Review: Mighty Mighty-PopCan!

Mighty Mighty: Pop Can: The Definitive Collection 1986-1988 (Cherry Red, 2013)

One of my most anticipated releases of 2013 is the forthcoming Scared to Be Happy box set, which features a litany of bands from the UK indie/twee/C-86/baggy/early shoegazer eras.  I’m a sucker for almost all of those genres, and I consider myself pretty knowledgeable regarding them. But, honestly, I wasn’t that familiar with Mighty Mighty despite the fact that they appeared on the legendary C86 compilation.  Hailing from Birmingham, Mighty Mighty originally only existed for only a few years, riding the crest of the British indie/C86 wave, but the rise of grunge, shoegaze, and Madchester let the air out of their collective tires after a few singles, one album (1988’s Sharks, on Chapter 22) and aborted sessions for a second album (finally released in 2012 as The Betamax Tapes).  This two-CD anthology, by the always collector-friendly Cherry Red label, collects most of their recorded output from their 1986-1988 heyday, including “Law” (their C86 contribution) and “Everybody Knows the Monkey” (the first single, and their contribution to the CD86 reissue) along with most of Sharks and the Built Like a Car EP.

Much was made, in their initial press, about singer Hugh McGuinness’s vocal similarity to one Steven Patrick Morrissey, and the band’s similarity to the Smiths, but Mighty Mighty were more than mere Smiths-clones.  The dual guitar attack (brothers Mick and Peter Geoghegan) was augmented by a very un-Smiths use of the Vox and Hammond organ, adding a 60’s garage rock flavor to the jangle pop.  At times, the organ lines become the central melody with the guitars merely chugging along as background, in ways similar to the seminal New Zealand band The Chills.  McGuinness’s voice can, at times, be a striking chameleon for Morrissey, although he has a tendency to croon more than the Moz of ’86-’88 (see “One Way”).  The band’s sound tends to be more energetic than the Smiths, with soul and funk basslines and dance grooves imported from Postcard Records artists like Orange Juice and Josef F.  But there are also moments where the smooth pop of Aztec Camera and Prefab Sprout comes into play (“Freedom of the City”) and others where the band could be less politically-minded kissing cousins with The Housemartins.  Occasionally ramshackle arrangements echo The Velvet Underground.

In the post-Smiths indie pop world, where it took merely a rush and a push to make the charts, it’s easy to see why Mighty Mighty burned brightly, but also why they faded fast: there were a lot of other bands doing something similar during their heyday.  Unfortunately, a fair number of really excellent songs got lost in the shuffle, but now is as good of a time as any to revisit their work. 

Review of The Men: New Moon

The Men: New Moon (Sacred Bones, 2013)

I came fairly late to the party, I’ll admit.  The Men were a buzzed about band going back to 2009’s We Are The Men EP, but I first checked them out after hearing a few tracks from 2012’s Open Your Heart.  Much of what attracted the band some early attention, most notably the rough edges and the ‘pigfuck’ sound of the early records, had begun to be sanded down on that record.  The earlier albums, 2010’s Immaculada and 2011’s Leave Home were obviously indebted to 80’s alternative stalwarts like Big Black, Butthole Surfers, and Jesus Lizard, but also paid obvious homage to the more heartfelt and melodic bands of that era (The Replacements, Husker Du, Dinosaur Jr).  Open Your Heart divided some opinions by including a twangy country-leaning track “Candy” and toning down the aggression for atmosphere (less punk-skronk and more shoegaze and psychedelica) but still seemed to placate the folks who saw The Men as a rebirth of 80’s noise rock.  If the bands in Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life served, in some fashion, as the template for the early version of The Men, many of those same bands (and the bands that those bands splintered into) changed their sound, softened, and altered their tone in their later phases.  So it seems to be with The Men, as well.  Producer/engineer Ben Greenberg has become a full-fledged member, and founding bass player Chris Hansell (acknowledged as the proponent of much of the louder, noisier elements in the earlier albums) was relieved of his role in the band because of his financial inability to go on tour, and these changes have certainly manifested in the sound of the record.  It is considerably more melodic, more poppy, and more accessible, on the whole, as the previous records.   

Fans of pigfuck will likely stop listening about 30 seconds in, when the gentle folk strut of “Open The Door”, with its high ‘ooh-ooh’ backing vocals and mandolin solos, reveals the new Men to be a pretty, poppy endeavor.  Being There-era Wilco is a certainly a fair comparison for much of this record, and the increased attention to melody and improved vocal chops (there are no phlegm-laden coughs present here!) only serves to help make these songs stick in the listener’s heads.  The band has also acknowledged (notably in a Village Voice article) an appreciation for Tom Petty, and there are certainly some Petty-esque moments (the opening drum stomp of “Without A Face” is a dead ringer for “Runnin’ Down a Dream”) but there are also echoes of The Pixies (the opening chords of “I Saw Here Face” could be the opening chords of “Monkey Gone to Heaven”) as well as sprawling, epic guitar hero Neil Young and Crazy Horse or Dinosaur Jr (the end of “I Saw Her Face”) and ramshackle latter day solo Paul Westerberg (“The Seeds”), and even mid-period Teenage Fanclub (“I Saw Here Face”, yet again!) A loping, vaguely country-rock instrumental (“High and Lonesome”) highlights delicate lap steel and piano immediately before a pair of fuzzed-up thrashing punky tunes (“Electric” feels like the Stooges-meets-early Replacements).  Anyone who lamented The Men ‘going soft’ on the last record will likely lose their shit when they hear the electric piano and harmonica-centric “Bird Song”, but they might be eventually pulled back into New Moon’s orbit on the eight minute psych-rock burn of the closing track “Supermoon” where guitar solos seem to keep coming at you like a pack of rabid feral dogs, and where Dinosaur Jr and Spacemen 3 battle in a last-man standing match in an echo chamber.  I imagine this record will be divisive, but this for me, it’s akin to last year’s fantastic Japandroids record Celebration Rock: it’s a love letter to a golden age of alternative rock, full of moments lovingly cribbed from the bands that were your life to, somehow, create a new band that you can obsess about.  My 17 year old self has already scrawled the Sacred Bones logo on his Trapper Keeper

Frightened Rabbit: Pedestrian Verse (review)

Frightened Rabbit: Pedestrian Verse (Atlantic, 2013)

There’s a whole lot of illness and injury in this record.  Vomit on shoes, shattered bones, an abused child breathing smoke in a loveless home, buried skulls…not exactly the music that will soundtrack your summer pool party.  For this, their fourth studio album and first for Atlantic Records, Frightened Rabbit complete their evolution into a potent stadium rock band.  The songs, despite the darkness of the lyrics and subject matter, are placed in front of powerful guitar-bass-drums rock songs, fleshed out by well-placed organs and synths.  Frontman Scott Hutchinson hasn’t toned down his thick burr for major label consumption, and while his accent is distinctive, his voice (mixed high) is expressive and clear, and often feels heartbroken and on the verge of giving in the desperation of the songs. 

Musically, the band have moved from the folkier sounds of the early records to something closer to that of fellow Scots Snow Patrol and Big Country, as well as U2 and Coldplay.  If references to those bands creep you out, don’t fret: there’s a sick Scottish humor to this record that the antecedents certainly lack.  “The Woodpile” features a chorus that begins with “I’m trapped in a collapsing building” and doesn’t end much better.  “Late March, Death March” acknowledges that there isn’t a God and that prayers are wasted breath.  The child of “State Hospital” has “blood thicker than concrete” and was “forced to be brave”, but is regularly beaten and thrown down the stairs and was, after all, “born into a grave.”   But, the song notes, all is not lost.   The songs are populated with drunk priests, balding plumbers, broken boxers, nitrous gas huffers, and suburban adulterers, flashing by in rapid fire, stream of consciousness fashion, like a drunken fever dream.  Or the memory of some really bad shit that has gone down, repeatedly.  

What’s really stunning about this album is the hook-laden catchiness of these dark songs: a chorus that begs you to sing the lyrics “this is a March death march!” repeatedly is a rare beast indeed.  Incredibly affecting melodies, rousing choruses, swelling synths draw you in, hypnotise you, and then, without warning, the poisonous bite of the lyrics takes you out, but also leaves you with something to hope for.  As Hutchinson sings in “The Oil Slick”, the album’s concluding track,: “There is light, but the tunnel needs to be crawled through…we’ve still got hope, so I think we’ll be fine.”  A stunningly affecting, emotionally complex, beautiful record.