz’s “Tropical Depression” recalls that which Brewer’s used in some of his own work. Brewer’s “Why Do We Lose” (which he recites over the track “Chewing Metal”) has the same air of introspective self-doubt as Eliot’s “Prufrock.” (Don’t take my word for it; you can read ‘em all in the blog on The Perfect Rat’s Myspace page.)
The real big news here, though, is the man behind the four-string axe. That’d be Greg Ginn, inventor of the, dare I say, business model for modern DIY rock as founder of SST Records and guitarist-evil dictator of Black Flag. Because he’s a conceptualist as much as a player, Ginn knows not to overplay the way a lot of guitarists do when they’re forced to pick up a bass. Instead, he furnishes ribcage-rattling slabs of sound to serve as a launching pad for Arce and Lalli’s explorations. (Is there a “Take that, Chuck” in there somewhere? Only Mr. Ginn knows for sure.)
The Perfect Rat’s music surges and roils, its scope stretching from dark, droning things like you’d expect from these guys (“Painted Canyons”) to modal rock explorations of a sort that I suppose originated with the Byrds’ “Eight Miles High” (the dervish-dance “Semi Nomadic,” wherein Tony Atherton’s sax rides atop the mix of guitars). At times, the music’s slightly dissonant metallic clangor and tectonic-plate shifts, as well as drummer Bill Stinson’s eccentric accents, recall yet another desert outfit: Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band circa Strictly Personal and Trout Mask Replica. As a longtime fan of Uncle Don’s declamatory style and lit Brit/ex-Deviant Mick Farren’s “evil Jeremy Irons” (my oldest daughter’s phrase) act, as well as an appreciator of guitar-centric extended psych jams in general, I found Endangered Languages to be right up my alley. So may you as well.
I first heard guitarist Mario Lalli back in 2002, on an album by ex-Kyuss drummer Brant Bjork (Brant Bjork and the Operators on Music Cartel) that I reviewed for the First Church of Holy Rock and Roll. Lalli, whose regular band is Fatso Jetson, is also a veteran of another Kyuss offshoot, Homme’s Desert Sessions series of recordings, a floating crapgame in the manner of the Denton rock lottery. In 2005, another desert muso, Yawning Man guitarist Gary Arce, drafted Lalli for the sessions that produced The Perfect Rat’s Endangered Languages, a collection of heavy psych jamarama with occasional spoken word interjections by Saccharine Trust frontman Jack Brewer. Released this year on Alone Records in Spain, it’s available domestically via Cobraside Distribution.
Brewer’s no stranger to this poetry-rock stuff, having been an original participant in Ohio poet Dan McGuire’s Unknown Instructors project (with Saccharine Trust guitarist Joe Baiza and the Minutemen/fIREHOSE engine room of Mike Watt and George Hurley) as well as versifying over S-T’s challenging, thrusting, punk-funk-jazz jams since 1980. Here, he speaks verse by L.A. poets Steve Abee, Florence Raush Ehlers, and Dennis Cruz, as well as one of his own. The texts are a varied lot. Abee’s “The Saint of Lost Things” is an evocative nocturnal urban vignette. Ehler’s “Clouds” overflows with imagery as lush and expansive as the garden she describes. The apocalyptic voice in Cruz’s “Tropical Depression” recalls that which Brewer’s used in some of his own work. Brewer’s “Why Do We Lose” (which he recites over the track “Chewing Metal”) has the same air of introspective self-doubt as Eliot’s “Prufrock.” (Don’t take my word for it; you can read ‘em all in the blog on The Perfect Rat’s Myspace page.)
The real big news here, though, is the man behind the four-string axe. That’d be Greg Ginn, inventor of the, dare I say, business model for modern DIY rock as founder of SST Records and guitarist-evil dictator of Black Flag. Because he’s a conceptualist as much as a player, Ginn knows not to overplay the way a lot of guitarists do when they’re forced to pick up a bass. Instead, he furnishes ribcage-rattling slabs of sound to serve as a launching pad for Arce and Lalli’s explorations. (Is there a “Take that, Chuck” in there somewhere? Only Mr. Ginn knows for sure.)
The Perfect Rat’s music surges and roils, its scope stretching from dark, droning things like you’d expect from these guys (“Painted Canyons”) to modal rock explorations of a sort that I suppose originated with the Byrds’ “Eight Miles High” (the dervish-dance “Semi Nomadic,” wherein Tony Atherton’s sax rides atop the mix of guitars). At times, the music’s slightly dissonant metallic clangor and tectonic-plate shifts, as well as drummer Bill Stinson’s eccentric accents, recall yet another desert outfit: Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band circa Strictly Personal and Trout Mask Replica. As a longtime fan of Uncle Don’s declamatory style and lit Brit/ex-Deviant Mick Farren’s “evil Jeremy Irons” (my oldest daughter’s phrase) act, as well as an appreciator of guitar-centric extended psych jams in general, I found Endangered Languages to be right up my alley. So may you as well.
posted by stashdauber at 7:14 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home