Car Commercials on Soft Abuse

It's been a while since the Jar single on Leaf Leaf records, and I had to go rifling through the shelves finding that one to get some perspective on this latest from Daniel Dimaggio and Daniel Sutton. I don't think I had any idea about Home Blitz at the time I bought it, so this single has a totally different place on the shelf now. That's the good thing about singles, making those connections later...buying a single like Jar just because of the xerox cover that looked like it was made in 5 minutes and of course the name. I held onto it because I always appreciated how all over the place it was, you were going to get something different out of it every time.
Listening to it now all I can hear is the Cave Bears, a stream of consciousness rehearsal space jam session that's constantly changing...going as home recorded as possible, sounding tortured, or happy... cut together so you never know the difference. I like the ambiguity, there's a lot you can personally take away from this. It's accessible, it has that I could do that feel, while having enough melodic moments to draw you in for another spin.

This 'Prisoner of Type' single from Soft Abuse finds the two of them, years later, very serious crouched in the woods...still delivering on that homemade psyche promise. It doesn't get bogged down with a lot of rules or particular sounds, and that can sound like a cop out, not nailing down what you're trying to get across, but that's the point and it works.
It's weird to just hear Home Blitz peek out here and there in phrases, the vocals get loud and that half english accent from Perpetual Night comes out for a second. Sort of like Car Commercials is the Ducktails to Daniel's Home Blitz, it's the unhinged, free form side of the home recordings. Daniel's vocals are really deconstructed, with no obvious melody, each syllable is an unrelated note at times with lots of space.
On the flip side the both of them are on guitar blurting out vocals on S's Pawn but The Bag Saga two part track is the most successful combination of their experimentation and melody. Accordion and acoustic sparse layers capturing a real loneliness and alienation. It's another document of why Daniel is going to continue to be interesting, you just can't pin him down.

I don't know if these guys will ever tour, or exist outside these two singles and the Judy's Dust full length or Eric's Diary, it would be impossible to recreate any of this successfully, unless they just took a improv route for every performance, and that can be genius or a nightmare for an audience. I could see them taking that chance.

From Soft Abuse, black vinyl long playing 33 with a punch out adapter thingy in the center and download card.

Car Commercials explore the personal / loner side of DIY with their singular take on no-chord strum & mumble rock n’ roll alienation. Dave Sutton and Daniel DiMaggio have created another soundtrack of suburban boredom & terminal paranoia; the stifling, mundane source of this music (geographically and psychologically speaking) is mirrored and regurgitated in these five tunes. Where once they tread a formless, lurching path, Car Commercials now tromp along with more-cohesive abandon. Moments of spontaneity & pure attitude are delivered in restrained spurts and jabs, and their chops seem better, too. All in all, Prisoner of Type extends the duo’s unsettling missives into (slightly) less-rudimentary corners. Each side offers a different, uh, side of the band. Its a savory listen. 300 pressed, includes a free download.

Side A
01. Supper's on the Table
02. Prisoner of Type
Side B
01. S's Pawn
02. The Bag Saga, pt. 1 [mp3]
03. The Bag Saga, pt. 2

Sonny and the Sunsets full length on Soft Abuse Records

Soft Abuse mentioned this full length from Sonny and the Sunsets when I reviewed a couple of their singles a little while back and looking further into Sonny I found a Tim Cohen/F&O's connection so I had to give it a listen and it's been sinking in this past week.

One of my favorites, the first track, 'Too Young to Burn' is warm layers of acoustic guitar and organic percussion; slightly faded to the left snaps and handclaps. It's just the start of that gather-round-the-campfire folk 60's sound... which is present throughout 'Tomorrow is Alright'. There's a timeless quality you can't put a finger on to sort out the exact elements... but still it's contemporary sounding.... not so much a throwback that it's losing it's own identity, the most successful kind of combination of influence. He recreates that folk/pop sound from the 60's or 70's but without being too nostalgic, too faithful to details.
But it doesn't completely stay in that era either...from the slightly country bluegrass of 'Stranded', to the slow Velvets nihilistic slow echo of 'Death Cream' it seems Sonny just takes whatever style works for the content...or his rambling ways translate into genre hopping....all while being catchy enough to unconsciously sing along with the vocals.
Something like 'Strange Love' is a classic 50's echo harmony ballad with off tune ancient piano. The sort of musician who grew up playing all over the place, soaking up the styles from everywhere, not playing with visions of rocking the next ATP festival, but making enough in tips to get that guitar fixed and move on to the next town.
He writes with unselfconscious sentiment and the idealized hopes about love, or the visions of society like in 'Planet of Women'...well in that case it's kind of a sci-fi, duet conversation with Tahlia Harbour. Men being slaves...willing slaves....there's nothing you have to read into, it's storytelling, good-times, sunny west coast roadtrip sounds.

Amoeba's blog has an interview with Sonny... tons more info about the album and it's various guest appearances and connections.

500 copies of vagabond soul from Soft Abuse:

Sonny & the Sunsets' debut album will be available 17 November via LP / DL.
The album is a co-release with the SF label Secret Seven, who you might know from the brilliant Tim Cohen (Fresh & Onlys, Black Fiction) solo LP from earlier this year.

Sonny & the Sunsets are a beautiful west coast thing. Birthed from the sand, the surf, and twilight campfires down in Ocean Beach, Sonny & the Sunsets’ busted beach-pop songs spark recollections of doo wop's otherworldly despair, the kitchen sink savoir faire of The Raincoats, a touch of humor from the Michael Hurley school, and the positive possibilities exuded by Jonathan Richman. Helmed by the acclaimed singer/songwriter, playwright, comic book author & onetime troubadour pianoman Sonny Smith, The Sunsets have featured a revolving door lineup that now includes Kelley Stotlz (Sub Pop) and Tahlia Harbour (Dry Spells, Citay). Others like John Dwyer (The Oh Sees, etc.), Tim Cohen (The Fresh & Onlys, Black Fiction) and Shayde Sartin (The Fresh & Onlys, The Skygreen Leopards, etc) cosmically appeared to contribute to the debut LP, Tomorrow is Alright.

Tomorrow is Alright is limited to 500 copies. An illustration from the heralded artist Chris Johanson (Deitch Projects, Awesome Vistas label) adorns the sleeve.

...and the first 50 copies get a comic written by Sonny...

Pumice - Persever 7" on Soft Abuse Records

I knew I've heard of Pumice before...I looked up an old post....ok, This is Stephan Neville from New Zealand with the low-fi 4 track stuff...this got me thinking, I need to reexamine that categorization. You can't just throw that around anymore. 4-track doesn't mean it was recorded to a cassette and bounced down a million times, with that inherent hiss and hands on craft. It's hilarious to even think there was a dolby noise reduction setting on the Tascam...it was always on, but I could never hear any change. So most likely it's recorded on a computer, with some kind of mixer software, but anything with the word laptop in it just makes me think about some kind of electronic, minimal, rave, DJ world. So it's home recorded. Experimental? In the way that he's using sounds in unconventional ways. So what's going on? Is this low-fi? Yes...at times. And that's going around lately don't get me wrong, it might be a red flag to some readers. It's practically required these days, and not even out of necessity, purely for texture, to maybe take itself a little less seriously? Things recorded too perfectly, lose the human element? All of this is at work on this new single from Pumice on Soft Abuse.

Pumice has been around since '91 but has been on a bit of a hiatus the past few years, but is back with this new original and a couple of covers on the B-Side.
To me this single, the A-Side, 'The dawn chorus of kina' is reminding me of The Microphones, and Mt Eerie stuff, intensely personal, idiosyncratic visions of making music. This track runs through all kinds of emotional landscapes from repetitive beat with layers of muddy guitars bleeding into one solid hazy melody that later breaks down into jagged angular strums, and then gets real quiet bringing the first melody back with a double time kick beat. Deconstructing the original melody and mixing it up, turning it over into something new by the time it comes out on the other side. It's an instrumental journey.
I'm surprised I really haven't hear him brought up in the low-fi conversations, the timeline, having started during the time of all the other low-fi contemporaries. If anything I think that's what being from New Zealand gets you...you're lumped in with the Dead C...all the flying nun stuff...you can't break away from that categorization.

Both of the covers on the B-Side are miles away from the introspective first side, but these are covers remember? The first 'Open Up' is a Michael Hurley song from his 1971 album 'Armchair Boogie'. Both are played with a ukulele sound, or maybe just capo-ed up acoustics, I'm even catching an accent, on these quiet syrupy tracks. Lots of echo, layers of vocals, with just enough tempo to keep it from stalling completely. Goth Folk for an acoustic indie set. Especially on 'Pacific Ocean', from a contemporary NZ band, The Axemen who must have played a show or two with Pumice. It's more upbeat, but Pumice just has this melancholy style that takes this somewhat optimistic song and flips it.

Get it direct from Soft Abuse....they also put out a tour Grouper/Pumice split that I think you'll have to track down on ebay at this point...I'm going to be getting his full length efforts from SA after hearing this single.

Following a mammoth tour of Europe, Japan & the US in 2007-2008, Stefan Geoffrey Neville took a sabbatical from Pumice. After a silence of several months, Stefan slowly began to re-emerge in New Zealand, playing (the drums) with a few bands in Auckland. Slowly, a few proper Pumice gigs were played & soon thereafter, in January 2009, Neville started work on a new batch of recordings. One of those found a home on the split single with Grouper, while the others, appear on Persevere; a befitting title for Neville's first new grip of songs following his hiatus. Three songs comprise Persevere: 'The Dawn Chorus of Kina,' an ode to (alleged) singing sea urchin, and covers from two vision-sharing kindred spirits: The Axemen ('Pacific Ocean') and Michael Hurley ('Open Up'). Persevere is released in an edition of 500 copies, housed in textured paper sleeves adorned with Neville's signature dog drawings. - Soft Abuse

Pigeons 'Lunettes' on Soft Abuse

Just in from Soft Abuse is this single from Pigeons, who are apparently just north of 7inches central in the Bronx. An overlooked borough for sonic weirdness I have to say. The number of artists that flocked there in the past few years for huge cheap spaces to build out has just been growing...sorry but those years in Brooklyn are long gone. Have I been up there then? Not really. It's too far...and there isn't a music venue anywhere near there as far as I know, but give it a few years when Brooklyn is what the east village is now and the east village is fallen back into a homeless shanty town and the Bronx is where you want to be.
So it makes perfect sense I'd hear of an act from this area where future Silent Barns are every other corner and this endless 4 song EP is playing at 33. After spinning the first side for a while, I haven't even flipped it over yet. Both of these tracks are taking their sweet time, slowly preparing you as things get weirder and weirder.

The first track 'Tendresse' (go check out the download below) uses the tremolo warble from an old tube amp and Wednesday's (great name) ethereal layered foreign (?) vocals, it's headed into some kind of Blue Velvet territory. High and in trouble. Tambourine with the restrained tom only beat makes this just barely crawl. I think it's safe to say this is in the Velvets family of reinterpreted slowcore-psyche sound. When the wavering guitar is gone, you'll miss it.

The second track on this single, 'Lowest' is where things start to really get weirdo, the vocals become another high pitch peaking sound alongside a heavily delayed reverb guitar, the two start two play off each other...there's no beat to be concerned with, there's nothing to hold onto here, you're clinging to the simple electric strumming behind the main melody, but it's all blasted through a far away AM radio speaker in the back of the warehouse. The delay screams just a little bit after the first round of vocals and it's impressive, what a sound. This high sustained vocal and overblown note just hitting the same blaring frequency...unsettling. My favorite.

Finally over to the B-Side for 'Oubli', and I see what Siltbreeze was talking about, a pretty loose mix of saxophone over heavy drums, some meandering guitar lines, barely audible screams and yells from Wednesday...but all of these tracks are held down by those steady drums...a staple of that drone, freakout, psyche, the pulse to work out against the experiments.
Finally 'Cruel Circumstance' could almost be a late 90's 4-track tape. Vocals all close to the mic, drum machine heavy on the treble, acoustic guitar. It's a weird 13th Elevator shoegaze or something. It's a lot like this blown out cover, zoom into a grainy polaroid and crop away the context, don't color correct...this isn't exactly reality....more like finding something you didn't originally see. It's distinct in the end, and there's something a little off just under the surface.

According to an old Siltbreeze post, they have existed previously as Pigeons II, more freeform noise, sound collage on a release from Clark Griffins own Moran Tape Label, an ultra limited, Peter King handcut lathe advocate.

Leave it to the great Soft Abuse from Minnesota to point out this thing happening right in my backyard.

One time pressing of 400, get it from the Soft Abuse site...I'm working on more words about some of their other singles and full length stuff, great packaging and a slew of new ideas...Tim and Eric would say 'Great job!'

Side A

01. Tendresse [mp3}
02. Lowest

Side B

01. Oubli
02. Cruel Circumstance

Pigeons make sublimely blasted / incredibly hallucinogenic songs from their base up in Bronx, NY. The trio of Wednesday Knudsen (in disguise on the sleeve), Clark Griffin and Carter Thornton have been active for a few years, releasing miniature-run cassettes and lathe cuts for Griffin's sub-underground Moran Tape Label that dealt in skronk, warp & mystery. Their wayward song-based creations are just as ambitious, melding dissonance, crude electronics & chanson pop . The pop element in their tunes, fully introduced on their brilliant Virgin Spectacle LP, firmly rests as the oddest element in the mix. Connections to the No Neck / Sound @ 1 crew & The Sea Donkeys exist, but Pigeons are wholly on their own plane. Lunettes, their first release since Virgin Spectacle, features four new song creations, arrives in lieu of their forthcoming LP Si Faustine (to be released by Olde English Spelling Bee), and provides a notion of what they're moving towards. - Soft Abuse