Boo-urns, Matt Stranach!!

What in the actual feck, Matt S?

You prefer Dr. S? Go take a long walk off a short pier!

So… due entirely to circumstances owned by me… we’ve had three episodes recorded this long 2024 so far! So… in an act of stunt production… contrition… and RAPID INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN PRACTICES… for uh… any educators in the house… here is the first of 3 episodes in 72 consecutive hours… in… drum roll… REVERSE CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER!

In this most recent episode in terms of recording… but NOT IN TERMS OF RELEASE DATE… we are on about 5 things we are/were listening to! As this was recorded roughly only a week ago, I’ll own that much of mine is still current… Please click below for audio and/or video as per your preferences!

We’d be remiss not to present this accompanying YT playlist!

Dan’s Notes

Whatcha listening to March 2024

The Chisel

As far as punk subgenres go, Oi! has never necessarily been at the top of my list but these Brits have been making a strong case for me to explore more of the genre as their recently released second album “What A Fucking Nightmare” is a total rager. This is “jump around in with a pint in your hand” kind of music, with some killer hooks thrown in four good measure. Their debut from last year Retaliation was one of thr first things I think I talked about on this show (as well as their guitarist’s other band the neo-pub-rockers Chubby And The Gang) and this second album is even better. One of the things I love about this band is all of the catchy hooks and melodic riffs they throw into their stomping street punk ragers. Hell I even smell a blatant (but obviously loving) wholesale lifting of a classic Mush-era Leatherface riff as a little transitional bridge on “Cry Your Eyes Out”. This is a super fun album that had me bobbing my head and wishing I had a pint in my hand to hoist aloft while singing along from the first note. This is also The Chisel’s  first album for Pure Noise Records, taking them from the scrappy indies to being label mates with modern heavyweights like Knocked Loose and Drug Church, and they are currently on this side of the pond on tour.   with fellow show favorites Home Front (whose song “Nation” features Cal from The Chisel on guest vocals). The band also recorded a pretty killer cover of Elton John’s “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting” recently as well. For a smart and catchy take on the street punk/Oi!, I would heartily recommend giving this little rager of an album a shot. 

The Ex with Tom Cora

Dutch art-punks meet American avant-garde cellist in a wild blend of musical styles, languages and politics. The Ex have been running strong since their inception in 1979 in an Amsterdam anarchist squat, though their sonic path was more heavily influenced by The Fall and the burgeoning no-wave post punk scene than any of their circle-A waving peers. Tom Cora was an American avant-garde cellist and composer who had previously worked with folks like Bill Laswell and John Zorn, and who had become a fan and then collaborator with the Dutch art-punks after sharing a stage with them during one of his  European tours. The Ex were a band I had heard about at the time, but whose music was not really readily available to me in that pre-internet music streaming except via pricy imports for the most part, but their collaborative album with Cora from 1991 Scrabbling At The Lock gained a bit of popularity on campus radio and that was how I finally ended up getting a chance to enjoy the great music they made together. Cora’s cello adds so much depth and extra heaviness to their sound and I totally hear the blueprints of bands like Submission Hold who would also mix similar influences and unconventional instrumentation in the late 90’s/early 00’s in this collaboration. The two forces would come together again a couple of years later for 1993’s And The Weathermen Shrugged Their Shoulders, but this first collaboration between the two has been a favorite for decades so it’s been a blast revisiting it for the first time in a little while. 

Canal Irreal

A South Side Chicago punk rock supergroup who just dropped a killer new album at the end of February. In my opinion, Martin Sorrendeguy is one of the greatest hardcore punk frontmen of all time between his work in Los Crudos, XLimpXWristX, and NEEDLES from the early 90’s through the 2010s. This latest project of his alongside members of 00’s South Side hardcore heroes Sin Orden is now two albums deep with the release of their sophomore full length Someone Else’s Dance. Unlike their previous bands, Canal Irreal turn down the speed of their previous bands to a bit to a more medium pace with darker tones, mixing the moody vibes of The Wipers with the sounds of earlier melodic Chicago punk bands like Naked Raygun and The Effigies. Who’d have thought the guy from Los Crudos would be the one to belt out one of the year’s catchiest breakup anthems in the lead off single from the new album, “I Failed”. This is a great catchy yet mature album from one of the titans of the genre’s newest projects and totally worth your listening time.

Team Dresch

Icons of the riot grrrl and queercore scene(s) since the early 90’s, Olympia’s Team Dresch are one of those “if you know you know” kind of bands who maybe didn’t get as much recognition outside of those communities for their music as far as crossing over to “straight” punk audiences as much but they still stand as one of my favorite bands from that whole era. I was excited to find out recently that they have been back together off and on since the mid 00’s and touring, after coming across the video for “Your Hands, My Pockets” from their EP of the same name released in 2019 while looking around for new music on YouTube, which led to revisiting their discography from their original 1990s run as well, which were some longtime favorites. My sister was pretty deep into the riot grrrl scene back in the day and this band was one our tastes overlapped on for sure. Built around longtime Olympia scenester and zinester bassist Donna Dresch (who had previously filled in on bass with The Screaming Trees for a time and played guitar for Toronto’s Fifth Column on their breakout album “36C”) and duelling vocalist/guitarists Kaia Wilson and Jody Bleyle (the latter also of Portland’s HAZEL), TD played driving melodic punk in a scene mostly known for more stripped-down sounds, and their two albums from the early-mid 90’s, Personal Best and Captain My Captain have been longtime faves that I hadn’t really revisited much recently until that YouTube algorithm turned me on to threat more recent recording, and their whole discography has been in rotation for me since. 

Mojo Nixon/Jello Biafra Prairie Home Invasion

First off, rest in peace to the low-culture outlaw country wildman god Mojo Nixon in his crossing over to the great NASCAR track in the sky. What seemed upon first glance a novelty genre piss-take at best, this collaboration between Dead Kennedys frontman and Alternative Tentacles Records head honcho Jello Biafra and the alt-rockabilly wild man Nixon has a surprising amount of heart and depth and a genuine love for American roots music. Sure there are some countrified takes on the usual Biafra subject matter like “Mascot Mania” and “Buy My Snake Oil”, but they also cover environmental activists Daryl Cherney and Judi Bari (rest in power)’s modern protest folk anthem “Where Are Gonna Work When The Trees Are Gone”, an updated for the time version of Phil Ochs’ “Love Me I’m A Liberal” and lots of potshots at the ever more commercial country scenes in places like Nashville and Branson, Missouri. When news came out of Mojo Nixon’s passing earlier this year, this was the album of his I ended up listening to the most afterward, though given the Jello of it all your mileage may vary all in all but it is still a nostalgic favorite that I’ve been enjoying revisiting, even if it’s definitely of a time and bearing the very distinct hallmarks of its creators. 

Miscellany and some tracks from albums I’ve purchased recently and totally forgot to mention at the end of the ep:

Superchunk – Slack Motherfucker

RUFUS featuring Chaka Khan – Ain’t Nobody (as featured on the soundtrack to the 1980’s movie BREAKIN’, which I purchased on vinyl recently through a local auction group)

Matt’s Notes

You wanted the best? Well, they didn’t make it! So here’s what you get instead!!

Notwithstanding the aforementioned humming and hawing about various delays of a personal nature and whatnot, I’ll own that it’s always a pleasure to talk TOP FIVE ANYTHING!

And so… above and beyond whatever was spoken to in the episode itself… hereabouts are some further… uh… SUPPLEMENTAL MEDIA RESOURCES… for any educators in the house…

Jesse Malin: New York Before the War

I’m doing myself the immense solid of listening to this on repeat on my turntable before and after work for going on three days in a row.

What else do I know about Jesse? Google challenge: what do I know about him without going to Google? I know that he was in a punk band once. Probably 80’s. Probably NYC. And he opened a show once for Tommy Stinson. That last bit is the part I’m most confident is true.

So what the hell? It’s just relatable thirties or early forties indie aging punk guy blues, it sounds like…

Some year I could take a deep dive. Google the gentleman. Read the lyrics. Pleasures saving for another time… you don’t really need a lyric sheet anyway. The less I feel I know about an artist sometimes, the more the mystique adds to the music or whatever.

But seriously… Jesse’s an artist with all kinds of stuff out there… all of it likely rad… and I for one love having artists with a rich discography out there waiting to be heard…

Who am I to disagree? Or you, for that matter…

Smoke or Fire / Joe McMahon

I can’t stop listening to these two albums:

The Speakeasy &

This Sinking Ship

Both on Fat Wreck Chords

The main reason I’m listening to them is the Apple Music Algorithm (AMA)! As I think we discussed during the recording…

I’ll also maintain that the AMA heard me intentionally listening to the Brendan Kelly / Joe McMahon Wasted Potential split acoustic record like… incessantly… for many many months… and counting!

Dudes, I went so far to buy a TEST-PRESSING of that record!

Which led to me getting in touch with Iodine Records who reissued SoF’s amazing Beauty Fades LP.

So… to the extent that the AMA has handed out some solid recommendations lately… also, the Joe McMahon solo LP Another Life is really really good as well…

Alkaline Trio: Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs

OK… so we’re living in an era wherein Foo Fighters, Rancid, the Gaslight Anthem, Blink-182… to name just a very few… besides those covered on the show!!… have released albums in the past year and a-half… Pearl Jam has a new one coming out… and not that I listen or even intend to listen to almost any of this! But fans of punk, pop-punk, and alternative particularly of a 90’s vibe have seldom had it so good…

This is a solid entry by an awesome band who clearly enjoy each other and their audience so so much… in all their significant volume of IG posts… and the Alkaline Trio Addicts FB page… and all kinds of venues and fandoms I’m not even aware of… there’s a goddamned glut of good vibes coming from these dudes and their supporting bands and fans and venues… Matt Skiba got sick right in the throat but wouldn’t let that keep him from nearly any shows… by all accounts the Montreal and Vancouver shows were lit!

So… their new album holds up great to any of their other 9 albums… and takes it further… many kudos to Derek Grant’s last hurrah on the drums for this band… welcome Atom Willard… Their accompanying deeply-felt, reciprocal engagement with their fans and peers and supporters is cool as feck to see! 28 years and still going strong…

Hot Water Music: Vows // Wayfarer’s Club

Look, I’m somebody who’s going to like anything Hot Water puts out. Like… out of necessity… since I heard the split with Leatherface back around when it came out, in the previous century… so…

It’s a foregone conclusion!

The vibe coming off the new album is one of collaboration and life renewals and affirmations… the guest list is unusually stacked on this upcoming release… including the likes of Turnstile! Thrice! City and Color! And others…

Also, their Wayfarer’s Club… punk rock Patreon… is in its early days pretty OK! I really have to hold off from being too much of an e-learning nerd… and punk nerd… in the discussions. All the band seems pretty engaged with it so far… and some of the commentary coming out of the discussions makes my EDUCATOR INTEREST… in… you know… e-learning… light right up…

Of particular interest… at least for me… are the Hot Water acoustic series exclusive to the Patroen! Maybe they’ll reconvene Rumbleseat for a tune or two? One can only hope…

ANYWAY…

It’s amazing to see Hot Water stepping up… much like Alkaline Trio… with a new record, tour, and as vital three decades in as they were back in the day…

Frankie Stubbs / ST 10″ vinyl

It’s a beautiful record.

Everything about it… lyrics, package, arrangements, singing, texture.

Here’s hoping you’re enjoying the first days of spring, Frankie…

They really don’t come any better!!

Folks, we and I are/am grateful for you checking this out!! We have two more episodes coming within the next seventy-two hours! You should join us for those too…

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Filed under: Uncategorized - @ March 28, 2024 3:43 am