The “Rock ‘n’ Roll Farm Report” was a short-lived review column that ran on our Alt.Culture.Guide™ website for almost a year until we closed the site, not due to lack of readers, but from lack of time and money to continue the project. Still, as these columns show, we reviewed a diverse range of music...
CITIES – Cities
“Post-punk revival” is all the rage these days, thirty-something critics auditioning for Pitchfork writing gigs fawning over bands like Interpol or the Walkmen in an effort to relive their misspent youths and assure their continued relevance. Bullocks! The Reverend is a crusty old rockcrit of the Marsh/Bangs/Johnson persuasion, and all the adjectives you can remember from grad school notwithstanding, an album either rocks or it doesn’t. Besides, “post-punk” as a description is mostly a lazy attempt by lesser minds to categorize music that refuses to be pigeonholed.
Case in point: North Carolina’s Cities. With the “post-punk revival” albatross neatly hung around their neck, the band’s solid debut disc has mostly been dismissed in favor of more “acceptable,” i.e. New York based noisemakers. ‘Tis their loss, however, the self-titled Cities a mind-tickling collection of fuzzy lyrics and fuzzier sound, each song filled with guitars that ring like Quasimodo’s fabled bell and buzz like a mix of Husker Du and Radiohead. Yes, Cities filters its ‘80s-styled college-rock personality against a new millennium soundtrack, and although the melodies are sharp, the album’s production is a bit more blunt than need be. Nevertheless, Cities the album shows the promise of a band that has its feet on the ground and just needs to reach a little higher to hit the stars. (Yep Roc Records)
Better than a decade down the road, straight-edge punks Good Riddance sound as hot-and-bothered on their seventh album as they ever have. Part of this can be attributed to former drum-kit mauler Sean Sellers returning to the fold after a lengthy hiatus. The other aspect that keeps Good Riddance young and grounded in an honest punk aesthetic is frontman/songwriter Russ Rankin, as proper a ranter-and-venter of left-wing political polemics as you’re likely to find.
Rankin’s intelligent and carefully considered lyrical broadsides are matched with a pure white light/white heat musical assault, the band kicking it old school with a renewed fury and self-righteous anger at the powers that be. Usually overshadowed by more loudly militant bands like Anti-Flag or trendier faves like Against Me!, Good Riddance nevertheless remain one of the best political bands on the punk rock landscape. My Republic is an essential release, a sterling example of punk at its relevant best. Plus, these jams will knock the plaster from your walls and shake the cobwebs from your brain! (Fat Wreck Chords)
GREG GRAFFIN – Cold As the Clay
The Reverend has always admired Bad Religion frontman Greg Graffin for his unyielding intelligence, machine-gun vocal delivery and refusal to “dumb down” the band’s songs for a mass market mindset. It comes as little surprise, then, that Graffin’s Cold As the Clay should attempt to teach a punk audience about the charms and wit of “old-time music.” This sort of musical exercise is to be expected from, say, Bruce Springsteen, but it’s an extremely punk rock thing to do for a hardcore legend like Graffin to throw aside fan’s expectations in an effort to make an honest artistic statement. Cold As the Clay succeeds both as an opportunity for Graffin to apply his songwriting talents to a drastically different musical format, and as a showcase for his soulful, vastly underrated vocal abilities.
Mixing traditional folk and country songs with inspired originals, Graffin’s delivery is supported by solid, appropriately understated performances by a talented group of sympathetic musicians. Bandmate/producer Brett Gurewitz also shows an unexpectedly deft hand in capturing these performances. If one goes into Cold As the Clay expecting the sort of blistering punk rock that Graffin delivers with his full-time band, you’ll be sorely disappointed. However, if you open your ears and free your mind, you’ll find a collection every bit as powerful as anything Bad Religion has ever recorded, music with roots deep in the earth and a history as ancient as mankind. Somewhere, Dave Van Ronk is smiling down on us all… (Anti- Records)
This Austin, Texas bunch of ne’er-do-wells has been kicking around for almost a decade now and Heavy Ornamentals, the band’s eighth album, displays everything there is to like about the Gourds. Chock full of irreverent humor, pop culture references and whip-smart lyrics, you might think that the Gourds are a little too, well, “intelligent” for the room. These boys temper their smart-aleck intellectual leanings with a lean-n-mean mix of roots rock, trad-country, folky witticisms and blues flavor, all delivered with the mastery of a band that has spent many nights on the road. All of which means that the Gourds are equally at home ripping through a honky-tonk rave-up like “Shake The Chandelier,” a Byrdsian rocker like “Decline-O-Meter,” or a poetic weeper like “Our Patriarch.” Consistently entertaining and as unique as the band that created it, Heavy Ornamentals is more soulful than anything you’re likely to hear from Nashville’s Music Row this year. (Eleven Thirty Records)
Let’s go ahead and say it – War Zone is every bit as valid a creative statement as the latest Conor Oberst snoozefest, rockcrit bias against “extreme” music be damned! Pursuing an American (as opposed to Scandinavian) death metal style that uses bands like Sodom or Death as their blueprint, Jungle Rot’s fifth album in eleven years lyrically tackles the violence, brutality and inhumanity of man’s crusades with a stark brilliance and dark poetry. Behind the band’s disturbing, intelligent lyrics, however, lies a soundtrack as explosive, dangerous and powerful as anything you’ll find in extreme metal.
Frontman Dave Matrise’s vocals are more intelligible, and thus accessible, than most metal growlers, and guitarist Geoff Bub attacks his axe with a zeal that’s downright scary. Bassist James Genenz provides the anchor that keeps the entire thing from flights of fancy while Neil Zacharek is that rare find, a drummer with muscular chops that enhance, rather than bludgeon, each song to its demise. Not to say that Jungle Rot will be pitching songs for The O.C. any time soon, but War Zone delivers a real ass-kicking, one that metal fans should ignore at their own peril. (Crash Music)
Featuring the best version of Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, the one with Dio belting out the tunes and bassist Bob Daisley and drummer Cozy Powell backing the maestro, Live In Munich 1977 is the live Rainbow album fans have long desired. Touring in support of the sub-par On Stage live album, Rainbow was mixing songs from its now-legendary first two albums with material from the yet-to-be-released Dio swansong Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll. The performances captured on this budget-priced two-CD set are simply brilliant, Blackmore’s incendiary six-string work matched by, perhaps, the best one-two rhythmic punch in the metal world in Daisley and Powell.
Featuring eight songs stretched to the 90-minute breaking point by extended jams, Dio’s soaring vocals and mind-numbing feats of instrumental prowess that would write the book for ‘80s British heavy metal, Live In Munich 1977 rocks with reckless abandon. Younger fans that never got to witness Blackmore and his wrecking crew firsthand can revel in live versions of “Sixteenth Century Greensleeves,” “Catch the Rainbow” and “Man On the Silver Mountain” that leave scorched earth in their wake. For those of us that were there, Live In Munich 1977 revives some long-forgotten rock ‘n’ roll memories… (Eagle Records)
