The Nuclears sail off into the Seasides
Warning: This blog entry is rated 'R' for rockist content and for frank discussion of cock rockery
The Nuclears make rock 'n' roll about rock 'n' roll and god bless 'em for it. Led by the brothers Dudolevitch, Mike D and Brian D share vocal and electric guitar duties and are ably assisted by Bobby Sproles (bass) and Kevin Blatchford (drums) who function as the control rods to this long-running Brooklyn-based musical nuclear reactor with additional assistance from vocalist/tambournist Briana Layon who acts as the band's steam generator with her Tina-Turner-meets-Valerie-Brown-meets-Julie-Brown-rapped-in-the-body-of-a-white-girl-soulful-belting-and-on-stage-shimmying-and-tambourine-shaking.
Seasides by The Nuclears
Earlier this year the band released what is said to be their final studio album Seasides (Rum Bar Records) and last week they played a farewell-to-Manhattan show at Mercury Lounge that burned with a white hot molten intensity (check out the Deli's Instagram account for a clip from the show in question alongside the super fun self-described "Maximum Oi'N'B" opening act 45 Adapters who shared sensible advice like "don't trust anyone who doesn't dance") and in case you missed that one their very very last NYC show will happen at TV Eye in Brooklyn-adjacent Ridgewood, Queens on 9/18—the giant centerfold portrait of Iggy Pop in the front room couldn't be more appropriate for this stacked bill alongside The Fleshtones (!), Televisionaries, and Spud Cannon—and really you'd be crazy to miss it. Over their decade-plus existence The Nuclears' sound has been compared to everyone from Chuck Berry to the Stones, the Ramones to the Dolls, the Kinks to Kiss, Deep Purple to Black Sabbath and the list goes on—not to mention their own self-stated musical influences such as The Who, MC5, Judas Priest, Blue Oyster Cult, Radio Birdman, Turbonegro, and the Hellacopters. In other words, they don't just rock. They rawk.
And speaking of "rock about rock" (sorry, make that "rawk about rawk!") The Nuclears are/were essentially a living breathing rock 'n' roll Hall of Fame traveling circus with intertwining stands of '50s rock und roll, '60s garage, '70s punk, '80s metal, and '90s grunge and the result is one hell of a lot more fun than staring at Mick Jagger's slacks behind a glass case in Cleveland, Ohio (not to deny that "Cleveland rocks") while still putting across their own singularly opened-hearted let's-get-the-party-started vibe especially live. Speaking of which it's a shame The Nuclears never recorded a live album because the band's insane level of shreditude and kinetic livewire energy in the flesh can't entirely be captured in the studio kind of like a vampire trying to comb his hair in a mirror.
But hey don't let it discourage you from giving Seasides a spin because for one thing it contains a couple honest-to-Abe "rock about rock" songs that truly rawk (both feature Briana on lead vox) right smack in the middle of the album. First there's "Mystery Slinger" about meeting a guitar slinger "down at the crossroads" (could it be…Satan?!?) who "possessed a magic in his fingers" (not to be confused with the Magic Fingers™ at your finer hourly rate motels) and Bonnie Raitt oughta cover this song on her next record because there's some insanely groovy blooze clues to be detected here; and then next comes the equally self-referential "Bow To The Queen" ("I'm the best this world has ever seen…burn it down with gasoline") with some serious-as-a-sheer-heart-attack heavy metal wailing both vocally and in the Dudolevitch's truly juicy Judas Priesty twin leads.
All of which raises the question: Should the Nuclears be classified as roots rockers; or is it more accurate to call them meta-rock postmodernists? Which raises the answer: Who cares?!? Because Seasides should convince any remaining skeptics not to "knock the rock" with songs that measure up majestically next to classics by Queen and Zep and Joan Jett (and of course "The Tap!") when it comes to rock songs about rock that also happen to rawk. ROCK! And not to worry they don't forget to throw in some sex ("Make the First Move," "Small Talk") and drugs ("Siamese Connection") for the masses with that lastly mentioned song adding some social commentary into the mix with lyrics about the CIA importing narcotics into the USA ("it's not a crime / if you're on the right side") but don't worry this isn't a message album unless that message is "let's rock!"
Speaking of postmodernism, the next song is called "I Just Wanna Have Nothin' To Do" which is a title the Ramones somehow never came up with and they make doing nothing sounds pretty fun (especially when they wanna do nothing with you) but peel back the onion and it's a straight-up deconstructive text about wanting to want nothing, desiring to be free of desire, because desire is akin to being stuck on a "hamster wheel…going nowhere slow" and I'm starting to wonder if these boys and their side chick are Buddhists or maybe they're just students of Schopenhauer. This impression is only solidified in the next song on the album "Doin' the Same Thing Twice" which further explores the futility of striving with lines like "one day you'll find / you're just a cog in the machine / trying to turn into a bigger cog / well that's the American Dream." And once a band's arrives at this stark realization well how can they not break up so yeah it's all starting to make sense now.
The Nuclears fittingly bow out with two truly head-banging-devil-horn-displaying-fist-pumpers. The first of which being "Slash Run" which opens with the lines "There's a place that speaks right to my soul / the best parts of rock 'n' roll / a drug (drunk?) house full of degenerates like me / and I never wanna leave" and admittedly I may be misinterpreting a word or two in there but misinterpretations can be revealing and then the song segues into a cover of KISS's "Strutter" and it's hard to misinterpret a couplet like "everybody says she's lookin' good / and the lady knows it's understood" so of course she struts her stuff and I mean wouldn't you. And then finally comes "Flat and Nasty" where The Nuclears look back to a pre-Internet-porn era when rock 'n' roll jollies could only be had by non-Paul-Stanley-types through such primitive rites as heading to your local ShopRite to buy a pack of smokes then going back to your bedroom and shuttering the blinds and, well, "the only way I could get my release / was all the flat girls on the TV screen."
So lest you accuse these New Yawk "rock about rock" meta-rock-masters of being masturbatory musically or otherwise, well guess what, they just beat you to it (!) by writing a terminal song that's literally about "beating it" but which also speaks directly to this particular band's artistry. Because in typical Nuclears fashion they make the love of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll sound like the most wholesome thing you could ever aspire to—especially, again, at their tent revival style live shows—a Hellfire Holy Trinity suffused with a nostalgic cathode glow that's as "All American" as that well known perv Norman Rockwell eating a slice of warm apple pie and then using the rest of the soft yielding pastry to pleasure his love gun American Pie style. (Jason Lee)
Photo by Kem Ettienne (@primo34)
The Nuclears
Threshing Spirit "The Abyss' Embrace (A Ship Of Fools)"
Threshing Spirit has released the first single, "The Abyss' Embrace (A Ship Of Fools)", from his forthcoming The Crucible which is due out on October 28th via American Decline.
This is the Black Metal persona of label head Jordan Reyes, and The Crucible will be his debut full-length album as Threshing Spirit.
The Crucible by Threshing Spirit
Threshing Spirit
Psychic Graveyard release "A Good-Looking Ghost"
Psychic Graveyard specialize in creating music built around a rich noughty center of garage rock backbeat and drone-y pummeling marshmallow fluff and infusing it with gooey streaks of wah-wah effects and random nuggets of congealed noise and covering the whole heart-clogging concoction in a hard-candy shell of throbbing synthesized sub-bass and Sprechstimme vocals—with the end result being vaguely menacing and entirely intoxicating, that is if you're built for this sorta stuff which is something like if you took the entire candy bar aisle at your local Wawa convenience store and somehow transformed it into a gnarley fused musical version so if you're "Looking For Mr. Goodbar" well you just found him.
Who are Psychic Graveyard? Enquiring minds want to know! The band themselves describe it best, so I'll quote from their Spot-i-fried bio here: "Noise Rock pioneers, Eric Paul (Arab On Radar, Chinese Stars, Doomsday Student), Paul Vieira (Chinese Stars, Doomsday Student), and Nathan Joyner (Some Girls, All Leather, Hot Nerds), [and] Charles Ovett (Battle Beasts, Joules) venture through uncharted territory with their new band. Nathan Joyner's grinding synths and 'found sound' buries the seed of each song deep into the fertile ground--while Paul Vieira's manic, fuzzed-out guitars, Ovett's bombastic drumming, and Eric Paul's obsessive lyrics shower the proceedings with equal parts sunshine and rain" and see below for some interesting and occasionally alarming but in a good way videos (parental discretion inadvisable) from the various projects listed above.
Psychic Graveyard's latest single is called "A Good-Looking Ghost" and it can be witnessed at the top of this page. It's a strong contender for this year's Most Outstanding Achievements In Creating A Song That Sounds Exactly Like It Should Based On The Title Alone award and it's also commendable for its opening quatrain which ably lays out the ghost's origins: "This is not the death that I wanted / but this is the death that I got / The bleeding started around Christmas / and I was dead by March." So if this sort of thing gets your goat (or your ghost's goat, or goat's ghost) and if you're digging this then check out more of their stuff below. (Jason Lee)
Psychic Graveyard
Stoner Doom metal group Shed has released the first two singles, "Pus of Man" and "The Shadow of Totality" from their forthcoming self-titled debut album which is due out on August 19th.
What sets Shed apart of the Metal group is the addition of heavy metal brass section consisting of trombone, bass trombone, and tenor/baritone saxophones.
Shed is made up of Calvin Armstrong (6-string electric cello, vocals), Drew Baxter (Bass trombone), Chris Misch-Bloxdorf (Tenor trombone), Patrick Stevens (Bass guitar), Steve Wasilczuk (Tenor/Baritone saxophones), and Kelson Zbichorski (Drums).
Shed by Shed
UgLi blur the line between DTF and WTF on heavy AF debut album
The South Jersey/Philadelphia-based band UgLi unabashedly bash out '90s style alt rock with panache—but still their music feels uniquely relevant to right now and it rocks hard enough to be relevant to any era.
FUCK by UgLi
Taking a genre (grunge) originally associated with flannel-wearing, chainsaw-wielding, primal-screaming lone-wolf types, the Philly foursome uses it to address topics like mental health afflictions, gender fluidity, body dysmorphia, medication overutilization, and the pure unadulterated joy of a new love. Surprised you with last one, huh? And while in reality grunge was always pretty multifaceted (oddly enough it only became less so in the later '90s morphing into rap-rock, nü-metal, and post-grunge all culminating in the nightmare of Woodstock '99) and it's always included great female musicians (L7 easily rocks just as hard as Soundgarden) but in 1992 it was still necessary for a certain "sad little sensitive Pisces man" to put a not-unsubstantial contingent of his own band's fans on blast in the liner notes to the Incesticide comp:
"If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us—leave us the fuck alone! Don't come to our shows and don't buy our records."
UgLi could in this way be considered the culmination of Kurt's wishes, and one can only hope that in between floating around and hanging out on clouds that somewhere up there he's looking down pretty happy about it. Because as a band that's otherwise made up of three pretty average looking rock dudes (no offense guys!) UgLi is fronted by co-guitarist, vocalist, and primary songwriter Dylyn Durante who also happens to identify as a queer trans woman. So when she sings lines like "How would you find love / you don't fit in the box / you're mixing colors and shapes / I think you need to get off" ("Why Be Pretty…when you could be free") it speaks not only to the youthful alienation of grunge-loving kids across a couple generations but also to a very specific situation—a situation driven home by the tight instrumental work of co-guitarist Andrew Iannarelli, bassist Lucas Gisonti, and drummer Teddy Paullin who pushes the album forward with Jimmy Chamberlin levels of energy.
Wait, what album? The track above plus seven others make up the band's first full-length on the self-released FUCK, which at first glance may come off as a blunt, simple-minded attention grabber of a title. But when you break it down "fuck" is actually one of the more nuanced and versatile words in the English language given its dozens of potential meanings, ranging from a modifier used to add emphasis ("no fucking way!") to a single-word exclamation indicating anger or disgust; ranging from the sensual physical union of two or more human beings to the state of being badly damaged or even ruined. And on FUCK, Dylyn covers all these meanings and more in songs where she "gets fucked" in every possible sense, and in songs where the band modifies the grunge formula to fit their own means—adding musical flavors ranging from the proggy side of the alt-rock spectrum (e.g., the Pumpkins/Radiohead-esque "Bad Egg" which deals with the difficulties of transitioning) to the dreamy chamber pop turned shoegazy slowcore rock ballad of the eight-plus-minute closer "Naegleriasis" with it's vibey vibraphone and hazy horn section played in waltz time.
And finally, when it comes to the exclamatory qualities of FUCK, the record benefits greatly from the aforementioned intricate arrangements and the impressively warm/crisp/clear yet crunchy/dirty/overdriven production work on the album—produced in collaboration with Dave Downham at Gradwell House in Haddon Heights, New Jersey (Dave is credited with recording, mixing, and mastering the album alongside a full production credit on "Naegleriasis") and I'm guessing that Butch Vig may be feeling just a little bit jealous now reading this. So whether you consider yourself a "House Pet" ("Nobody taught me how to care / I think I should've picked it up somewhere") or a "Bad Egg" ("I'm searching for that high note / grasping for survival / well, what the fuck do I know") you may want to follow the former song's advice to "shimmer while you can" because the album itself follows this advice and it seems to work out pretty well. (Jason Lee)
Shoegazer