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Archive for the ‘Hellbender’ Category

Karl Taro Greenfeld–“Fun Won” (Harper’s, June 2012)

Posted in Bob Mould, Decadence, Drinking, Drugs, Harper's, Hüsker Dü, Hellbender, Karl Taro Greenfeld, Marriage (Happy), Marriage Trouble, Models, Nostalgia, Short Story on May 21, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: HELLBENDER-Con Limón (1997).

Con Limón was Hellbender’s final CD.  It shows a lot more depth and variation than one would have expected from the debut.  “Fake I.D.” opens really really quietly for two verses so that you have to turn it up loud.  And then the song kicks in and explodes your speakers.  There are more such dynamics on this song, including the verse ending on a high guitar note and pause that adds a bit of quiet punch to the otherwise fast song.  “You Gutted Me with a Switchblade Shaped Like a Telephone” opens with some quietly spoken words (which I have not as yet been able to understand), but the verses and chorus have quite an emo feel.   “Long Distance Phone Bill Runner” has a catchy chugging riff with some screamy vocals.  “Untrusted You” introduces acoustic guitar (and a cool off-key note).  The vocals sound like Bob Mould.  Indeed the whole thing has a kind of Hüsker Dü feel to it.  “I-95 is Tattooed on My Brain” also opens slowly, with dark, quiet lyrics and a cool riff once the guitar kicks in.  The guys clearly have a way with song titles.

“Song About Some Girls” is perhaps one of the cheesiest songs I’ve heard in a long time (although as one reviewer points out, it does anticipate radio friendly emo by about a decade).  Coming from Hellbender it is super-cheese.  I’m surprised they allowed it to be released (and I’m surprised it wasn’t a huge hit).  Check out the lyrics (and this coming from a band with two lyricists who are currently published authors): “This is a song that I wrote about some girls/That I met at the beach back when I had the Jeep.”  Really.  And the chorus is a series of staggered “Right” “Right” “Right” “Right.”  It is so insanely catchy–I hate myself for liking it so much.  (The lyrics to their other songs are much better).

“Graveyarded” returns to the more angry type of song, dark with interesting riffs.  It’s a fitting ending to the last release by this under appreciated (they don’t even have an entry in allmusic?) band.  Oh wait, there’s a bonus song on the disc.  After a few seconds of silence, there’s a strange bass-heavy riff (and kind of dancey drums).  The lyrics are all spoken (I won’t say rapped).  It sounds nothing like them, but I’ll bet they had fun making it.

[READ: May 21, 2012] “Fun Won”

Sometimes a title confounds you until you see it in the context of the story.  I couldn’t even figure out how to say the title (which isn’t hard, but looks so peculiar) until I read it from one of the characters.  I also had no way of anticipating what this story might be about.

Imagine my surprise that it was about the 90s, and about a woman who worked for Conde Nast, when money and drugs were plentiful and the fun never stopped.

It’s funny how context is everything.  If I had read this story in the 90s, I would have hated everyone in it for their glamorous life, their quarter pound of weed, their expense accounted fancy dinner and even the fact that they work for a fashion magazine (Gaultier and Naomi Campbell are name-checked).  And yet now that the bubble has burst and the fun has stopped and I never got to be a part of it (not that I would have…but still), I read this story almost wistfully.

This story is set up in a tricky way.   Meaning that it starts out by talking about marriage but then shifts gears.  The marriage discussion is all about how her friends married such squares in the 90s (while now women marry interesting men who have job but are defined by their hobbies).  And it is a nostalgia piece for the 90s (“when you could still dream of being a writer, when writing for magazines and then writing books and all of that added up to a good life.”) [Sigh].

For background we learn that the narrator, her brother and their father were big dopers (their mother abstained–from the dope and the family).  Her brother Ed is visiting from California with a quarter pound of awesome pop (this was before everyone had access to awesome pot).  The bulk of the story concerns this visit.  Ed and the narrator get high, then they share the pot with Marni (who is famous, although whose actual title is unstated–she’s the one who calls Gaultier).  They end up all going for dinner at a fancy restaurant (with shaved truffles).

They also meet the narrator’s boyfriend who is a real estate mogul–he sells building for tons of money (and yes, is likely the reason the bubble burst).  And then they go to a record studio to hear a famous singer make her album and watch it get mixed. (more…)

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Terry Moore–Rachel Rising 1-4 (2011)

Posted in Death, Graphic Novel, Hellbender, Highway 61, Punks, Supernatural, Terry Moore, Violence, Yuck! on February 6, 2012| 3 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: HELLBENDER-Footprint of the American Chicken (1996).

This disc opens with a funny quote from a movie I have never heard of called Highway 61 (thank you, internet, back in 1996, know one would have known where “Lady, you can’t cheat at bingo. If you could, I would, but you can’t. I won because I was lucky – lucky to wind up in a town full of losers!” came from).

This disc fees like a progression from Hellbender’s debut–mostly in production values, but also in song textures and vocals.  The band is still angry, still aggressive, playing choppy punk (although with most songs clocking in at over 3 minutes it’s a different kind of punk).   Al Burian, the lead vocalist is still angry–and still hard to understand, he sounds very much like California punk circa the mid 80s.

But the thing that impressed me is that on some songs there’s another singer (I assume Wells Tower, or maybe it’s Burian’s “other singing voice?”).  He is more melodic, less screamy and he really lets you hear the lyrics.

So the first song (shouty singer) has a great title “Unsolicited Anthem for the Portand Hipsters,” but I have no idea what the words are except the chorus of “It’s raining again.”  But “Tourist Trap” has some great lyrics (as well as more melodic sound):

“The quiet Americans who are my friends/ laugh at the loud ones on the other end/ of the room/ and watch them spend and spend/ acting rude/ being defeated by foreign food/ being defeated by waiters who pretend/ not to speak/ a word of their language.  We draw the line between us and them as best we can

It goes on like this with some more great imagery and then it ends with a cool detuned chord.  This song is a major highlight on the album.

The disc continues with a mix of faster, harder songs and slightly more melodic ones.  As on their debut, they throw in some nice drums breaks and great dynamics to keep the songs from becoming predictable.

“New Wounds” is more melodic, almost, but not quite, poppy with a cool guitar riff and interesting lyrics “Stay up all night counting cancers as if the counting could cut them out”

“Until It Peaks” sounds like yet another singer (man I wish I had liner notes…or could find anything about this album online anywhere…come on people!).  “Half Driven” has some interesting backing vocals and some cool “ticking” sounds instead of drums. “Pissant’s Retrospective” has a new sound for the disc: scratchy guitars.  That “third” vocalist is also singing again.   And at 5 minutes long, it stands out for having a slow instrumental section for the last minute or so.

I also really like the lyrics to “Dumb Waiter.”  It opens with a false intro (I love that) and more cool lyrics:  “cross the street which separates losers from jocks…this is just like high school again.”  I also like the chorus “I’m not lighting candles. I curse their darkness.”

The final song “I Thermostat” features three vocals at once–a harmony vocal and another voice singing a third line.  Very cool.  This album shows some major progress for the band.  They released one more disc before breaking up.

[READ: January 31, 2012] Rachel Rising

My subscription to Terry Moore’s Echo ran out with issue 27 and I never got around to renewing it.  So I totally missed the ending.  I ordered the last issues from him but, gah, 28 is sold out, so I need to wait to finish it.  But when I was on the site I saw that he has a totally new series cooking called Rachel Rising.

There were very dark tones in Moore’s most famous work, Strangers in Paradise.  And Echo is all about nuclear annihilation, so he’s clearly no stranger to darkness.  But wow, Rachel Rising a dark, dark work.

The opening sequence (a stunning words-free nine pages) shows a woman rising from the earth.  She’s beautiful and not at all zombie-like, although the whites of her eyes are dark and she has clearly been strangled.  She stumbles home (actually she gets a ride from a concerned guy whom she totally ignores) and tries to figure out what the hell happened.

We see a brief flashback of her visiting her friend Jet at the garage where she works.  But when she goes to visit Jet’s house, her housemates (or whatever they are) not only say that Jet isn’t home, they say that Jet is out playing a gig like she does every Thursday.  But Rachel thinks it’s Tuesday.  So what the hell happened to her?

In Issue two she visits her Aunt Johnny who works at a mortuary. Terry doesn’t hold back with some of these scenes.  Johnny thinks that Rachel is a figment–she gets visited by lots of ghosts in her line of work.  Rachel convinces her to go look at the site where she was buried.

In the meantime, we get another storyline.  A young girl in pigtails is visited by a woman in white.  I have to say that this is a confusing development.  The woman in white looks a lot like Rachel and I can’t decide if I’m suffering from “a lot of Terry’s characters look alike” syndrome or if this is supposed to be Rachel in another incarnation, or what.  Anyway, we don’t see what the woman tells the girl, but several pages later when that storyline resumes, we see that the woman has had a powerful impact on the girl’s behavior.

In Issue 3, Rachel visits Jet at her gig.  While they are all in the bar, Rachel and the woman who looks like Rachel but is in white both interact with a couple who are getting married soon.  Both women say things that are not very nice about the institution of marriage.  Although Rachel’s seems unintentional, the woman in white’s seems deliberate (and we notice smoke coming off of her finger).

A little later when there is an accident, Rachel is involved and the woman in white is a witness.

In Issue #4 the storylines collide somewhat.  Rachel is at the hospital after her fatal accident.  But she soon wakes up–to the astonishment of Johnny and Jet who saw that she was dead.  Doctors said she was pronounced dead at the scene.  But Rachel has a pulse, a very faint one, and Jet and Johnny are simply at a loss.

Meanwhile, the young girl (who we find out is named Zoe) is finishing up the act that she started in Issue #2 (which includes stealing her sister’s car even though she is waaay too young to drive).  She drives out to the field where Rachel was buried.  There she runs into the man who was supposed to get married.  As we’re starting to get into the plot here, I’m not going to say anymore, except that violence abounds and it’s fairly clear now that Zoe and the woman in white know each other from some kind of past experience.

Issue #4 came out in December.  I have no idea how long the series is expected to run, but it seems like it’s got a long way to go.

This is a very dark series…Terry seems to be exorcising some demons here.  But man is it good.  Terry’s art is (as always) beautiful.  And (as always) he creates real women and gives them good roles.  And as with everything that Terry has done, I cannot wait to see where he goes with this series.

My only word to Terry is that for as long as I have been reading him, he uses “it’s” instead of “its” I hope someone will correct him someday.

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Wells Tower–Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned (2009)

Posted in Anachronisms, Cheerwine, Circus, Death, Harper's, Hellbender, Marriage Trouble, McSweeney's, Metallica, New Yorker, Short Story, South, The Blues Brothers, Violence, Wells Tower on October 10, 2011| 3 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: HELLBENDER-Hellbender (1993).

Hellbender is a band that Wells Tower was in before he became a professional writer.  He played guitar and sang backing vocals (and wrote some lyrics, but not on this album).  The drummer, Harrison Hayes is now the drummer for Les Savy Fav and the bassist and singer Al Burian is most notable for his zine Burn Collector (for a time he was the most famous former Hellbender, although I’d never heard of him).  They were always pretty small time, although their third album did receive some attention.

This first album is pretty rough–quickly made and cheaply mastered and yet there are good dynamics, cool breaks and a whole lot of punk.  Al Burian’s voice is in shouty punk mode (lyrics are not all decipherable) and although his voice works it’s a bit samey throughout the disc.  The drums don’t always sound great, but there are often cool drum breaks.  And the guitars are quite assured.  Despite the punk attitude, it’s not all flat out speed.

There are some dynamic breaks, like in the second track “Housebroken,” which has some cool moments when the drums highlight an unexpected tempo changed.  “Clocked Out” was the single they released prior to the CD and it has some real production values (and a very funny intro from a local DJ).  The guitar highlights the trebly end in a kind of ska riff which is quite different from the rest; there’s also some discernable bass lines and a cool bass/guitar solo (punk, yes, but branching out a bit).  It’s a great track.

“Two Twenty Two” made it onto a couple of local compilations.  It has a slightly less heavy feel, with some interesting guitar lines.  “Aisle Ten” has verses that end with some really heavy (reminding me of Metallica) riffs that really punctuate the vocals.  “Peeling” has some cool backing vocal chanting (as well as what sounds like an answering machine message) that sets it apart from the other songs.  “Clarence” has a really long instrumental opening (1 minute out of a 2 and a half-minute song) that shows of more of Burian’s bass lines.

“Couch” was the B-side to “Two Twenty Two” and it has better production values as well–and lots more dynamic parts.  The final song, Retread” is a sorta political song, “Do you remember when we were young–revolution seemed like fun.  I thought I could get things done by yelling at the top of my lungs.”  Not mind-blowing lyrically but a good sentiment nonetheless.

The band is very tight–their breaks and starts and stops are right on–many of their songs end suddenly and the band pulls it off very well.  When I first listened to the album, I thought it was kind of pedestrian, but after really listening, I realized this is a very well-formed debut. It’s an interesting addition to any punk fan’s collection and an interesting footnote for any fan of Wells Tower.  You can find a copy of the disc at Metro/Sea.

[READ: September 30, 2011] Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned

After talking about Wells Tower for a while and reading all of his uncollected stories and nonfiction, I finally got around to reading his short story collection.  And I think I have an interesting perspective on the book because at least two of the stories were totally reworked from their original release.  Not simply updating a thing or two, but totally revamped.  In my experience, aside from the David Foster Wallace essays that were truncated in their original form, this is the only book I know where the stories inside were totally rewritten for the compilation.

There are nine stories in the collection.  And I have to say as an overview to this book, I can’t get over how much I enjoyed them.  I mean, I knew I liked Tower from what I had read before, but I didn’t expect to enjoy this book quite so much because Tower writes a very manly kind of story.  He usually writes about tough guys and men who have a hard time interacting with their fathers and other situations that are out of my ken.  But Tower upends many conventions in his stories and his prose is tight and succinct and his stories are very quick to read and really enjoyable. (more…)

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