P, V

Policy Of Three- Discography

I am such a sucker.

There’s this punk as fuck record store in the neighborhood, right, which I totally check out like every few weeks. The kids that run the store have been around for years, still totally flying the flags and trying to make it work in an area that must have a pretty high rent, so I try and buy something from them every time I go in.

Come to find out that Ebullition released a retrospective comp by Policy of Three, who were this emo band that got a lot of props in the pages of HeartattaCk back in the day. I bought one of their 7”s way back when and listened to it maybe three times before I decided it was total dreck- that sorta low-rent scr/e(a)mo that has ‘dynamic’ time changes and stop/starts that you can see from miles away. The kind of band that you might dig if you saw ‘em live; the kind of band that the locals from a small, insular scene in like the Midwest or whatever heralded in the pages of their Xerox fanzine. A local band that did some touring. You know.

So what do I do? I buy the fucking record AGAIN. And listen to it like three times AGAIN. My god.

Portishead- Roseland NYC Live

Portishead is the quintessential indie kid make-out record. Jesus, we were all in college or working jobs and none of us had discovered Barry White. The smoldering, sultry beats did the trick, admit it.

I tend to be pretty skeptical of live records (I know, it’s shocking), but this one finds twofold redemption: it acts as a de facto greatest hits package for a band that only has two studio records, further streamlining their catalogue for maximum output, if you catch my drift. Two, the live show is beefed up by the presence of a 22-piece string section, which serves to enhance the band’s performance rather than just documenting it like so many other live albums do. Damn, just thinking about it is giving me a boner.

I’ve gotta go.

Postal Service- Give Up

I’ve said it before: Ben Gibbard, he of Death Cab For Cutie, is a fantastic songwriter. The Postal Service features Mr. Gibbard and his electronica buddy Jimmy Tamborello performing these fucking infuriating songs.

I’ve heard two Postal Service covers- Iron and Wine covering ‘Such Great Heights’ on the soundtrack for Garden State(and, just yesterday, on a commercial for candy) and the Shins covering ‘We Will Become Silhouettes’ on a sampler in the new issue of The Believer- and both of ‘em are better than the originals. The songs on the Postal Service record are very good to excellent, but man, do they ever get bogged down by the whole electronica aspect. Too many signifiers, unnecessary bleeps and bloops that distract me from listening to the melodies and lyrics and draw attention, over and again, to the fact that the record is electronic in nature. ‘This Place Is A Prison’ gets the balance right, sounds like a proper song rather than a songwriter performing over something different as an experiment or a lark.

P, IV

Pinhead Gunpowder- Jump Salty

Just awesome. Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day’s side project, containing songs that are more gritty/less hooky than his usual fare, propelled by the frantic, caffeine-fueled drum stylings of Aaron Cometbus (though not anywhere near as rickety as his work in Crimpshrine). Wildly entertaining stuff.

Pixies- Surfer Rosa/Come On Pilgrim

We were sitting on the back porch a couple of weeks ago, talking about how weird it is that:

a) there’s this big new university arena a few blocks down the street, and
b) the Pixies were going to be playing there.

The Pixies were on my radar when they were still an operating band, but the Boston in my head back then was this totally daunting, sprawling concrete wilderness of bad drivers and roads that only led to crime-laden neighborhoods. I didn’t know how to drive the city or get around, especially at night, so I missed their shows. If you told the 20-year-old me that the Pixies would be playing three blocks away from my house, he’d be hell of psyched, dude. Then he’d be totally dismayed that I didn’t make any sort of effort to go. Probably some rant about not being such a fucking product, tool of the man, blah blah blah.

I did see ‘em on the reunion tour, don’t get me wrong- they played Lowell on my birthday. I dragged my dumb ass out of bed at like fuck o’clock this one Saturday morning and hit redial a zillion times before I finally got through to the ticket agency, then went back to bed once I scored the ducats- cha-ching! I was glad to have a chance to see them, yeah, but I’m not sure if I was ever really excited about it. The whole notion of all these old bands reuniting still feels a little bit odd to me (this coming from a guy who unabashedly saw the reunited Sex Pistols and fucking loved it, mind you). I don’t want to say that I felt an obligation to see the Pixies, but I did feel a certain pull, like the indie rock tractor beam was turned on without me knowing it. Couldn’t miss it.

The show itself was fine, though a little bit weird. The Pixies and Mission of Burma in a hockey arena? There was so much disconnection from the band and so many twenty-five dollar t-shirts surrounding me that it didn’t feel at all organic. The music was great and everything, but still.

So, the inevitable build-up/hype happened, everyone and their fucking mother was listening to the Pixies, and, truth be told, I was starting to get sick of them. Not the music, just the band themselves, their upgrade from indie to total ubiquity.

Easy to forget, though, is that the reason why everyone was so excited about the reunion was because the band is fucking awesome. Surfer Rosa/Come On Pilgrim is one of only two albums I’ve owned that has gotten lost/stolen (the other being ‘Songs For A Blue Guitar’), which says something. The Albini production is still jarringly sharp and spare, the ferocity of the yowls still shock even though I know ‘em all by heart, and the songwriting remains unique even though legions of imitators have lined up at the altar looking for any scrap of a clue.

Placebo- Without You I’m Nothing

The no-bones androgyny was enough to get my attention, and the first couple singles were hooky and slightly dangerous but never outrageous, despite their best efforts. After that, though, ‘Without You I’m Nothing’ wallows in its own misery. Maybe they were looking to carve out a special niche market of bummed out, sexually ambiguous teens with tiny record collections. That’s gotta be it. I mean, if you’re all maudlin, are you going to go for Placebo over the Smiths or The Cure or Depeche Mode? Or over the Dolls or Bowie or Iggy? Whatevs.

Piebald

Piebald- If It Weren’t For Venetian Blinds It Would Be Curtains For Us All

The follow-up to ‘When Life Hands You Lemons’, part of the amazing initial batch of records that HydraHead put out in the late nineties, before the label narrowed their focus to metal.

Whenever it was, 1997 or so, Piebald was like THE band around town (which I spend a little time explaining in the review down below for ‘Barely Legal/All Ages’, the retrospective repackaging of the band’s first few. It’d make way more sense if you read the reviews chronologically, I think, but, anal as I am, I feel duty-bound to review them according to their release dates, and, of course, the retrospective was released later on. Stupid trick chronologies).

‘Venetian Blinds’ still gets pulled out every now and again. I understand that ‘Lemons’ is the sentimental favorite among fans, and I feel some of that, too- I have deep associations with listening to the album right when I moved to Boston, learning my way around town with the album playing in the headphones. Totally makes sense. ‘Blinds’, though, is the better record musically. A lot of the ‘Blinds’ songs were kinda of the same era- I remember, f’r example, a bunch of shows where the debut, ‘Grace Kelly With Wings’, was being played amongst the ‘Lemons’ tracks. ‘Grace Kelly’ was the song where all of the kids would go ‘whoot!’ during this mini guitar break, which I always thought was cool and funny- like watching a live-action Rocky Horror or something. That was one of the things about the band that I found to be charming- the fans were super familiar, and totally fucked around at shows, making things feel more participatory and inclusive. Y’know, a little club.

Continued explorations of voice-cracking melodicism, invitations to makeout parties, odes to motorcycles (Aaron took to wearing a motorcycle helmet around town), innocent introductions to radical politics, spelling lessons involving Zeppelin and Tom Petty. The band at their charmingly geeky best, not trying so hard to sound menacing or tough, just concentrating on being themselves and banging out these quirky ditties.


Piebald- The Rock Revolution Will Not Be Televised

After hitting one out of the park on ‘Venetian Blinds’, Piebald jumped into a barrel of oil and came out sounding pretty slick on ‘Rock Revolution’: Big chords and big production, big lyrical ideas.

I don’t know. All of these high-falutin’ but non-specific lyrics about Huge Issues- art, rock, economic inequality- didn’t sit well with me when the record came out, still don’t now. They feel like a stab, a grab for the brass ring. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with trying to make a living doing what you love- I don’t begrudge anyone that. It’s just that Piebald was always a band that was emo, singing about girls and their feelings, all that cool shit. The shift over to this quasi-politically aware Big Rock band with more volume and less tricks seemed more like a career move than a progression. Shit, the best song on the record is ‘David Lee Rock,’ a song about Van Halen- so much less self-conscious and goofier than the rest of the songs, like they weren’t trying so hard (having said all that, though, it sounds kinda like a J Church song, except for the mathy bit at the end).

Piebald- Barely Legal/All Ages

Let this anthology of previously released Piebald songs serve as a warning to all fledgling label owners- the job that you do on the packaging, however impressive it looks, can totally ruin a release. When this anthology was released, no one talked about how all the old out-of-print stuff was finally available again because the nice-looking double-disc package, for some inexplicable reason, contained this embarrassing essay written by the label head on the inside cover. Not only was it light years cheesier than any of Piebald’s stuff (no easy feat), but it contained all these typos and misspellings. Never before or since have I seen anything like the shit talk on the message boards about the package’s lameness detracting from the product.

Anyway: Piebald. Local kids, from Andover, this affluent suburb. The early stuff has this screamy vibe to it. A product, I’d guess, of being big Converge fans- songs that didn’t sound much different than any of the bands loved by readers of HeartattaCk, if that’s any indication. Not a lot to distinguish them from the pack, aside from the aforementioned localism.

Not until ‘Sometimes Friends Fight’, anyway. At that point, two things happened: the band started to smooth out their rough edges a little bit, and, most importantly, the band started putting patches in with their recordings. There was a space of like three years, I shit you not, where it was completely impossible to go to a show within fifty miles of Boston without seeing some kid with a Piebald patch sewn onto his/her ________. Brilliant.

‘When Life Hands You Lemons’, released on Hydra(ponic)Head, was totally a summer album. The band was approaching their best, having ditched their screechy basement hardcore leanings in favor of a goofy melodicism. Travis starts to sing, or try to, and his voice cracks all over the place- not sure if the breaks are affected or not, but it doesn’t really matter because they’re charming and inclusive, like “Hey, my voice is changing, and I’m in a band! You can be in one, too!” Seeing the band live was always a trip, because the kids knew every note. Always an amazing moment when the kids all shouted ‘Say we had a falling out……now we gotta FALL BACK IN!’ Hell, it extended beyond the lyrics to singing along with the guitars, no shit .

I’m not sure if Piebald’s stuff would be enticing to a new listener or if my apreesh for the band is a product of (blatant) localism. Whatever, really- I was there, I was down, and I’m glad I have it to listen to, embarrasing packaging or no.

P, III

Pet Shop Boys- Singles

I didn’t have any time to sit around and feel sorry for myself because there was too much shit to do before Dennis’s wedding- had to take care of sleeping accommodations, transportation, tux pickup, laundry, etc.

I first found a cheap auto rental place down the street from my house a little ways, then an online coupon which made renting a midline sedan cheaper than renting one of the little cars. I walked down to the office, which turned out to be connected to a gas station, two desks and a bunch of chairs crammed into this glassed-in little room that was maybe ten by eight. The three people who worked there couldn’t have been any older than twenty-one. They were all charming in their complete lack of professionalism, fully and openly talking shit about their recently completed training and the couple that had been in the room before me, a grizzled biker type and his cougar girlfriend. The kid behind the desk was overweight and fairly stuffed into a dress shirt so new I could still see all the packaging creases. He sweated and thwacked away at the computer, sucking on some kind of Dunkin’ Donuts fruit-flavored iced coffee drink which probably didn’t contain a lot of actual coffee. Finally, he informed me that all of the midlines were gone. I’d get a free upgrade. He pointed out the window at a tan SUV.

I’ve never driven anything bigger than a Jetta, I thought. Plus, the whole environment thing.

Fuck it.

Less than an hour later, I was driving up Route One in an air-conditioned SUV listening to the Pet Shop Boys. Easily the tackiest stretch of road in all of Massachusetts- strips of restaurants and stores, a giant orange dinosaur leaning over the road from a mini golf course, the fifty-foot high neon cactus that stands in front of this one steakhouse, flanked by a dozen model cows.

Just like that, things had ended, my plans had changed, and I was in the most absurd place I could imagine- this big, gas-guzzling pimpmobile, listening to this amazingly awesome, silly but deadly serious totally gay club music that I knew every word to. And not only that, but I actually caught myself enjoying the ride up, and more than once, too. I started laughing out loud at the whole thing, the whole awful, wonderful, stupid fucking situation, all of the worry and crumpled emotions and anticipation/dread of the wedding. Sitting there laughing at everything in a rental car listening to the Pet Shop Boys even though I had had this fucking awful week. I can only imagine what that shit sounds like on Ecstacy.

Photek- Form And Function

I can’t speak with any sort of authority about the form of the Photek record, or its intentions in broadening/shattering said form, because the whole techno subgenre thing went right over my head and stayed there. I’ve never had any urge to go out and try and understand the difference between like, deep house, illbient and glitchcore- to me, techno has pretty much always been techno. I know, I’m a crotchety old coot, but fuck the metermaids- that’s just how I feel, man.

Having said all that, though, the Photek record seems to contain a bunch of different styles/forms. There’s a couple songs that sound like driving a rental car on cheap trucker speed- always darting your head around to find out just where that unfamiliar buzzing noise is while at least trying to keep looking forward so you don’t crash into anything, but where the fuck did THAT noise come from?!? Others are a little bit more subdued, more chill, like walking through a wide path with a halftrack clanking behind you, trying to identify the interesting sounds of the wilderness (hey, is that what they mean by jungle? Probably not).

At the very least, these songs do contain a similar function- the bass is there to make you shake your ass. The rental car, of course, has those big subwoofers because you got the free upgrade, and ‘Form And Function’ transforms you into one of those assholes that drives down Newbury Street with the windows down, trying to lure the fly honeys into the pimped out ride by playing music that’s loud enough to rattle fillings out of cavities. Never understood until you were the one flossin’.

P, II

Pedro The Lion- Winners Never Quit

An eight song concept album, all linear and narrative, telling the story of this politician and his drunk brother. This record’s a hell of an accomplishment- David Bazan plays everything, sings. The slower moments totally test my patience, engaging and well thought out storyline regardless, as do the dirgy, relatively monochromatic vocals on such occasions.

Pell Mell- Interstate

Whenever I’ve gone on a lengthy car trip, I’ve packed a wallet full of like thirty CD’s. Half of ‘em never get listened to (I always bring too many books and CD’s when I’m traveling now because when I went to France for a month in 1990 I only brought one book [what was I thinking?] and wound up reading this biography of Malcolm McLaren like five times). No matter how many dozens of CD’s I pack, Pell Mell always gets listened to. They play this occasionally surf-y, desert-tinged instrumental rock that always makes perfect sense when driving. Hell, they know it-they named the record ‘Interstate.’ Not obtrusive enough to preclude conversation, but engaging enough so you don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.

I think they continue to languish in obscurity, although the past few years have probably given them a boost- the first song on this record is the music played in the background before each episode of ‘Six Feet Under’, when you see recaps of the stuff that happened in previous episodes. I hope Pell Mell is seeing some money because of it.