Episode Two
Thank you for creeping here to join us!
On our first episode of 2023, we looked back at artists who were significant to us in 2022… who didn’t necessarily have a major release! Dan is to thank for the topic, and Matt is to thank for the tech delays which held this up for a few days… not that you’d necessarily know! And… to the best of my knowledge… TNBTTW is now locatable on Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Apple Podcasts… and probably a few more on the way in coming weeks…
Still holding on to that post-holiday glow… #tnbttw #bogmonstermusic
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Dan’s Notes
MSPAINT
From Hattiesburg MS. they are newer band who released a 4 song demo right at the start of the pandemic and have only really started getting out to tour around the US and Canada within the last year. I first heard of them after the host of Demolisten podcast posted a video of one of their sets on his instagram and strongly recommended seeking out their demo, Another podcast I listen to recently joked after talking to members of the band at their merch table during a live show that this was the only time he’d probably get the chance to meet them under those circumstances as there would be no surprise if they were popular enough to hire someone to sell their merch for them soon enough, and I can see why. The band plays a flavour of emotive hardcore with passionately shouted vocals, but with the standard distorted guitars replaced by synthesizers and fuzzed out bass and a definite groove to the drums, which also incorporate electronic percussion along with regular trap kit. They’re like the bastard children of Fugazi and Death Grips with a slight hint of the era of Beastie boys where they incorporated live instrumentation. Live videos of the band call to mind the sheer fire of bands like Torches To Rome or other Sarah Kirsch projects. While they did not have any full releases in 2022, MSPAINT increased their entire recorded output by 50% this year between their Colin Young-produced single “Acid”, and their collaboration with Militarie Gun “Can’t Get None” released before their tour with that band earlier this year. They are just a the point now where If they decided to make the jump from basements to larger venues they are sure to start gaining wider popularity soon. I would not be surprised if we get more MSPAINT this year and I can’t wait.
HOME FRONT
From Edmonton, released late contender for my faves of 2021 with Think Of The Lie 12” EP in Dec of that year. On record they are a 2 piece with Grant Mackinnon on vocals/guitar/bass and Clint Frazier on synths/drums, but have expanded things to a full band for live shows. Heavily influenced by early 80’s post punk and new wave but with more fire and drive to their music than most attempts at creating a pastiche of sounds from that era. Reminds me a lot of Blitz’s “Second Empire Justice” LP where the street punks embraced more dark atmospheric synthy elements and realized it’s okay to admit you like Factory Records. Mackinnon brings the edge and energy from his main project, melodic hardcore punk ragers No Problem and Frazier’s drums and synths form a driving backbeat so 80’s inspired it could be the audio equivalent of neon lights in the background of a gnarly Cannon Pictures action movie. That is not to say they are some sort of New Wave cosplay act, instead channeling the spirit of some alternate earth’s top gritty 80’s post punk act that magically showed up through a Spiderverisian space time portal to our earth to spread their wicked tunes to our 2020’s ears. They are still a new band so there is not much in the way of press or interviews out there that I could find but the music really speaks for itself and they have also been bringing like minded bands like Poison Ruin (who I talked about on the first episode) and Schedule 1 on tour with them, which has helped me discover even more cool music because of their association. While their debut was just released at the end of 2021 so it could see it maybe a little while before we get anything more from them but I am hoping that wait is not tomorrow long as I’ve been loving their six song debut and can’t wait to hear what they do next.
ANGEL DU$T
I’ll admit, I heard this band mentioned for a good couple of heard before I gave them a chance and dove into their music but something about their name made me think they were going to be something like E Town Concrete or something due to the stylized dollar sign replacing the S in their logo and all that but what can I say, sometimes I have very poor judgment as I was missing out on some amazing music. Last year I got hooked on their 2021 album “Yak: A Collection Of Truck Songs”, and was surprised in looking into their background that they share a few members with cool band du jour Turnstile (TS vocalist Brendan plays guitar for these guys and both bands share drummer Daniel Fang and rhythm guitarist Pat McCrory as well). Singer/guitarist and primary songwriter Justice Tripp used to front Baltimore-based 00’s hardcore heroes Trapped Under Ice but in this band channels older acts like The Lemonheads, Violent Femmes and maybe even early Talking Heads. They work in a lot of acoustic guitars but not in a derivative folk punk sort of way and poppy melodic songs but not in a standard pop punk sort of way and cite bands like the aforementioned Lemonheads and The Replacements as major influences. Tripp has also been branching into solo endeavours under the name Cold Mega what with three of his regular band mates being busy getting nominated for Grammies and stuff but hopefully we’ll get more from the full band soon.
CHUBBY AND THE GANG
Another second generation punk fronts London’s Chubby And The Gang, as “Chubby” Charlie Manning Walker’s parents were visual artists who hung around The Sex Pistols in the 70s and worked on the animated sequences in “The Great Rock N Roll Swindle”. Manning-Walker himself has a long resume of former bands and currently also plays guitar in The Chisel as well as collaborating with Jonah Falco of Fucked Up under the name BOSS. COTG seems to be his primary outlet these days and have released two albums since the start of the decade – Speed Kills in 2020 and The Mutt’s Nuts in 2021. They play a mix of punk, oi, pub rock, power pop and even a little bit of Motown, and aren’t afraid of throwing a harmonica or some keyboards in the mix sometimes. Imagine stomping street punk mixed with the garage-soul of various Greg Cartwright projects with lyrics that take on cops, landlords and the enemies of the working class. They even have a couple of holiday-themed EPs for Valentines and Christmas respectively. I know that Manning-Walkers other bands may be taking a bit of his time currently (The Chisel are starting a US tour this coming week) but hopefully they’ll have something new out soon but both albums got a ton of play all year.
NARROW HEAD
I had a weird thought spiral in trying to best describe Narrowhead’s music in that one could almost think off it as similar in terms of distance of nostalgia’s gaze backward as the wave of dead-on 60’s style garage rock revival bands that started popping up in the 90’s, except now it’s a band at the forefront of a revival or at least major draw of inspiration from sounds of the 90’s here in the 2020s. Their singer/guitarist Jacob Duarte is also a literal second generation member of the punk scene as well, as his father and uncle both played in 90’s/00s Texas pop-punk band The Tie That Binds, which makes me feel incredibly old as I remember them popping up on various comps and stuff back in the day. NH have a triple-guitar attack that draws heavily from bands like Quicksand, Jawbox, and even a Smashing Pumpkins at times with swirling distortion and melodies mixed with a lot of drawn out vocal styles, but all still with a punk edge. They also seem to have nailed the look, or at least Duarte has inherited his father’s old band merch collection as they are always wearing shirts from bands like Sonic Youth and Godflesh in their music videos – which they have several of on YouTube, most with a hazy throwback camcorder vibe and often shot in old school full screen aspect ratio. Their 2020 album 12th House Rock has been in regular rotation around my way and I’m looking forward to the follow up to be released in Feb 2023.
Miscellany
J Church “Mary Provost” (Nick Lowe cover)
The Tie That Binds “Annette Explains It All” (Jacob from Narrow Head’s dad’s band)
The Chisel “Retaliation” (Charlie from C&TG’s other band)
End It “New Wage Slavery” (killer newer band touring northeast US with The Chisel this month)
Matt’s Notes
Thanks to Dan for another great topic… Everything that isn’t happening right now is either dust or speculation… and so I have had these artists on the record player… or the Android phone… for as many waking moments as I can cram in…
The artists I’ve included here… all moved me for various reasons last year. In some cases, it was a matter of relatability… this was a year where, being unemployed for almost all of it… and en route to the divorce… I had more time and resources to spend listening to music, in search of music, going to see live music… and all the spinoffs from those activities… silver linings? Unintended consequences? The motherfucking butterfly effect?
Correct answer:
- All of the above
- None of the above
- Fuck this bullshit entirely, man…
Sorry… sometimes my “educator” self wants to jump out into The Bog From Which This Podcast is Broadcast… asking, pedantically… so… is it a bog-cast? Are you bog-casting your pod from a specific bog out there in the Untamed Maritime Wilds?
Errr… anyway! Here are my picks for Episode Number Two!
Northcote
Matt Gould is so fucking cool.
I have my friend… and former Frederictonian… Acharya Samaneti to thank for sending me a timely Facebook message telling me that I should, in all circumstances, go see Northcote when he opened for Hot Water Music in September…
This was good advice because I was staying in Surrey, BC… cause after some experience it’s preferable to stay just outside Vancouver than right downtown…
ANYWAY… I don’t remember that much about the gig as such… but I definitely remember hanging out around middle-back of the Vogue Theatre getting pretty drunk… and I distinctly remember Matt on stage, and I distinctly remember thinking that this was some cool stuff… and when he closed his set with a bit of Chris Wollard’s Reason in My Rhyme… I guess I was “the drunk guy” at the gig, cause I also remember hollering “Chris Wollard, motherfucker! Well done!”. I’m forty-four years old, people…
ANYWAY…
Immediately after getting back to Kamloops, I ordered all the Northcote vinyl that I could find… maybe four or five records? They’re all fucking great. And by that I mean, they speak to me…
He’s a few years younger than me, and it’s something like with Joel Plaskett… prolific, talented Canadian singers around my age… who manage to tap into my inner life in a way that few others do… I can see these parking lots and teen centres and bars and I’ve worked the shitty jobs, and so forth..
And I literally just read an interview from 2020 supporting his excellent Let Me Roar LP… and it turns out the dude has had a day job as a fucking mental health worker… like… this music is coming from a person who is engaged meaningfully in the world… which is commendable to me, although I don’t know why as such…
I trust that by the time you read this, you might have listened to and/or watched the TNB recording(s)… so, I’ll leave the whys and wherefores as to how much this hits for me for the multimedia… let me get it here as well… 2015’s Hope is Made of Steel is basically a perfect record… and I’ve had it on my iTunes on repeat for… all of 2023 so far…
Well fucking done, Matt.
Signed,
The drunk guy at the Hot Water Music show in Vancouver
Ship Thieves
So… if you’re reading this… there’s a good chance we know each other in some way already… and so… far be it from me to repeat what I’ve said previously… In both previous episodes, I went into my affinity for Hot Water Music… and in that regard, Chris Wollard is 100% part of the larger endeavor, and part of what continues to make that band so dynamic after 25 years or whatever…
So, what is it about Wollard and the Ship Thieves in specific… that compelled me to get artwork from their most recent album tattooed on my left forearm?
Again… where I see it going is… relatability…
He is somebody who has described struggling with mental health issues…depression and anxiety in particular… this was partially why Chris Cresswell joined Hot Water Music… so that band would be able to continue recording and touring…
The guy is four or five years older than me… and speaks to things that are important to me… and in ways me and people like me find relatable…
With these four albums and a few singles and comp tracks, you can go across some pretty broad terrain. The first LP is a legit pop record, in my opinion. The second record… Canyons… is a more straight ahead rock affair… and both No Anchor and Irruption feature dark, angry, fast, and… unanchored… punk music… of the smartest, most literate variety…
Anyway… I’m afraid that anything else I might say could potentially draw you away from this band… and in fact, I’m afraid I might have already done so. Please don’t let my hamfisted description here keep you from checking them out… recommended on vinyl for the better sound, and also for the absolutely gorgeous colored records, with the rest of the packaging adding strongly to the overall thing…
Alkaline Trio
Here it is again! The AK3. Between the first two episodes of this show… and my blogs going as far back as June of last year, if not earlier…
I liken it to trying to get 20+ years that I WASN’T listening to them fit into the present day.
So… above and beyond all that… as per Matt Skiba and Asian Man Records on Instagram, Matt is in the studio working on… something! Since Dan had a solo record out last year, it would (might?)(who the fuck knows?) make sense for Matt to release a solo record of his own.. whatever it is, here’s hoping it’s out sometime in the next 50 weeks!
Mark Lanegan
You can’t talk about Lanegan without talking about Screaming Trees… I’ve been listening to Sweet Oblivion since I first became aware of grunge… and besides a couple of Mark’s excellent solo records on Subpop… that was pretty much it, as far as engagement or whatever…
Lanegan passed away on February 22, 2022 in Ireland… and that was when I dove into his fucking amazing, dark, hilarious memoir Sing Backwards and Weep… and followed that by reading his fucking harrowing account of nearly dying from COVID… which was published about one month before he passed away…
Anyway, that in turn, has led me to his vast post-Trees discography… he was writing and recording with a constellation of other artists from all over pop music… he was consistent as an artist, but impossible to pin down…
I’ve had a blog post about Lanegan’s books sitting in draft format for more than a month now… I think there will be a time to speak to him as one of the most honest, raw, utterly thoughtful singers and songwriters of his era… with fierce literary talent that was finally being recognized in the last decade of his life…
Lanegan would have none of this, of course. He was just doing what he was capable of. And thank fucking God that he did.
Beastie Boys
I’ll repeat what I said on the show: in around November of 2022, Paul’s Boutique made me ask myself:
A) What the fuck is this?
B) Is this even fucking music?
This leading to:
C) If this is fucking music, then everything I’ve thought about music up until now is fucking wrong.
To say nothing of the persistent, righteous NYHC lineage…
So, thanks, I guess!
xNo Sleep Til FrederictonX
Etc.!
Thank you so much for visiting the bog! Here’s to a radical 2023!
Filed under: Uncategorized - @ January 11, 2023 8:50 pm
