In my bedroom, earlier today, Teta and I discussed our own personal relationships with Lucky Dragons: mine is kept to this odd disconnection, a relationship that doesn't seem to ever begin, yet when it's flirted with, feels like it's already there, and the irony is that we've played together a few times, but never in my own town (even when it was with one of my own projects, I couldn't make it to the show, so they went on without me). We see each other, and there is substantial respect and mutual admiration, the kind of connection that is both satisfying in the sense that it is allowed to happen with minimal physical necessities to do so, but also sad in the fact that it usually bound to that moment. ...for example, “I've been meaning to write Luke lately”. ...and: ”lately” is marked by a time which started when we last played with each other, August 2008.
Teta cited her time at The Manor, a local house that is forever doing shows, with an alternating cast of occupants. Not wanting to be in your own home, having strangers flood in, and not truly interacting with you or making positive impacts on you, and Lucky Dragons providing a relief, through small headphones underneath a blanket in the bedroom, a false sanctuary within the boundaries of your own domain, something beautiful and magical that made things a little bit better during a time that not allowing feelings things to feel okay.
This of course is not a criticism of the Manor, by any means, though in her specific time there, it was very loose, the occupants all having their own affairs, plans and schedules. That being said (and over-ruling): my favorite memory in that house is sitting on the futon in the living room, with Teta next to me,... she had just finished cooking some green beans while some band was playing in the living room, and her letting me try some (they were delicious, cooked to the perfect point like only she and specific Thai places can), prompting me to ask if she had ever had this one green bean dish at Lemongrass, where we inevitably had dinner together almost a year later, slightly before she left town, the first time, on a road trip. ...she left early and didn't say goodbye, and I was proud of her for doing so.
This is off task and personal, though that is the sort of thinking that Lucky Dragons consistently seem to prompt for me, as most things beautiful and magical should. There is the vagueness that yearns to be treasured, and while may be written off as boring by some, is appreciated as golden by others.
“Open Power” is perfect in every way possible, except for the fact that it is too short, not just in the confines of it being an EP, but in the broad parameters of it not being allowed to go on for hours at a time. Physical and electronic sound, cascading into something that feels like an ambient yet glitchy Gamelan-style soundscape. This is truly celebratory, escapist music. This couple is from Los Angeles, and this is the antithesis: the soundtrack for retreat and something finer, or for bulldozing the concrete to find something deeper, or for painting over the surface to open the eyes of those passing by to something more, or for looking inside yourself to find the will to hold on and pull through.
This record is truly important. There are 750 of them and I urge you to take one as your own.
CHECK OUT LUCKY DRAGONS: HERE.
One of my favorite moments from this past year, was seeing this great Vancouver duo play for a second time. The first was in a crowded basement in Portand, about a year earlier, our tours intersecting under one of the more stressful of situations. (Not to get off track, but it's hard to not want to talk about how Tent/City and Nu Sensae is a weird enough of a combination, but that local werido hero Nick / Tunnel's set of abstract basement bizarro-dance music was possible the odd-project out that night, but easily / also the most enjoyable, in a way).
This time around, however, our own endeavors were much more appropriately matched, with me contributing a new Soft Shoulder line-up that was thick and disgusting, but much like Nu Sensae, also very digestible in an upside down sort of way. (and on tour with them was Justin / Random Cuts, which was a treat all of it's own).
Only slightly more refined than the admittedly rough (though specifically perfect) 12” on Isolated Now Waves, “Three Dreams” is actually four new tracks, much welcome after letting the 12” and their contribution to the Emergency Room compilation sorta simmer for awhile. (The only other new offering that had come my way was a split cassette with Syrup, which oddly enough was a live recording from our show together the summer before last, including a Channels 3x4 cover that, I am quite positive, was only known as such by me.
As was before, Andrea's on sludge bass and vocals, Daniel on drums, recording on the lofi end of things, and the energy and angst at full force. Something spooky and goth-like, despite this band being consistently fun to listen to and see, above all else,... there is also this psuedo-self confidence and reverse-ego that trickles through and conquers,...
a line from “Fantum” on the B-Side inadvertently / accidentally conveys: “You've fallen sick with what I've got”.
...almost perfectly sums this single up.
CHECK OUT NU SENSAE: HERE.
Speaking as a child in their mid-late 20's, I find it fair enough to say it's a shame that this person was not common knowledge. He first came into my scope in the mide 90's, not because I was into fringe culture, but because mainstream culture had, for a minute, bridged a gap that brought Vic into magazines, on PBS and even MTV (specificially in regards to a compilation benefiting Sweet Relief, in which groups like Garbage, R.E.M. and Smashing Pumpkins covered his songs).
The fact that Vic was suicidal has always been common knowledge, as was the fact that he was partially paralyzed from a car accident when he was 18. What I found most upsetting what that in the past year, he has had so many neat things going on, and I had secretly been allowed to feel all the lightest better knowing this to be true. (Specifically, he recorded a new record with some of the Godspeed You Black Emperor guys and Guy from Fugazi, and just finished a tour with them as his band, too. On top of that, he was just on NPR, talking for an hour about doing so, his former work, suicide and his life. I wouldn't have been delusional to think that this would mean, "he will never try it again", but it made me feel optimistic and good, that he had gotten to another place that was nice.
Rather than write my own long winded explanation for how / why I felt Vic Chesnutt was so important and valid (cause I am getting there, believe me), I'm just going to go ahead and repost his friend Kristen Hersh's eulogy, instead.
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Surrounded by family and friends, Vic Chesnutt died in Athens Georgia this afternoon, Friday 25 December at 14:59.
In the few short years that we knew him personally, Vic transformed our sense of what true character, grace and determination are all about. Our grief is inexpressible and Vic’s absence unfathomable.
We will make more information available according to the wishes of Vic’s family and friends.
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What this man was capable of was superhuman. Vic was brilliant, hilarious and necessary; his songs messages from the ether, uncensored. He developed a guitar style that allowed him to play bass, rhythm and lead in the same song — this with the movement of only two fingers. His fluid timing was inimitable, his poetry untainted by influences. He was my best friend.
I never saw the wheelchair—it was invisible to me—but he did. When our dressing room was up a flight of stairs, he'd casually tell me that he'd meet me in the bar. When we both contracted the same illness, I told him it was the worst pain I'd ever felt. "I don't feel pain," he said. Of course. I'd forgotten. When I asked him to take a walk down the rain spattered sidewalk with me, he said his hands would get wet. Sitting on stage with him, I would request a song and he'd flip me off, which meant, "This finger won't work today." I saw him as unassailable—huge and wonderful, but I think Vic saw Vic as small, broken. And sad.
I don't know if I'll ever be able to listen to his music again, but I know how vital it is that others hear it. When I got the phone call I'd been dreading for the last fifteen years, I lost my balance. My whole being shifted to the left; I couldn't stand up without careening into the wall and I was freezing cold. I don't think I like this planet without Vic; I swore I would never live here without him. But what he left here is the sound of a life that pushed against its constraints, as all lives should. It's the sound of someone on fire. It makes this planet better.
And if I'm honest with myself, I admit that I still feel like he's here, but free of his constraints. Maybe now he really is huge. Unbroken. And happy.
Love,
Kristin
Maybe it's that there are very few “hardcore” bands that appeal to me in this day and age, and this is truly “solid” ...maybe it's that when it's in terms of things coming from the heavier side of things, that's even more so the case,... or maybe it's because the first time I listened through this LP, it was drumming and (fake) singing along with John Quintos' one year old child while he sat on top of that jazz LPs inside Eastside Records after close on some Thursday night. Or maybe it's just that this LP is incredibly well done.
With much modern intensity, much like Sex/Vid or their cohorts in Iron Lung (see: their incredible collaboration 7”), Texas' HATRED SURGE also channel a specific element of gloom that I always associate with His Hero is Gone's “Monuments to Thieves” and Unruh's “Setting Fire to Sinking Ships” (to of my favorite LPs, period), though the juxtaposition of male / female vocals adds a specific flare that makes it all that much more engaging, though not so much in sound as in spirit, in the same way that Antischism always appealed to me. A true account of paranoia and desperation, appropriate reactionary aggression. (Perhaps, imagine the finer points of Dirt and Brutal Truth, with album art taking tasteful cues from Gism, for sure).
17 songs on a 45rpm LP, though though without falling into the pitfalls of classic powerviolence or grindcore, this LP provides a diverse approach to something that undeniably has been done countless times over the past 20 years, but making it their own and rendering it valid and important, regardless. I passed on seeing this band a few months ago, as I had only heard a single that didn't grab me as much as this did, and I'm not as into Mammoth Grinder, who they were on tour with (and actually share members with). However, they'll be passing through Phoenix / Tempe in just a few weeks, and I am very much looking forward to catching them this time, instead of screwing up and passing on the opportunity to be crammed in an overcrowded storage space or house, and seeing on of the best active hardcore bands there is.
check out Hatred Surge: here.
