MOSSING ABOUT: WINGNUT DISHWASHERS UNION - Burn the Earth! Leave it Behind! (2009)

Review by: Jonathan Moss

So I only got into Pat the Bunny like, literally yesterday, but right now i’m digging his stuff a lot, but then again I kinda purposely decided to go through a folk punk phase before I started listening, for the aesthetic. 

I do sincerely enjoy this album a lot though. There’s something very endearing about Pat the Bunny’s style, the simple, derivative acoustic (and occasionally electric) guitar riffs, his scruffy, whiney sing-shouted voice, the funny lyrics, anarcho-socialist lyrics, and of course, the overriding sincerity of it. The music could definitely be called lo-fi, but not in the artsy affected way Pavement were- for like one album, their worst album incidentally- in a ramshackle way. This gives the album its messy charm, like an enthusiastic child playing in a sandpit and throwing sand at the other kids, without meaning anything by it. Well, I just consulted fellow To My Most Alas writer Francelino and he told me he hates sand, so I guess for that simile replace it with whatever you prefer. 

I guess I don’t talk about lyrics that much, because I mainly review rock music, and most rock lyrics are garbage, but the lyrics on this album are fantastic! They don’t seem like they were written in maybe more than half an hour but that just speaks for Pat the Bunny’s natural wit and occasional poetic turns of phrase. As I said earlier, Pat is (or was) an anarchist, and anarchist themes frequently pop up, but not in a boring dogmatic Rage Against the Machine way, Pat is a natural anarchist, and consequently something of an individualist, but there’s lots of nice leftist touches, hell, the first song is called “Proudhon in Manhattan”. The lyrics don’t touch solely on that, with lines that are just generally amusing and autobiography. When I first listened to this album I was in a group chat and I repeatedly typed the lyrics that stood out to me in caps locks, so i’m gonna do that here. “A PUNK ROCK SONG WON’T EVER CHANGE THE WORLD, BUT I CAN TELL YOU ABOUT A COUPLE THAT CHANGED ME”, “CAUSE URINE SPEAKS LOUDER THAN WORDS ON A POLITICIAN OR ON A PRISON WARDEN”, “FUCK EVERY COP WHO EVER DID HIS JOB, FUCK EVERY BANK THAT NEVER GOT ROBBED”, “THROW YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR ‘CAUSE PROPERTY IS ROBBERY”, “SO I DON’T BELIEVE IN GOD BUT I’M NOT AN ATHEIST”. 

Well, that’s me made that paragraph longer and more annoying than it needs to be. A lot of the songs are fuck-catchy as well! The album is mainly comprised of Pat strumming his guitar, and like I said earlier the riffs aren’t particularly original, but Pat knows how to strum his acoustic guitar in an aggressive and catchy way. “Proudhon in Manhattan” is the first track and its a really fun one, especially at the end with the aforementioned “property is robbery” bit. “Fuck Shit Up” is a very good song, it has a great crunchy electric guitar joining in, making it more conventionally punk I guess. The “TONIGHT WE’RE GONNA FUCK SHIT UP” chorus has a jubilant tone to it which makes it a minor feelgood anthem. “For a Girl in Rhinelander, WI”, is a more peaceful melancholic tune, with cute lyrics referencing Kathleen Hanna and Bikini KIll. 

I must admit, I really do enjoy the way Pat alternates between singing and shouting. It sounds so organic, like he can’t help it, he just has to shout, and he’s a really good shouter, he can be funny and passionate, depending on the lyric. 

Speaking of lyrics, boy are the lyrics on the last song good, and boy is the last song in general good! It’s named “My Idea of Fun” and at six and a half minutes its the longest song on the album. It’s quite a poignant song, with a calming strummed acoustic riff alternating with a pretty, melancholic picked riff. Also I really like the lyric “Like if you don't want to work, then that becomes your job, there's a lot of overtime, there's not many days off, I hope you know that I'm not trying to complain.” The ending of the song is soothing in an almost neofolk way, with a beautiful piano line repeating the pretty guitar melody, wistful horns, chiming bells, violins. It’s just a very pretty wistful song, with philosophical angsty lyrics, you’ll connect to it!

SO, this is a very good album, and its like 29 minutes long. It has endless replay value and a good variety of styles, with great lyrics!

MOSSING ABOUT: COIL - Horse Rotorvator (1986)

Review by: Jonathan Moss

Alright motherfuckers, I just finished Lolita and I’m ready to write my Nabokovian masterpiece in the form of a Coil review. Well, John Balance would probably prefer something more Blakeian in tone, so I guess I’ll just be myself. 

Look, I like to think when people read my reviews they listen to the albums, but sometimes I’m not so sure, so please please please listen to Coil. Specifically this album, but most of their shit is great. But I find this one in particular to have a strong mix of songs and a good eclectic style. They’re a very underrated band, especially since that fucker Clive Barker booted them off Hellraiser.

Coil are kind of part of the same underground containing bands like Current 93 and Nurse With Wound (hence why the three bands were covered together in Englands Hidden Reverse) but, despite enjoying C93 and NWW a lot, I prefer Coil. Sleazy was a production genius, and Balance wrote great poetry, and sang it pretty great as well! Sure his voice betrayed his bourgeoisie origins, but he sounded really menacing all the same. An upper class punk! Well, he’s also quite capable of tenderness as well, but you can tell especially from this record that he was taking inspiration from stuff like Throbbing Gristle. But maybe he had a couple of classic prog era Genesis records as a guilty pleasure. Back to Sleazy though, his production on this album is so varied, from great electronic stuff to much more out there shit, but in general united by the same kind of lo-fi patchwork style, it almost reminds me of those hammer horror movies, but if they had been inspired by romanticist poetry! 

Hey, I just came up with a great idea, I’m going to try and avoid using the word “esoteric” in this review! 

“The Anal Staircase” is the first song on this album and I imagine it’s introduced a lot of people to Coil. It’s probably the most industrial Coil get on the album, but it’s very catchy as well. And erratic! And sloppy! It really is like an anal staircase (what a great title). The song starts with a strident sample from The Rites of Spring, then this spastic chiming keyboard line joins in. There’s also the sound of what sounds like children playing (this ends the song), clanging percussion, and what sounds like a crappily synthesized horn line, as well as other beautifully low quality keyboard shite. Also a weird sort of fast whooshing sound. Now imagine all that stuff happening at the same time. It’s a very dizzying performance. John Balance sounds in complete power over it, especially when he commands “blow the fucking thing apart, blow the fucking thing apart”, in his slightly high-pitched voice. If Halloween had retained its pagan roots this song would be played during it. So yes, this is a supremely good introduction to Coil. 

“Slur” follows on and manages to be great in a different way. John Balance’s vocal melody is quite subtle but it’s there and once you notice it you won’t be able to get it out of your head. The song has a sort of rustic post-punk vibe, very Nick Cavesy. There’s a really gothic harmonica sound. It sounds like the harmonica has become very rusty with time, fading into the desert atmosphere and becoming an integral part of it. The guitar sound is kind of goofy and baritone, but very catchy and bouncy, like a snapping elastic band. The song has a pretty menacing atmosphere but it’s a different menace from “The Anal Staircase”, it’s the menace of a saloon being slowly burnt by the sun with the people inside unable to escape and being too drunk to notice or care. 

“Ostia (The Death of Pasolini)” is a fucking tune as well. It starts off with creepy atmospherics, a kind of melancholic but jeering harpsichord line and a very passionate eastern sounding violin. This makes it a rather tense, majestic song. It shits all over “Kashmir” by Zep, that’s for sure. And most Led Zeppelin songs, for that matter. Balance delivers another great vocal performance, cool modulation, and the “throw his bones over, the white cliffs of dover, and murder me!” The gloomy repetition of the song gives it an intensity, so that when the next song, an interlude comes on, blasting a brass band, the juxtaposition is hilarious. 

The next few songs to me don’t stick out as much but they’re still good. “Penetralia” doesn’t seem so much a proper song as a collection of bizarre sound effects and a heavy guitar riff that wouldn’t sound out of place in a Killing Joke album (well it would, plagiarism is always out of place, after all) . It’s still a lot of fun to listen to, I love the blurting horn instrument. And the song in all has a nice cheap and dirty quality, maybe their attempt at doing Foetus. “Ravenous” is a creepy song with creaking sound effects, droning choir, and an eerie harpsichord. There’s also a melodic horn line as well. “Circles of Mania” is the gayest song on the album, and it has a great agitated jazz punk vibe. But dirty and synthesized! “When you swallowed one you just swallow another”. Fun acoustic bass line and screaming from John! Fab slurping noises at the end. “Blood from the Air” has this weird, clinical buzzing sound, maybe Steve Stapleton had a hand in it. More clanging noises, some gothic synth and harpsichord. Menacing shit, Balance is at his lowest, most sinister croon. 

“Who by Fire” is one of the best covers I’ve heard! And with the recently and sadly departed Leonard Cohen everyone should listen! It has a very catchy keyboard line at the beginning, ghostly groaning background vocals from Marc Almond, the keyboard line getting louder and other various instruments swirling around it. John Balance sounds great as well, delivering a convicted performance doing Leonard justice, and bringing his own gothic vibe to it, not that Leonard wasn’t gothic, of course. 

“The Golden Section” is a rather jaunty tune with some pseudo-scientific occultist narration, and a gothic choir underneath. It’s a bit cheesy but it’s a fun song and the martial drumming gives it a driving vibe. Good music to walk to. “The First Five Minutes after Death” is a great piece of wintery melancholic electronica, with a catchy as hell synth line that wouldn’t sound out of place in a Tangerine Dream song. The percussion is neat well, kind of African or whatever, and there’s some woodwind instrument that’s very pretty. And some nice noise as well! Hell yeah! 

So, to conclude, with the styles included on this album and the considerable vocal and lyrical talents of John Balance, I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to listen to it. Unless you’re a cunt. 

MOSSING ABOUT: COMUS - First Utterance (1971)

Review by: Jonathan Moss

 

 

My dumb brother's standard complaint about folk music is that its boring, but for me this marvellous album by Comus proves otherwise. It hasn't been called “satanic goat music” for nothing after all. Simply put, this album features some really well-played, mysterious guitar playing and haunting, eerie vocals. But it also has an unhinged, freakish quality which stops it from sounding like Led Zeppelin's folk shit or something. There's something delightfully individual about this album, its sprawling and occult, and feels genuine in a way that Led Zeppelin don't. I can't imagine the people who made this being quite normal.

The album starts off just fucking amazingly with “Diana”. What a great way to introduce Comus! It's bizarre and freakish to the point of almost being comical, like some weird circus song. The bass is loud and goofy, the guitar playing sounds like a whimsical sitar, there's a chugging violin (or similar instrument) and Roger Wootton sings in a ridiculous but endearing falsetto. It's like if The Residents played folk music, almost. The song does have moments of tenderness though, there's some pretty female vocals and the violin playing during the chorus is beautiful. The violin rules on this song actually, it gets a very dramatic solo halfway through. So yes, this is a short, catchy opener which surrealistically shows off the albums charms. The album gets into its more mysterious side with the second song, a twelve minute creeper called “The Herald”. The guitar playing on it sounds like it could be played by the melancholic ghost of a young man who killed himself, and the female vocals his mourning lover. The accompanying woodwind works fantastically as well, even if it does sound a bit like a theremin. The chorus is actually really catchy and gorgeous though, with the rising vocals during it suggesting hope and reconciliation, somewhat reminding me of Wind in the Willows. Outside of that though the song conjures the vibe off a misty forest surrounded by mountains and abandoned villages. At twelve minutes the song shows why the album has the prog tag, but to be honest its more krautrocky, just in terms of the hypnotic quality. The mesmerising guitar playing and hypnotic vibe help the song to maintain its stamina, like a naked female runner.

“Drip Drip” is the second epic, but it comes in at slightly shorter, clocking at eleven minutes rather than twelve. Thanks for the breather, guys. “Drip Drip” has a much more Indian vibe than “The Herald”, with the acoustic guitars once again sounding like sitars. The guitars are different as well on this one, being more riffy and chord based than the spiderlike picked ones on “The Herald”. With Roger taking the vocals again this is a much more menacing song, the violin sounding like it thinks it could do better than the score for Psycho. The chorus of the song is really bewitching though, with Roger's falsetto sounding more angelic than creepy and the violin like an angel who suddenly deemed the works of Hitchcock base and immoral. The freakish, playful sound helps to give the song a manic intensity, along with the urgent “la la la la” female vocals. Now that I think about it, the song could totally be converted to a Rolling Stonesesque hard rocker, thats how driving it is! Or at least one of Gabriel era Genesis' rockier numbers. If “The Herald” is the abandoned village, “Drip Drop” is wonderer's finding the village and celebrating with a pagan dance, yet not managing to keep their nerve when they consider the creepy, dead atmosphere of the village. Less abstractly, around the six minute mark the tune kicks in with a great, funky, ominous bassline. Hows that for diversity!?

I don't want this review to be too long so I'm just going to crudely lump the last four songs together in this paragraph, and describe them in more brevity than the last two. “Song for Comus” is a melodic, groovy number with some piercing woodwind, agitated acoustic riffing (it sounds like he's just playing two notes together over and over again) and passionate vocals. The song soon builds up in passion, like when you're microwaving popcorn and you can tell its almost done because of how rapid the popping becomes. “The Bite” has some electric guitar playing! The acoustic guitar riff and flute in this song is manic as fuck, it sounds like an escaped mental patient running as fast as they can from the asylum that housed them, and with the same amount of joy! The violin playing suggests a whole level of drama, as do the piercing female vocals during the chorus, jaunty but anxious flute, chugging violin and stern tone of Roger. “Bitten” is an eerier song, it has scraping violin like the playing on King Crimson's song “Providence”, a chunky, menacing bassline and eerie, ghost story guitar playing. And that's it! Cool spooky instrumental. Lonely, melancholic guitar playing opens “The Prisoner”, and more pseudo-theremin. After this a more gentle guitar line starts, along with an almost Nick Drakeish lead one. Roger delivers a touching, subtle vocal performance, accompanied by Bobbie's sweet female vocals. The song has a really warm vibe to it, with the violin playing sounding like it could accompany a film about some ambitious go-getter. “And they gave me shock treatment!” is a super catchy singalong part of the song, leading on to more dramatic male-female dialogue. “The Prisoner” has a lot of energy and momentum to it. Something I forgot to mention earlier but will now is that the album at times has an almost gypsy like vibe, which is prominent during the end of “The Prisoner”, which is a frenzied dance with screamed gibberish vocals!

So, to conclude, this is a very special, unique album, with a collection of truly epic guitar work, violin playing, woodwind and other assorted instruments, with two unique vocalists to top it all off. Please listen to it as soon as possible! So you too can experience the pleasure of seeing satanic goats without having to take acid or watch a cheesy eighties horror film.

Mossing About: CLIPPING - Splendor & Misery (2016)

Review by: Jonathan Moss

Clipping's latest album is a concept album that made me completely re-evaluate my opinion on the group. Prior to the album I had viewed them as a minor noise-rap group, with a few catchy songs and a generally interesting sound, but nothing compared to Death Grips or Dalek. This album made me take them seriously as a modern experimental hip hop group and realise I'd been unfair to their previous releases. It made me feel like a fool, but I'll happily be a fool if I can continue listening to this album.

Like I said, it's a concept album, and while the concept is interesting I really won't be going into it that much. What I will talk about is the general sound of the album. Well, it's got a really claustrophobic vibe, like a mother shoved her child into a washing machine because she didn't love it enough to clean it herself. It's also got a lot of neat sounds, shit like metallic clanging and other noises. The synth lines remind me somewhat of PiL's album The Flowers of Romance, though probably more in spirit than actual sound, just the same gothic coldness and weirdness. Less abstractly, they're pretty glitchy and cold, like an iceberg with some asshole playing a Gameboy on it. This really gives the album a sound matching its setting as a malfunctioning space slave ship, the whole album sounds clanky, dank and leaky.

Daveed Digg's rapping on the album is pretty great as well. Whilst in the past I'd dismissed him as a rapper with a really good flow and delivery but little in the way of any personality, this album made me realise he has a pretty interesting overall style, managing to sound cold, cocky, sentimental, unsure, whatever mood the album and story demands. He also has some really neat lyrics on the album, especially on songs such as “All Black” (“That time will not afford him, any cover, any pardon, This is the choice that he has made, No matter how much time or space has passed since his escape, he is still a runaway slave and so lonely”) and “Baby Don't Sleep” (“No home, you've been there, clearly off safety, no destination, no time for waiting, saviors are fiction, memories fading like ghosts, ghosts, go”). I also find it interesting that Daveed chose to make the album about a slave in the space age, as it of course shows raps place in black culture, making them seem like they'll take the place that spirituals took during American slavery.

“All Black” is the first proper song on the album and fuck is it magnificent. Pretty much the moment I heard it I realised I'd made a mistake with my evaluation of Clipping in the past. It's a very creepy, minimalistic song, six minutes and repetitive, but in a good way. The songs backing instrumentation sounds almost dark ambientish. I'd just like to point out when I made notes for this song I didn't know what the album was about, and I wrote “sounds like an empty, decayed ship”.

I'm a fucking genius.

“Wake Up” is a really cool song as well, being short and having a very manic pace, with Daveed's rapping being a whirlwind of fast paced paranoia, which matches the BLARING SIREN. It sounds like the ship is being hit by asteroids, which serves the concept well. It also has some nice singing, adding an eerie vibe, with the singing being clearly influenced by, shit, the type of music in Fallout 3. “True Believer” has some bashing percussion and more of the ye olde style singing. “Air Em Out” is a fucking classic, just one of those songs that you feel cool listening to (though when you realise this you feel really uncool). Its the closest the album comes to embracing contemporary rap, percussion is trap and synths are grime, kind of. Daveed's vocal performance is very confident and braggadocious, adding to the vibe. The driving, dancey beat helps, though the song is deffos too abrasive to be played in a club.

I'm going to talk about the last two tracks separately, because they work so well as almost a mini-suite, a good juxtaposition. “Baby Don't Sleep” is a particularly abstract and menacing song, while “A Better Place” is really pretty and poppish. “Baby” creates its bleak atmosphere- it sounds the like ship is disintegrating- with a multitude of ominous noise influenced sounds, urgent, stern rapping from Daveed, especially on the chorus, which takes a leap into dark ambience and general robotic weirdness with a high pitched robot voice saying the title of the song. “A Better Place” meanwhile has an atmosphere which suggests a calming universe, created with beautiful, melodic keyboard playing, pleasant spacey tangerine dream like sound effect, and an uplifting rap performance by Daveed, with some pretty singing as well. The song could be the first in ambient pop-rap. Lyrically both songs are pretty bleak though, “Baby” appears to be about the ship being destroyed whilst “A Better Place” makes it clear the protagonist wont survive. And of course, even if he does, he's still a runaway slave. This is perhaps why despite the ostensible positivity of “A Better Place” the song actually ends on a burst of nihilistic harsh noise. Together the two songs work together beautifully to create a sad end to the album, which is what makes me look at them as a piece.

This review is getting a bit long but I do have to criticize the album a bit before I can end it. Not that the criticism is perfunctory, I really do feel like the album doesn't contain enough songs. The interludes are cool thematically and I did like them the first time I listened, they do become annoying and in their place they could have included some other songs, perhaps a few other bangers like “Air 'Em Out”.

Overall though this is a very strong album and it makes me feel excited about Clippings future.