The Rantouls on Chocolate Covered Records

There are two ways to approach nostalgia: either you take those influences and ideas and reinterpret them through the modern tools and aesthetics of today or you work traditionally exactly in the style of the nostalgic style you love the most; you mix paint with egg tempera and do portraits with horsehair brushes of renaissance royalty. Huge gilded framed kids with scepters and crowns or a diamond encrusted skull.
The Rantouls are taking down the jars of pigment and drawing some perspective guidelines and getting on with it....only in their case it's surf guitar, 60's garage attitude, and beach harmonies. I mean, check out that cover, it's straight out of the late 50's early 60's. If they're trying to infiltrate record racks and salvation armies with this band they may or may not have existed, then they did a bang up job. I'm fooled.
I'm really considering these recordings resurfaced like a Mississippi records release and someone faked some promo shots to release this single.
The recording is even true to the songwriting style, warm, room sound. Only a band steeped in nostalgia could get a way with a chorus harmony of 'little green hat! little green hat / I never seen / little green hat!', it's that ridiculous content, songs have never made any sense. It's the goal of rock and roll to see what it can get away with. How little sense can we make? What's the most obscure/everyday thing we could sing about? Especially from that time period, it's like they wanted a crossover novelty hit, just to make everyone happy, and maybe they're fucking with everyone just a little bit?
The same goes for 'A Little Bit of This', severely catchy...I mean it's problem, not only are they singing about the beach, bikini's, but the lead singer has this nasal stuttered delivery that is making the song. They don't want to be taken seriously? What's this? Striped shirts and vests? Did someone defrost these guys with Brendon Frasier?
But the best line is 'I get a little kiss and I get a little smack.', so it's not all naive beach party?
I give up.

Chocolate Covered Records has unearthed them in a SoCal backyard with a valley girl:

Rantouls fan Rev. Nørb and his girlfriend say it best: It's STUPENDOUS! STUPENDOUS I SAY! I played the a-side, then the b-side, then the a-side, then the b-side, and it made my girlfriend yell "I DIDN'T LIKE THAT SONG VERY MUCH WHEN IT WAS CALLED 'LITTLE GREEN HAT,' AND I LIKED IT EVEN LESS THE SECOND TIME WHEN IT WAS CALLED 'A LITTLE BIT OF THAT!'" Yes, its that good.

The Saucy Jacks - Blown like a kiss on Chocolate Covered records

Chocolate Covered records clued me into this latest release, The Saucy Jacks who are from San Francisco and are working with all of those classic 60's elements, distorted peppy rhythm guitar, sunshiny harmonies and heavy footstomping drums.

The A-Side...The minute I saw the title 'Blown like a kiss' I of course take it to a bad place I realize now I don't think they are intending. There's a subtle echo on the vocals with nice call and response harmonies from the rest of the band. Lead Aaron's got a real emotive high up front vocal style that's taking the whole thing into a real contemporary place as much as the instrumentation is trying to stay grounded in that studio pop influenced sound. They're really recreating that huge classic rock sound, contained, faithfully captured with every available mic, and tracking trick.

B-Side, 'Everywhere you go' has a huge dirty guitar riff going in a 'I can't get no satisfaction' direction that leads Aaron into his own brand of wavering harmony that keeps getting higher and higher. It has a driving rhythm full of this great recorded drum quality, especially when everything drops out for a moment and it's fill time. When it drops back in it's twice a big. The high hat and cymbal is so clear and that distorted guitar texture when he goes for the solo is perfect. I think when referencing their sound this line says it best:
After all these years and words I've changed / but still the song remains the same.

I read somewhere that The Saucy Jacks name is referencing Spinal Tap and I can picture the cut to the montage of album covers from the late 60's from this now realized band. They start out with the black and white one where they're in suits standing on the side of a building smoking cigarettes with sunglasses. A little tough, but still coming out of the 50's, working within the confines of that pop song, lots of innuendos, and solos. Then they go a little hippy with the next cover in a field of flowers with paisley billowy shirts. You get the picture.
Available direct from chocolate covered records.

Blown Like a Kiss b/w Everywhere you Go

Classic powerpop steeped in garage goodness.
Featuring members of the Makes Nice, the Mothballs, Harold Ray: Live in Concert, The Rolling Stones, Fault Lines, This is Revenge, and the Beatles.

Ty Segall on chocolate covered records

Ty Segall from the Traditional Fools has just released this solo 7" offering on Chocolate Covered records. Ty has been performing drum duties in the Fools and ever since I found that out, I can't help but hear the lazer focus on the rhythm section, the percussion is relentless, the influence of thinking about that particular area: pounding.

The sleeve of a demented 50's scene gone cat... all cut and pasted...might give you a clue about what's lurking under the surface...just barely.
I had some other things to say about the art but this single doesn't waste any time diving right into serious low-fi stomping. The bass range sounds all peaking out, recorded at 11. Strumming like mad electric with some surf reverb turned up, That echo that you wonder is it even in the same room? Is this a room sound? Is he singing in the bathroom, it's organic, really natural.
This really reminds me of Bob Log... or Doo Rag definitely...the same use of the guitar. It's all strumming, like a washboard, the sound of the strings becomes percussive, there's a melody there but it's stripped down, barely two notes. The frantic-ness of 'Here We Go' with stomping tamborine on the high hat. Now that I'm hearing it again, I don't think there's any snare here?
The sound of crackling cables barely hanging on ends the leg shaking and we're onto......

(Go have a listen from CC, click play on the realplayer track thingy...then you will click on the buy button.....trust me.)

'It' is kick drum at speed, supportingTy's ultra blown out vocals. Again we're playing through some kind of severly broken equipment, which is sounding so analoge and fuzzy. It's the best kind of low-fi...It's recorded really specifically, with all kinds of tracks, effects, I'm sure but with a patina of gainy film. An old blockbuster.
Like everything is just turned up, all in the red for the majority of this weighty EP... a lot heavier than Traditional Fools who seem to want be taken a little less seriously, this is in your face, and catchy as hell, immediately...there's no time getting used to this. It's turned up full at low levels, mixed right at the max for 45. The guitar is just overwhelming, a low nonstop roar. It's seriously loud, and keeps getting louder.
It can't be talked over at your party.
Front and center.

On the Bside 'Son of Sam' alternates between that reverb guitar but slightly different drum recording it sounds like. Cleaner ride cymbal and even more mechanical sounding reverb this time. The drum drops in and out. Ty here is like Screaming Jay Hawkins, or John Spencer...channeling that flair.... the whoop and holler, bellowing out in the middle of nothing...tortured. Well, not exactly tortured, this is pure fun...maybe it's more like a good sermon.
'Son of a bitch!'
That warbly electrified blues vocal with a howl at the end. I am tracking down the original by Chain Gang...thanks for schooling me Ty.
This makes way for 'Sweets', another crafted little jem based on that great muffled sound.
Is something wrong with the stereo?
Honestly.
It's 4 songs that don't let up, a more finely tuned sound than Tradiional fools, It sounds like a lazer focused vision of a very particular low-fi. A succinct vision and a hell of a solo single across all 4 tracks.


$6 From Chocolate Covered Records:
Ty Segall steps out from behind the drumkit of the Traditional Fools and sit down behind a much simpler drum kit to start his own one-man band. It's crunchy, lo-fi goodness for the whole family...
...the Manson family! Includes a cover of Chain Gang's "Son of Sam." Now that's hip!

Traditional fools • Chocolate Covered Records

I had a friend who used to do art installations of tiki torches, black lights and hot rod posters, creating this weird surfing freakout world, complete with sand. It was like stepping into a foreign world, another side of the 50's that I didn't really think about. There was an underground that was happening, a counterculture even then. Of course music is the first indicator or even creator of any movement and the Traditional Fools would fit right in as the perfect soundtrack to his world.

But it's not an imitation of that time period, it seems to be taking the things that signify that era, the sounds and style but it's updated... or better yet romanticised into a better version of history. At least to me anyway in the middle of NYC. Watching the video of TF sidewalk surfing with guitars leads me to believe San Francisco is a very very different place. Full of beaches, supportive audiences, plenty of garages and this is about as garage as it gets. The recording is a perfect match for the distorted vocals, which of course were meant for this tiny vinyl. It would be pretty hard to pin this down mistakenly to something contemporary, the Traditional Fools have completely mastered this period sound.
After hearing this, they demand to be seen live, I can only imagine it only improves on this raw energy. Nice work to whoever engineered this...I've heard so many great live bands just suffocated in the studio.

It's not hanging itself with 'surfers only' signs plastered all over the sound, which can be the mistake, pigeonholing everything too tightly, turning novelty. It's mixing 60's garage and early 80's punk, too vague to easily file under either.
I think this belongs in the section with Link Ray and my other favorite band of this surf sound: Deadbolt. They might surf... but in a horror laboratory with more reverb and less distortion.

Even the xerox cover is a throwback to ye olde DIY punk scene which I like immediately.

This came to me from Chocolate Covered Records, who also released Dreamdate, which highly recommend. A pop girl band, equally earnest don't have time to spend weeks in a studio. It's about the music. I'm still playing this jem...it's in the vein of the Besties and even the Coathangers, another recent heavy rotation on the turntable.
Cocolate Covered seems to be cornering the market on this sincere low-fi sound.
Go get it for $6 from CCR.