Big Show on 12/26 in Elgin, IL

A couple of months back, our pal Chris Musatto got in a pretty bad car wreck and while he is fighting hard and on the road to recovery, it looks like he's going to have a few bills to deal with when he gets home.

In order to help, Chris' pal and fellow Repulsator, Jeff Zimmerman, is putting on a big show on December 26th at the Gasthaus in Elgin (15 N. Grove Avenue). If you can't make the show but would like to contribute a couple bucks to help Chris with those bills, go to http://www.chrismusatto.com/ and look for the Paypal "Donate" button at the bottom of the page.

Show starts at 3p.m. and here's the top-notch lineup:

The Bungdoons

Vacation Bible School

Oil Can Boys

Chronic Seizure

Canadian Rifle

Love Mound

Groovy Love Vibes

The Mashers

The Repulsators

Biscayne

The Phenoms

That's a whole mess of new, current and old punk rock goodness for you to enjoy AND do something good for a fellow human being. So be there fuckface.

Reviews - 10/25/09

Well, the magical PO Box has not been really kind to us thus far in October but our promise stands to give anything that comes in a full listen. So here we go...
















Nitekast - 3-Song Demo - From the first notes of this demo, it was pretty clear where this was headed. Guitars run through some amp that makes all sorts of "effectz" coupled with a gal who I suppose has a decent voice, but this was kind of brutal. Would these guys list Evanescence as a main musical influence? Sounds like it to us. In the "pro" column, the second track starts out kind of sounding like mid-80's ZZ Top and the last track sounds kind of Judas Priest-y in parts.

Not that strong of "pros", but beggars and choosers and all that. (www.nitekast.com)
















John Gray - Demo CD - We were kind of surprised that this was even sent to us. I mean, we release albums at a rate of about once per year (if that) so I doubt we'll be making the jump to jazz guitar stuff any time soon. That being said, this started out stronger than expected. Some pretty chill noodlings by this 18-year old kid. Plus, the track titles kind of cracked us up too. "Vulcan Event Horizon", "Saturn's Magnetosphere" and "Beach Boy Socrates" to name a few.

Things start to get a little to loose by the end though with the overall sound drifting towards Spinal Tap's free form jazz odyssey after Nigel left the band and Jeanine started booking them at amusement parks. "If I've told them once, I've told them a thousand times. Spinal Tap first, puppet show last." (www.johngrayjazz.com)
















Anciem Regime - Demo CD - I am less of a man for having listened to this CD in it's entirety. Outside of the last track, an instrumental which was decent, I pretty much loathed this thing which was a watered-down appropriation of such 80's heavyweights as A-Ha, Thompson Twins, Flock of Seagulls and the like. Yes, a watered-down version of those bands.

At one point while driving through the local woods listening to Ancien Regime as the leaves around me changed from green to yellow and red, I felt, for a split-second, like I was a character in a movie starring Andrew McCarthy or Rob Lowe or someone like that and had just found out that I was getting kicked out of my boarding school or that that creep Lowe has been fucking my mom or my girlfriend or my favorite professor or something like that.

Very nice press kit though, complete with a full listing of Ancien Regime's gear as well as an overhead diagram of how they set up on stage. Ye gads. (www.myspace.com/ancienregimeband)

Reviews - 9/26/09

Smash It Up - Not Aiming, Just Swinging - Smash It Up certainly has an animal for a drummer, a couple of hotshot ax-wielders and a singer with a pretty decent sounding snarl. But, I can think of one, maybe two moments on this 13-track album where my attention was grabbed. One is on track 7 - "Babylon's Calling" - where there's a pretty heavy change of pace into a mosh-inducing breakdown. The other is...shit, I don't remember.

It's like there are some competent parts of songs going on, but there's nothing to set them up and make them mean anything. Even the track titles ring a little generic to me. I.E. "Drunk and Mean", "Die Hard", "Heroes", etc.

By no means would I go so far as to call Smash It Up "mall-punk" or anything like that, but I guess they're like a street-punk version of Rush for this reviewer. They know how to play them instruments and everything's tight, but they didn't move me. I bet they've got a following and that's cool. Just didn't really do it for the Beercan staff. (www.smashitup.se)

Reviews - 9/22/09

The Scraps - Demo - I could never bring myself to fully tear into these guys as you can tell that the music means a lot to them as a vehicle for personal, and perhaps social, improvement. In fact, the first two tracks on this little 3-songer - "Shotgun" and "Even Up" - are legit good, albeit shabbilly, recorded tunes. Maybe kind of Social Distortion-ish? In any event, if shabby recording is a crime, then let every band I've ever been involved in as well as 60% of the bands I've enjoyed in the last 15 years...be guilty!

That being said, track 3 is a real fucking stinker. Like, really, really bad.

So, 2 for 3. Nothing mind-blowing, but not too shabby (outside of the recording quality).

(www.myspace.com/thebinkleys)

Reviews - 9/5/09

The Baker Street Brawlers - The Drunken Fury of the Baker Street Brawlers - This has been touched on before on this blog, but we're usually against drum machines. However, in the case of the Baker St. Brawlers, you make an exception. Because A.) you can tell that these guys were like, "fuck it, we've got some good tunes ready to go, let's record 'em. Don't need a drummer" and B.) it doesn't sound like it would be a good idea to get on the wrong side of these cats.

This is a bunch of real solid, mean-spirited odes to the pursuit of debauchery, obtaining and engaging in debauchery and the consequences (both good and bad) of said debauchery. Juiced-up R'n'R guitars and growling vocals belting out tracks such as "Start a Fight", "She Spit In My Face" and my personal favorite, "Sold to a Narc". This is some good shit and the if the Brawlers can round out to a full band, they're on to something.

Favorite part about this CD is that by the time they get to Track 7, the singer's voice is gone, or at least well on it's way, leaving this humble reviewer to think that these fuckers go balls-out and let the proverbial dust settle where it may. Dig it! (www.myspace.com/bakerstbrawlers666)

Reviews - 8/1/09

We got these two CD's at roughly the same time in the magical Beercan PO Box (Box 457, LaGrange, IL 60525-0457) and they're kind of similar yet they come from opposite sides of the Atlantic. You shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, but the covers of these 2 CD's are similar and the artwork of the latter is a little cooler than the former and the tunes therein are correspondingly cooler in the latter. Coincidence? Maybe. Is the Beercan staff making any sense? Probably not.

Read on...



Portugal - 4 song EP - Four dudes from Italy form a band and call themselves Portugal. Perhaps some European humor I don't get or perhaps they just dig Portugal and find it cooler than Spain? Who can say, really? Anyway, outside of the first song, this is some solid, precise yammering. In general, the guitar tone is a little too clean for my tastes, but these Italian Portugesians are doing some cool stuff. "The End Is Turning" grabs the ear with some off-kilter, off-beat back-up shouts that compliment the lead singing Italiagesian very nicely. The song then tumbles into a bass breakdown that is accompanied by the drums to a nice effect. However, this nice effect goes on a little to long. In particular, the singer yelps "I try to, try to, the end is turning" for a total of 28 times. Yes, we counted.

Now look, if I tried to write lyrics in Italian, I wouldn't be able to pull it off. Hell, outside of English, I can barely speak Spanish, so kudos to Portugal for stretching their linguistic boundaries. But still, that repetetetetative part kind of drags down an otherwise good tune.

The last 2 tunes ("Don't Look Back" and "Frenetic World") are respectable, catchy tunes, but overall, this 4-song EP left us a little flat. These Portugal cats are on to something, but in our humble opinion, they should tinker with the guitar tones, keep the cool vocals stylings, but sing those cool stylings in Italian. Or Portugese. Or Brazilian. Shit, now I'm confused. Just don't sing them in English. (www.myspace.com/weareportugal)




Spokesmen - Spokesmen - So kind of like the afore-reviewed Portugal EP, this is precision, well-crafted songwriting, but there are a bunch of things that bump this 8-song album up above and beyond the masses. First off, it was sent to the magical PO Box by the good people at Let's Pretend Records (www.myspace.com/letspretendrecs). And no, we do not believe that the label makes the band, but still, Sweet Pete has a grand ear for the punkish, weird and distorted.

Secondly, these here Spokesmen seem like they know how they wanted this album to sound. In particular, some deeeep bass and drums all guttural and depthy-sounding.

OK, we're ditching the numerical bullet point format of this review right...now. We were going to make a Hot Snakes comparison and that is certainly apt, but a.) we read something similar somewhere else while writing this review and b.) it's starting to shape up that something like 50% of our reviews make a John Reis-project reference which both dates the Beercan staff and reveals our limited writing abilities. So, outside of that comparison, "Clear Your Head" starts with a madman-drumming lead-in that's mixed differently than the rest of the tracks, but then dives headlong into the business at hand with the end product sounding like a modernized and less-stylistically confined Reverend Horton Heat scorcher (how's that for a dated reference?). "Chernobyl" manages to jump back and forth betwixt white-hot intensity and rulin' melodicism. In short, 7 of the 8 tracks are winner-winners, fully deserving of chicken dinners.

The only mis-step here is the gag track, "Palm to the Forehead", where the Spokesmen boys presumably are trying to make their landlord sound like an asshole for leaving a preachy voicemail about standard furnace maintenance. Spokesmen, take it from a guy who once called a furnace-repairman for the exact same problem described in "Palm to the Forehead"...you pretty much deserve to be made fun of a little bit for not changing the filter. It's HVAC 101 really.

That's a very minor complaint though and if you dig your music, you should really track this CD down and buy it. (www.myspace.com/oohbarracudasucks)

Reviews - 6/20/09

The Have Mercy's - Great! - More great stuff from the Have Mercys this time in the form of a 4 song, green plastic cassette. A cassette...fucking beautiful. A couple of rockers and a couple of slower dirgy tunes and...and...oh shit, I am just far too distracted by the beauty of the packaging of this EP to even talk about the music. I mean, it's a cassette and it's green and, and, and the artwork is a drawing of a giraffe and sketches of the band members. And then the artwork has been xeroxed and presumably put into all the other tapes that they made.

Don't get me wrong, I very much dig the tunes. Go ahead and scroll down to a post from March about the Have Mercys. The opinions stated there pretty much apply to this release.

I guess the only complaint at this point would be to urge these cats to go ahead and put out a full-length. Preferably on a cassette. Fuckin' A! (www.myspace.com/havemercys)

Reviews - 6/3/09

Stella Peel - LP - (www.stellapeel.com) - Years ago there was a book written about the influential independent bands of the 80's and 90's. One of the chapters was about Big Black and therefore, basically about Steve Albini. We learned how he eschewed the title of "producer" when he recorded bands. When I first read this chapter at a younger, more impressionable, yet less-wise age, I thought it was this some super-cool stance where Mr. Albini refused to get too big for his britches and refused to take too much credit for the bands he worked with who are actually making the music.

And this is probably true.

However, as I get older and wiser (and more cynical) I feel that, without a doubt, the flipside of this stance is for the Stever to be able to freely wash his hands of the sub-par stuff that ultimately comes out of his studio.

Well, Albini recorded this group of tunes and sadly, I think this album falls into that latter, sub-par category. It's 10 or so tunes featuring a decent singer, a guy playing guitar and a drum machine. Not the worst songs you'll ever hear, but if you're using a drum machine, you REALLY have to know what you're doing. And even then, it's usually a recipe for shittydom.

At least in our opinion.

Dom Unique

Whilst we figure out the final details (no shit) of the Mushuganas retrospective, we've some sad news that we feel should be acknowledged. Granted, this isn't "news" at this point, but we here at Beercan want to pay some electronic homage to the late, great Dom DeLuise, one of the greatest character actors of all time.

"Treasure? Bath? Treasure? Bath? I'm going to have a Treasure Bath...Treasure Baaaaaaath!!!!"
or better yet...

Pay yer respects to..."Him."



On a side note of gloomy death, I recently purchased a pair of cowboy boots and admittedly, I'm a Yankee. I've already gotten a boatload of shit from my friends about being from Illinois and wearing cowboy boots. First of all, fuck them. Secondly, cowboy boots are slyly stylish as fuck and encourage moseying, which is always better than the fast-paced walking that Yankee dress shoes lend themselves to.

But back to the gloomydom, after a few months of wearing these boots, every passing second fills the wearer with an increasing urge to emulate the late, great Terry "Bam Bam" Gordy and peel said boots off (preferably the left one) and absolutely drygulch the nearest pretty boy, Von Erich-looking clown. Or really anyone within bootshot. Seriously, there's something about the heft of a boot that makes you want to win a 6-man World Tag strap in the most illegal way possible.



Rest in peace, you fantastic, influential, violent, weird, occasionally-effemintate, chubby freaks.

Beercan

Reviews - 3/21/09

Astral Feedback - Soundsucanc EP - Yes, that is the actual spelling of the title of the EP. There is some nice piano work on "Boblo Island" which is track 4 of this 4-song demo. But outside of that, this is some wack-ass, overproduced genero-rock. And the gal lead-singer/bass player really can't sing.

The thing we found most offensive about this EP is that based on the press-kit that came along the CD, all the members of this 3-piece look to be pushing 30. And that is completely fine. Hell, 30 gets farther and farther in the rearview mirror for this reviewer with every passing keystroke. But track 2 - "Sounds the Same" - opens up with a mish-mash of parental chidings mimicked by the members of the band (presumably) like, "I told you to be home at 12:00, not 12:05!" and "are you even listening to me?" and then the song itself is a bitch-fest about how you can't tell Astral Feedback how to live their lives.

And those are perfectly natural emotions for a youngster. But again, the Astral Feedback folks look to be pushing 30. Grow up for criminy's. (www.myspace.com/astralfeedback)




Direct Hit - 5 Song EP - Each of the first 4 songs on this EP sound like they would not be at all out of place playing while the credits scrolled at the end of a Jennifer Love Hewitt movie. Kind of catchy...mildly rocking...but you just get the feeling that any angst conveyed here is more of a front in an effort to score pussy. And there's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but there's not a lot right about it either.

Track 5 is a pretty respectable cover of "Rockaway Beach" for all you Ramones completists out there. (www.myspace.com/itsdirecthitgetpumped)




Canyons of Static - The Disappearance - Maybe it's the springtime talking, but this group of instrumental tracks from Canyons of Static sounds like thinking-man's frisbee music to me. Hear me out because this is meant as a compliment. Let's face facts, playing frisbee is very fun, but what's the first kind of music you think of when you see people playing frisbee? Grateful Dead, right? Maybe Phish? Dogshit music is my point here. But every track on "The Disappearance" is very well done and would go delightfully with a sunny day and a slowly floating disc flying your way. Furthermore, everyone knows that the ladies like playing frisbee and this album would be deep enough to weed out the silly hippy-dippies, but be pleasing to the ear of the truly open-minded.

I swear I'm not high as I type this, but I wouldn't blame you if I thought I was because that last paragraph was as meandering as a mother-fucker.

So let's change course and let me say that I've spent more time than I care to admit listening to late night college radio trying to find value in lyricless "ambient" bullshit. And while, again, this entire CD is lyricless, it isn't some pseudo-intellectual self-stroke session with randomly repeated bleeps and blips trying to pass themselves off as songs. Every track on this thing are fully fleshed out SONGS with buildups, breakdowns, verses (I think), etc. Really, really cool stuff that is good for your ears.

And your frisbee game I bet. (www.myspace.com/canyonsofstatic)

Reviews - 3/19/09

Tenement - Icepick 7" - Chalk this one up as another early scouting report, yet ultimately a blown opportunity, from your dear friends here at Beercan Records. Had we the funds or the balls to fund this on credit, I believe we would have beaten 608 Kisses Records (www.myspace.com/608kisses) to the punch on releasing this. But we had neither the funds, the credit nor the balls. The last of which is ironic as 608 Kisses appears to be run, at least in part, by a gal.

But none of this is important really. What is important is that you pick up this 7" fucking immediately upon it's release. I've read a bunch of reviews comparing Tenement to Dinosaur Jr. and that is pretty fair because both bands feature some unbelievable guitar action that, if attempted by a lesser player, would result in a waste of your time. But this is certainly not the case here and this Tenement cat (Amos, I believe) truly knows how to play a guitar and make it count. As in, that perfect balance of being able to get all technical, while using that technical prowess to stoke the emotions of YOU, the listener. In other words, Rush truly sucks, but you can't deny that they know how to play their instruments. While on the flipside, Void will work you into a frenzy, but most of their songs sound like they are literally throwing their instruments against a wall. Tenement, meanwhile can appears to be able to do it all. I, personally, would throw in a comparison to the Descendents at this juncture, only a little less structured, which isn't a bad thing whatsoever.

Both tunes here - "Icepick" and "Summer Street" - will tug at your emotions, but don't you dare call this emo. They're poppy, but don't you dare call this pop-punk. They both rock, but I'll put an Icepick in your face if you call this garage rock. By the way, the threat in that last sentence was basically lifted from a lyric in "Icepick". In any event, this stuff will make you nostaligic for your past, anxious about your present and hopeful for your future all at the same time.

Absolutely beautiful rock and roll. Although in the spirit of our bitterness about not acting on this one fast enough, I will say that I slightly prefer the original rough recordings of both of these tunes that we here at Beercan have in the vaults.

Track us down in 20 years, future Tenement fanboys. And if this 7" is any indication, there certainly will be Tenement fanboys in 20 years.
Beautiful rock and roll. (www.myspace.com/tenementwi)



Tenement - Sitcom Moms 7" - Yet another one that we should have released. Looks like the better label this time around is Rock Bottom Records (www.myspace.com/rockbottomwrex). Our thoughts on this one are essentially the same as our thoughts on the "Icepick" 7" seen above. The songs here are a little shorter and concise, but still maintain an epic vibe. Wondrous, catchy shit that you need to hear. The B-side, "City Bus" lags behind the rest of the Tenement pack o' songs, in our opinion. But that's like saying that a greyhound lags behind a cheetah in a footrace.

I cannot wait to hear what these cats come up with next. (www.myspace.com/tenementwi)

Reviews - 3/14/09

Cheetah Speed - 4 Song Demo - The singer on this here sampler sounds a lot like Rick Sims of Didgits/Gaza Strippers fame. Problem is, Rick Sims has always rubbed my ears the wrong way. There's some pretty solid deep-space trucker, somewhat-psychedelic hard rock going on here. Lot's of lyrical references to nature, space, maybe even rainbows? I don't know...I gave this one a few listens, but it just wasn't grabbing me. These guys can definitely play, but the songs themselves are a little boring. The Cheetah Speed seems to be on to something by song 3 of this 4-song demo as they get a little darker and edge away from boasting about how much they rock, but it was a little too little and a little too late.

This review is making it sound like I hated this, and I didn't. Just wasn't too crazy about it, that's all. It looks like this band has broken up since we first got this demo anyway so whatever. (www.myspace.com/thecheetahspeed.com)



Mature Addiction - To the Death of a Day - If a band takes the time and effort to record something, put artwork together and spend postage money on sending it out for people to hear and review, the least we can do is listen to the whole thing. It's only right and it's the honorable thing to do. That being said, we here at Beercan were very hard-pressed to make it through this one. This was 14 tracks of acoustic drudgery.
14!
And while admittedly, Beercan tends towards the electrified and distorted, we've got nothing against a good mellow tune now and again. But 14 tracks of a guitar, a singer and non-stop sob stories? No thanks. Here're some of the track titles - "Looks Like Death", "Beautiful Storm", "Take It All Away"...get the picture?

Look, I hope the guys of Mature Addiction are proud of this album and I hope it was cathartic for them or whatever, but I can't even go with my usual nice-guy cop-out of, "well, this isn't really my thing" as I actively disliked this CD.

14?!?! (www.geocities.com/mature_addiction)



Romantic Robots - Self-Titled LP - Super-scuzzy sounding lo-fi punk drek from Italy. Why is there so much late-50's/early 60's space travel imagery linked with this type of music? Do primitive sounding guitars automatically remind people early space travel? Kind of like with garage-rock and old horror-film stuff along the lines of frankensteins, werewolves, etc. I've never really gotten that as it seems kind of shoehorned in...in order to fit a genre. Whatever the answer, it seems like there's some of that same shoehorning going on here.

In my mind's ear, if you're going to be stripped down this far on the sonic-scale, you've got to jazz it up with some speedy numbers now and again or add in some distortion freak-outs or something. For the most part though, this CD kind of clangs along at mid-tempo. At times, it sounds a lot like some of the Action Swingers earlier stuff. Unfortunately though, a decent amount of the Action Swingers earlier stuff is pretty shitty. (www.myspace.com/romanticrobots)

Reviews - 3/13/09

The Have Mercy's - Love/Hate 2-songer - This shit is so good to our ears but we're not going to write too much about it because, hell, it's only 2 songs after all. But as a little back-story, the lead Have-Mercy seems to be a gal named Colleen who used to be in Fenwick. Fenwick was a Massachusetts-based band that we here at Beercan really liked. Looks like ole' Colleen went from way out East to way out West, but kept her song-writing chops and mellowerful voice (that's "mellow" and "powerful" mish-mashed together) during the transition. And let's not sell the rest of the band short. No idea who else plays what else, but everyone seems to stay within a nice solid pocket which works well.

Song number 1 actually IS a fuck-you song called "Decapitated" which sounds like a pretty blunt brush-off for some sad sack out there (and if you got that hidden Fugazi joke of ours...well then, you have listened to too much Fugazi). Song # 2, "Eyeful", is an exact opposite of track 1 both lyrically and musically, which does a great job of capturing that incredible, yet in-a-way shitty, yet terribly exciting feeling of new romance. What to do, what to do. At least, that's what I heard when I listened to that one.

Anyway, great controlled yet powerful stuff that you really need to listen to. More songs please Have Mercy's. ( www.myspace.com/havemercys)



Retardos de la Mour - Self-Titled - So this one has been sitting on the ever growing stack of unreviewed CD's for months and months. At some point the head Retardo, Louie, emailed us asking if we hated the CD so much that we couldn't bear to review it. I assured him that this was not the case and that we actually quite liked the tunes. He then shared with me this feedback from WXRT Local Anesthetic host, Richard Milne, which surely was contributing to Louie's paranoia - "Lyrically, it's too silly for me to give serious consideration. Also, sound quality is a little lo-fi. And in case you haven't heard, 'retard' ain't quite politically correct. Don't know about other stations but it'd never fly on XRT."

I find this response hilarious for a number of reasons that I won't get into here, but fortunately we here at Beercan are not all that worried about silliness, lo-fi, political correctness or any combination thereof. Not that we're claiming to be the most out-there cats going, but we really don't have anyone to answer to here so, let it rip Retardos.

And let it rip, they do. Not necessarily in speed or feedback or volume, but these De La Mour gentlemen have a definite swagger that's hard to miss. Right from track 1, "Creeps Baby", you learn that the Louie (presumably) is "just a little guy/I weigh one-fifty/And most of that's/Dick". Now that's an attention-grabbing lyric that's compounded with really odd phrasing and some incredibly haunting...xylophone? I think it's a xylophone. Whatever it is, it kicks the song into an excellently weird, yet melodic, place. It then rolls right into "Niggers & Queers" which slinks along thanks to a heeeavy-deep saxophone tone. And calm down...this tune is not a racist/homophobic tirade, but rather a pretty vivid musical description of a hypothetical nightmare scenario for some clown who would get the heebies-jeebies should a passel of...gasp...blacks folks and gay folks show up at their door AT THE SAME TIME!

"Nobody Else in Mind" sounds like a slowed down version of the Heartbreakers "Take a Chance With Me". And before anyone gets cute and tells us that said Heartbreakers song is a cover - which it probably is - fuck off, because that's not the point. The point is that these here Retardos definitely know what they're doing, know how to craft a good song and aren't afraid to throw in some instruments that can really fuck up an album if put in the wrong hands.

But they aren't in the wrong hands here. So chim-chim-chiree! (www.myspace.com/retardosdelamour)

Brand new nonsense!

OK, so the beercanrecords.com site is currently not routing correctly. That, coupled with the fact that my current computer is very much on the fritz and incapable of handling any website updating software, has led the Beercan staff to make the executive decision to set up this blog page.

We're going to use this site to finally catch up on a shitload of CD/Demo reviews that have backlogged. Probably a bunch of stuff that gets posted is from bands that have since broken up, but it's a blog and the important thing is that opinions are posted...not that anyone reads them.

Plus, there is actual news on the Mushuganas compilation as well as a new It Burns 7" that we've recently released in conjunction with Let's Pretend Records.

Stick around...this should be a good time.