Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Reviews - 3/13/09

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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)

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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)

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