The Afghan Whigs - Gentlemen

Release Date: 5.10.1993

★★★★★ Tracks:
Gentlemen
When We Two Parted

Ladies let me tell you about myself
I got a dick for a brain and my brain is gonna sell my ass to you
Now I’m ok but in time I’ll find I’m stuck
‘Cause she wants love and I still want to fuck

Greg Dulli croons on “Be Sweet” before the guitars and drums build into an excellently ugly bridge. These ugly truths Greg Dulli so candidly confesses populate the entirety of Gentlemen, and it’s what makes this collection of songs so compelling.

Gentlemen, a record that was released in late 1993, propelled The Afghan Whigs to the fringes of mainstream. At a time when grunge was dominating the airwaves, Dulli and Co., soaked up some airplay with a hard rock that was more soulful than the majority of what their counterparts were producing. The guitars didn’t rely so heavily on the power chords that had become so prevalent at the time; Greg Dulli and Rick McCollum combined melodic distortion with slide guitars, octaves and pedal effects. The strings combine with off-kilter 4/4 percussion and odd bass drum syncopations, and in reality The Afghan Whigs have a lot more in common with 90’s post-hardcore/indie groups Fugazi and Jawbox than they did with Nirvana or Stone Temple Pilots.

My introduction to The Afghan Whigs was when that memorable (and now humorously dated) music video they released for Gentlemen’s title track was played on MTV. As a new teenager who had just began guitar lessons, the distorted high string guitar strums and its interplay with the percussion was something I could only wish to replicate in my shitty garage band. In following one of the few 90’s formulas they did have in common with their grungy brethren, the quiet verse shifts into a loud chorus and Dulli yells “Understand! Do you Understand?!” Fuck, was I hooked to that track. I never bought the record though, and the seldom times I heard it at my best friend’s place nothing caught my ear quite like “Gentlemen” did.

My cousin however remained a steadfast fan throughout the years, and when he told me he picked up tickets for us to the Terminal 5 reunion show this fall, I decided it was time to finally download a copy. The aforementioned “Be Sweet” is a highlight, as well as the intensely guitar driven “Debonair” and “Fountain and Fairfax.” But the only track that nearly matches “Gentlemen” in songwriting prowess, with its slide guitar leads and Dulli’s signature implicatively confessional yet self-aggrandizing lyrics, is the ballady “When Two We Parted.” The second half of Gentlemen tails off a bit, but re-familiarizing myself with The Afghan Whigs has me pretty fucking excited for that reunion show in October.

Check out my cousin's post here.

The Stooges - Fun House

Release Date: 07.07.1970

★★★★★ Tracks:

Down on the Streets
Loose

Punk rock’s foundations are agreed to have begun sometime in the late 1950’s. But in my mind the first band to embody punk rock as we now know it is The Stooges. And it all starts with Iggy. Here on Fun House he screams, squeals, barks, claps, burps, cajoles, and sings as abrasively as he can for thirty minutes, trying his damnedest to replicate the energy from his legendary stage persona. And what a stage persona. A man willing to do anything to rile the audience, he would roll in glass, throw up on stage, dance like a lunatic, and his most lasting antic, stage dive into the audience, being the first to attempt what is now a concert past time.

As much as I like punk rock though, The Stooges are a group I appreciate more than I rotate regularly. Fun House is solid but I think punk rock works best in compact doses. The repetitive melodies are effective and outstanding on the shorter songs here (“Down on the Street”, “Loose”) but wear out their welcome on anything +5 minutes (“Dirt”, “1970”, “Fun House”). Still, I love to hear the roots of the genre. Everyone from the Wire to Fugazi to Nirvana to NOFX owes to the music of the The Stooges. And just as Iggy created his persona out of his idols (Jim Morrison in particular), countless others would study and follow in Iggy’s steps. Shit, Ozzy should be sending him regular royalty checks.

Twelve Hour Turn - The Victory of Flight

Release Date: November 1999

★★★★★ Tracks:

New Snake
Second Story
For Want of a Real Whole
A Mouth of Suitable Size
Little One

Anyone who grew up in Florida in the mid-to-late 90's familiar with its underground music scene knows there was a huge post-hardcore movement. Bands like Strikeforce Diablo, I Hate Myself, Omega Man, Poison the Well, (early) Hot Water Music are all examples but The Victory of Flight by Twelve Hour Turn best represents the sub-genre I really dig, screamo. Yeah yeah, laugh it up. It has a ridiculous name, and being directly associated with emo has allowed it to be completely overlooked. But that doesn’t mean it’s inconsequential. While there are plenty of clear paths from influential 90’s rockers like Radiohead and Pavement to current-day indie rock, there are also a lot of great bands who took notes by listening to Fugazi. Instead of following in the footprints of the birth of pop by creating verse-chorus-verse songs using almost exclusively major chords, Fugazi was interested in gathering ideas from reggae and jazz while incorporating the punk rock sound of groups like Wire, Joy Division or Gang of Four; sonic tones that, to this day, are still ripe for exploring. And in creating these distorted, diminished, discord-like guitars and abrasively shouted vocals, a slew of new bands followed ready to push those sounds further. Enter Twelve Hour Turn.

Twelve Hour Turn’s first record is certainly not for everyone, and has probably never been heard by most anyone, but completely fucking phenomenal nonetheless. I’d go through the record’s highlights but there’s no point. If you like this kind of thing, the raw emotion in both singer’s voices as they scream their way through a half hour’s worth of blistering 2-minute long post-punk tracks, every song included is a highlight. The unconventional instrumentation is spectacular as well; two guitars (always separated by L/R speakers) staccato picking off key-notes, made-up chords and diminished key progressions, bass patterns that border on avant-garde, and effortless transitions between 4/4 and ¾ (waltz) timings. I’m not sure this is applied music theory or just four guys fucking around until they hit something that clicks, but what is obvious is Twelve Hour Turn was throwing the rock’n’roll rulebook out the window: This is a garage band created by guys who were tired of the same old garage bands.

2010 was another great year for music, but most of the stuff you'd find populating critics' "best of" lists borrows from the same sounds and chord progressions that have been recycled for the past 60 years. Creative, good hard rock has all but vanished. Rooted in the already polarizing genre of punk rock, Twelve Hour Turn’s brand is a bit too harsh for most, but there's still plenty to explore and experiment with here. Music tends to be cyclical, so here's hoping 2011 brings us a few bands willing to break the mold and rock the fuck out again.

Wire - Chairs Missing

Release Date: August, 1978

★★★★★ Tracks:

Another the Letter

Heartbeat

Outdoor Miner

I downloaded Chairs Missing soon after I heard Pink Flag, looking forward to another 18 tracks of chaotic punk rock. But that's not anything close to what I got. Where's all that sloppy guitar distortion I loved? Where's the speed? What happened to the minute long punk songs? What's with the synthesizer? What the hell happened to Wire?! After a few spins I shelved it (or unchecked it, in iTunes terms), thinking Wire had gone soft. And I came in to this post fully prepared to take a nice bloggy shit all over Chairs Missing.

After my first time re-listening through, sometime last week, I was still pretty sure I felt the same way about it. By the second time, without my knowing it, my foot, like it had a mind of its own, began tapping to the slow-building momentum of "Heartbeat." As I noticed I quickly stopped myself, cursing at my foot for sending conflicting thoughts to my mind. Now I couldn't help but pay closer attention, and almost to my dismay, I found bits and pieces of songs I began to like: "Another the Letter's" synths were actually great, "Men 2nd" had a great guitar riff and a distinct rockabilly feel to it. And then I got to "Outdoor Miner," something of an ode to Velvet Underground, and I was hooked. I woke up the next morning and all I could think was 'I can't wait to play Chairs Missing on my commute to work.' No use resisting it.

You got me Wire.

Chairs Missing is easily one of the strangest records I have ever heard. The first track, "Practice Makes Perfect," sounds like it could be the background music to a horror film, with eerie guitars and click-calickity drums, demonic sounding laughter, and ever-increasing panic in Colin's voice as he screams "Waiting for us!," which slowly builds in to anti-climactic chaos. It's not even close to one of my favorites on the album, and exemplifies why first impressions based off of one song can really hurt a record's chances of ever reeling you in. But isn't it ballsy to start off your sophomore release with a track as weird as this one?

"French Film Blurred" begins with another dark, creepy guitar riff and combines with Colin Newman's gloomy voice, and again, it consistently builds but never quite punches it home. The first thrown changeup and a personal favorite comes next, the synth fueled 1:08 long, "Another the Letter." "Men 2nd" gives us a reminder Wire is a punk rock band before we're warped back in to yet another anti-climactic track in "Marooned," a disturbing song about a sailor. And by now one might gather one of Wire's primary intentions for Chairs Missing -- to make a record of constant chaotic tension and unease; to create a sort of musical anxiety that is rarely relaxed. The best track on Chairs Missing and one of the best examples of Wire's intentions is "Heartbeat," which has the feel that it's going to break loose at any moment, but just adds a sliver of a payoff. It makes it all the more addicting to keep coming back to:

"I feel icy
I feel cold
I feel old
Is there something here behind me?
I'm sublime

I feel empty
I feel dark
I remark
I am mesmerized
By my own beat
Like a heartbeat
(In it's own beat)"

Wire add a couple upbeat and not-so-gloomy tracks in to the mix as well, and somehow they fit in perfectly. "Sand In My Joints" and "Another the Letter" are examples but "Outdoor Miner" is the biggest outlier. A throwback to the 60's, it's probably the poppiest song Wire had written yet:

There's no doubting Chairs Missing isn't for everyone. Shit, it wasn't even for me until just last week. To say this album requires patience is a vast understatement, and an interesting exercise on how easily I/we can give up on a record based off of minimal exposure. Once I found a couple of tracks to latch on to, I really began to appreciate what Wire was attempting to create: a slow-building, tense and creepy art-rock record that rewards listeners for repeated listens. I can see how Wire continues to influence modern rock with Chairs Missing. I hear Fugazi again in "Heartbeat," I hear TV On the Radio in "Used To," I can hear its influence on goth and industrial rock, and I can still hear those punk rock roots embedded within. While Pink Flag still has the upper hand, Chairs Missing, just from my time with it in the past week, has definitely become the more interesting record of the two. I'm not quite sure I've ever experience a rock record quite as weird as Chairs Missing, and I'm not sure I ever will.

Wire - Pink Flag

Release Date: December, 1977

★★★★★ Tracks:

Three Girl Rhumba

Ex Lion Tamer

Lowdown

Mannequin

I picked up this bad boy on vinyl a while back, as it's simply one of the best punk records ever. Pink Flag practically invented an entire genre of punk-rock and hardcore that blew up in the 80's. Black Flag and its most prominent member, Henry Rollins, list them as an influence. The Circle Jerks, Gorilla Biscuits, Bad Brains, Dead Kennedys and many, many others are direct disciples of Pink Flag, borrowing the moody punk sound and the brisk song length. And I'm pretty sure you could find a teenage Ian MacKaye playing guitar in his bedroom, spinning this record, probably drawing "X's" on his hands, and gathering ideas for two of the 80's and 90's most influential alternative groups, Minor Threat and Fugazi. "Lowdown" especially sounds like it could fit in one of Fugazi's early records:

Before Pink Flag was released in 1977, punk rock was still in its stages of infancy, and at that time still upbeat and poppy for the most part. The Ramones were said to have been channeling pop and surf rock from the Beach Boys, surely most of us hear traces of the Kinks and the Stones when listening to the Sex Pistols, and the Clash we're experimenting with some of the most upbeat music you could find in reggae. While all these artists we're punk's founders, Wire expanded its boundaries even further. Yea, they continued in the tradition of politicizing the lyrics and building a lot of their tracks using the increasingly popular "power chord." But make no mistake about it, Wire added their very own take to the genre. First, they stripped the music down to it a very raw form: one guitar, one bass guitar, drums, and vocals, sometimes talked, sometimes sang, and sometimes screamed. With all the pieces in place, Wire crafted Pink Flag to be even heavier than any of the punk rock that preceded it, which many found -- with all of the guitar distortion, fast drum beats and blaring vocals -- to be overbearing to the ears already. They also condensed songs in to incredibly tiny packets, with five tracks clocking in at under 1:00, and only three (out of 21) over the 3:00 mark, none pass 4:00. The compact, short, guitar-driven track, and the emphasis of lyrics focusing on the decay of the democratic society would, and continues to be, a staple of punk rock music. Here's "Field Day For the Sundays," clocking in at a whopping 28 seconds (the youtube clip takes 5 seconds before the track begins):

"I wanna be a field day for the Sundays so they can fuck up my life.
Embarass my wife, and leave a bad taste.
That striped toothpaste can't remove on Monday mornings.
I wanna be a target for the dailies so they can show.
Pictures of me with a nude on page three, so lacking in taste.
Touched up near the waist, looking as limp as Monday morning."

Wire don't completely snub pop-lovers. With Pink Flag covering 21 tracks, there are a few upbeat songs that break the album's mostly brooding tone up nicely. And their most radio-friendly song on the album, "Mannequin," turns out to be my favorite of them all. Maybe that makes me some sort of poser, but c'mon, click below and tell me this isn't catchy! The lyrics, focusing on a person singer Colin Newman does not hold in high regard, contrasts the instrumentation with a good sense of humor.

There is no reason a self-proclaimed punk fan shouldn't give this record a few spins, at the very least. If you're a child of the 80's and 90's, and ever listened to Minor Threat, Fugazi, NOFX... shit, even Rancid or the Offspring, you are doing those bands a disservice by not seeking out their biggest influences: Wire, Ramones, Sex Pistols, and yes, the Clash (I'm not a huge fan of the Clash, so there goes my cred right out the window, I'm sure you'll tell me. But stick around and we'll get there eventually.). I could see strictly pop lovers having some reservations with a record full of heavy-hitting, politically and socialistically charged 1:00 long punk tracks. But Pink Flag would eventually be an influence on the pop world as well: I don't think Green Day would be where they are now, American Idiot Broadway show and all, without the contributions of Wire, and especially Pink Flag.

Three Girl Rhumba video on tumblr.