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