From Hillbilly to Hipster (A Devolution): J.T. Dockery's Remembrance of Some Nice Kentucky Record Stores Past He's Known to Benefit the Reopening of Mark Rudolph's "Closing Doors"....Part II

As part of a series of record store remembrances to help promote the Indiegogo campaign to fund a reprinting of Mark Rudolph's graphic novel "Closing Doors" (Nix Comics), American Gloam is presenting an installment by artist/musician JT Dockery. Part II continues Dockery's memories of brick-and-mortar stores in rural Kentucky, including his time spent working as a record store clerk at The Outpost in Berea. To read Part I, click here.

Mr. Dockery and Jeffrey Scott Holland in Berea, performing as Cheeseburger and Fries

Written by J. T. Dockery

I even ended up being a record store clerk, after a fashion, in my early twenties. My pal and often collaborator in all sorts of shenanigans, Jeffrey Scott Holland, opened up a record/used book store/art-performance space, the Outpost (or for those of us a few degrees up the line knew it to be the "Creeps Outpost") in the aforementioned Berea, south of Lexington, circa 1998/99. With the small college in that town, and in the early days of the internet/downloading when the physical artifact of music still sold reigned, the local community was hungry for a record store (ironically, at the time, the nearest brick and mortar record store was Recordsmith, but many of the students didn't drive...Recordsmith would hold on until May of 2003, and even had a second location in Berea towards the end, but the end did come when sans fanfare it closed its doors). To say Jeff ran his store loosely would be an understatement, even calling it a business would be stretching the point. Holland, at that time, viewed most of his forays into business more as temporary art projects, even though the upstairs location in one of the centers of Berea's shopping districts, made its rent the first month it was open without any advertising or even an external sign to the building for the shop.

My gig was mostly to go down on the weekends from Lexington and inhabit the store to give Holland, and his wife at the time (he had no other employees) a break, in exchange for gas money/lunch money, a few extra bucks here and there, and, perhaps, more importantly, barter time for records/CDs. If your average, decent independent record store was curated, then Holland's Outpost was curated on the next level. He viewed his selection of vinyl and CDs as being fit to suit his own tastes in music, not the customer's. Granted, Jeff's knowledge of music was pretty vast and his selection represented that, but it was that knowledge and cherry picking which was presented to the potential customer, not some notion of catering to a vague common denominator.

He bought used music, but the thing about Jeff is if someone brought in music to sell/trade, he'd give you more money/credit than your average store if he thought the music was good (his pricing was that used stuff of quality had a higher than average price on the shelf). But if someone brought in music he thought was crap (not popular or unpopular, but a value judgement on Holland's part) then it was purchased from the seller and resold on the shelf at a very reduced price, equal to its perceived lack of value, in general. Jeff's section for this sort of product was actually labeled "CRAP." And some customers routinely shopped the "CRAP" section, with no apparent shame. There was a local punk scene based around Eugene Records, and both Jeff and I fostered a relationship with those cats, played some house shows locally (Jeff and I performed music together in various projects). I had a well-attended art exhibition there, with lots of locals, and friends coming down to Lexington. I remember Jeff laughing that he made more money off people shopping the records during the opening than I did selling art.

Jeffrey Scott Holland, owner of The Outpost in Berea, posing with musician/writer/artist Sexton Ming

 I remember trying to impress a girl in a Danzig shirt who would more than ten years later end up being my girlfriend (only through the synchronicity of me telling an anecdote, a Misfits song on the radio in a coffee shop together invoked the memory, about the "girl in the Danzig shirt" did she put two and two together and explain she WAS the "girl in the Danzig shirt," failing to capture her attention then, I did later, at least). I remember the trio of cute high school German foreign exchange students that would come in the store and hang out with me in their free time, and the "parents" of one of the girls putting a stop to that when she actually entered the store and realized the girls were hanging out with a questionable young man chain-smoking and wearing his thrift store vintage finest in Jeff's less-than-standard Outpost. And, yes, hard to believe he not only allowed me to smoke "on the job" but there was a vintage ashtray by the register, so I could still smoke and ring up customers. Holland's store only lasted as long as his marriage. But in that time period, Holland put out an album ("Marshun Love Secrets") by the British outsider artist/musician/writer Sexton Ming who played a show with us in Lexington and visied the store in 1999 that established a friendship and collaboration that still exists today, and it was Jeff giving me money out of the register to go see Hasil Adkins for the first time in West Virginia as an emissary that began our relationship with him that resulted in his Lexington appearances and ultimately the "Night Life" LP, his last studio record. There are more stories I could tell (and some I could not) about the Outpost days, but, alas, again: gone are the days.

The previously mentioned Lexington-based Cut Corner also went out of business in the late 90s, but the actual physical space was taken over by record store upstart, CD Central, helmed by Steve Baron, so the continuity was pleasant. But even before Cut Corner's closing, I regularly stopped by Steve's original location, just a block down the road. A success story, Steve's store still inhabits that space to that day, a feather in the cap of Lexington's retail culture. I can recall, years ago now, Steve showing up to eat towards the end of the shift at my employer for several years, the independent cajun restaurant, Gumbo Ya Ya, and stepping out from the kitchen to talk to him as it was slow in the last hour before closing, Steve telling me that his reaction to people pontificating why he'd try to maintain and independent record store in the decline of the physical artifact of music that the big sellers of compact discs were either completely phasing out disc media or making it minimal and that, by surviving, he'd end up with virtually no competition. I'm glad his prophecy came true, and glad to see the certain "rebirth" of vinyl. Lexington now, in addition to Steve's CD Central, has Sami's Music aka The Album, owned by Sami Ibrahim (my original "music director" my first year as an on-air DJ at the aforementioned WRFL) which caters more to the hip-hop crowd, and the mighty thrift store with huge used only vinyl stock, Pop's Re-Sale Shop (and lots of friends have worked there, and still do, and its history was part of my own history, it just didn't inform/shape me as much, as Pops arose later in my twenties), and even a few more brick and mortars than those mighty three, and it's good to know that these stores/stories/my history are not all doom-and-gloom and that the independent record store culture still survives and thrives in Lexington, and that young people there are still being shaped by that experience.

Artist Ben Durham outside of CD Central in Lexington. Photo by Joseph Turner.

From Hillbilly to Hipster (A Devolution): J.T. Dockery's Remembrance of Some Nice Kentucky Record Stores Past He's Known to Benefit the Reopening of Mark Rudolph's "Closing Doors"....Part I

As part of a series of record store remembrances to help promote the Indiegogo campaign to fund a reprinting of Mark Rudolph's graphic novel "Closing Doors" (Nix Comics), American Gloam is presenting an installment by artist/musician JT Dockery. Part I focuses on Dockery's memories of brick-and-mortar stores in rural Kentucky, as well as Recordsmith in Richmond.

Written by JT Dockery.

Growing up in rural eastern Kentucky, and when I say rural, I mean rural Jackson county. The county seat was Mckee which had (and still only has) one stoplight, population 500 (I lived a few miles away in the slightly less cosmopolitan Gray Hawk area). The notion of record stores seemed like some distant urban dream. Born 2/5/76, it was a drive of at least 45 minutes that ever even put me in areas that had your K-Marts and Wal-Marts as retail outlets that sold albums, singles and tapes.

I did have an early interest in pop music. My first purchases bought with chore money/allowances (my parents were both school teachers, so compared to many of my peers in the cash poor agricultural landscape (most of Jackson county was and still is National Forest, actually), I had a relatively posh middle class existence). Top forty eighties radio and the rise of the music video were my first informants. I recall with distinct clarity the feeling of putting a 45 of Madonna's "Like a Virgin" on my Fisher-Price record player. The first time I ever remember becoming aware of Prince was seeing a Prince and the Revolution on a female classmate's notebook. I remember my best friend getting four copies of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" album for his birthday in that year of the gloved one (1984--and for the record he refused to give me any of the extra copies (he went on to become a conservative Republican)). And in third grade I recall sitting in class and staring at another friend's copy of Whodini's "Escape" album on cassette and, not even listening to it, staring at the j-card at my desk as if it was some artifact from an alien culture.

At this time, the closest relative to a bonafide record store on my radar would have been the chain variety seen in shopping malls of the 80s. The nearest place that had these was an hour and half drive to the "big city" of Lexington, KY. As my "musical taste" developed, and the advent of cable tv was followed by the input of Headbanger's Ball which made its debut on MTV in 1987, followed by Yo! MTV Raps in 1989 (although I had jumped on the rap (I wouldn't have yet used the word hip-hop to describe the music) bandwagon with RUN DMC's "Raising Hell" album from '86 as one of my first full length cassette purchases, my tastes veered toward rap and metal: the two musical forms that a) had the least to do with a rural Appalachian upbringing/lifestyle and b) the most likely to annoy my elders).

All this rambling, parenthetical or not, to me to circa age 12 (1988). The first time I became aware of any actual independent record store would have been around this age. Some buddy of mine, I know it would have been one or two of my older metal head pals (punk had not found its way to Jackson county, seemingly), hipped me to the fact that there was a record store in Richmond, KY (about a forty five minute drive away): Recordsmith. I can still recall vividly my first trip there. It was the first time I ever stepped into a record store that seemed, although I wouldn't use the word at the time, curated. The vinyl, the tapes (I can see the locked boxes for the cassettes in my mind's eye) and the burgeoning compact disc format were not like your department store or even mall record stores...this selection was not all the flavor of the month new stuff plus a random flotsam and jetsam of older stuff and "classic" big sellers, oh no, this was the entire discographies of bands/artists. And stuff I didn't even recognize. The first clerk that helped me was Martin Shearer, and opening up the cassette section for me in the general K-L area, he looked my young frame up and down and said, "I'll bet you're getting a Led Zeppelin tape." My little hand was in fact reaching out for something from the KISS canon, feeling like maybe I should pick up something by Led Zep instead, and it was also the first time I'd encountered the zen of the indie record store clerk/store owner.

I was hooked on that kind of experience. It turned out that Martin was in the Lexington-based band Stranglemartin (who, starting in '89, had a nice run of a few years putting albums out up through '95 on indie labels and did make some indie rock scene waves) was my clerk that day, and his cohort, Jeff Duncan, who also played in Lexington bands, quickly came to recognize me and watch me "grow up" in a sense. My own tastes developed into my teen age years, and they also helped to guide that taste, making suggestions as one album/one band led to another, and I descended farther into more obscure metal and into punk rock and the emergence of the 90s alternative scene. They even put the zine I put out in high school in their magazine section. And when my mother remarried, we moved to Berea, KY which was only a fifteen minute drive from Recordsmith, and when I started driving, solo-trips to Recordsmith became common. Those guys even got to see me with my first "real" girlfriend senior year of high schook, who was from Richmond come in together; she had been, on her own, a loyal customer growing up going to shop. And even after I moved on to Lexington for college, I would still stop back in and see those guys. I even ended up playing some shows on the same line up, as a musician myself, with Jeff's band, later on.

The move to Lexington put me down the rabbit hole of the infamous Cut Corner Records on Limestone. There I would see cartoonist John Howard working on his comics in the downstairs section of the store (the vinyl vault that gave way as the popularity of vinyl waned into the expanded video rental section--the store did not live to see the reverse of this dynamic, haw), but I was too shy to approach him about his work (we would get to know each other later). And I knew of his work primarily via an interview with John by Aaron Lee, whose zine, "Blue Persuasion," was a big hit in the zine world. His girlfriend at the time, Mary Burt, also published "Sad Magazine" (she worked at a store next door to Cut Corner) and cartoonist Peter Bagge gave props to them in an issue of his comic book "Hate." Made me feel like running down the streets of Lexington yelling at people, "Don't you realize how cool that is that Aaron Lee and Mary Burt were plugged by Peter Bagge and THEY LIVE RIGHT HERE AND WORK IN OUR HIPSTER STORES!" Oh well, gone are the days. And gone are the days when the people who worked at Cut Corner at various times there as age 18 and 19 became my early twenties were my "elder" shaping and informing my interests in music/zines/books/weirdo culture in general. Not to mention the connection that many of us shared via WRFL 88.1FM, the University of Kentucky's student/volunteer non-commercial radio station.

To be continued...

Photos of Recordsmith provided by Central Rock Company.

Submit your own memories of record stores to Ken Eppstein at Nix Comics (ken@nixcomics.com).

To contribute to the Indiegogo campaign, please click here.

Interview with Ryan Patterson of Coliseum

Coliseum has been breaking it open the last few weeks, tearing through blogs and sites and bandcamps and whatall with news, reviews and talk of their latest LP Sister Faith. The album was released on Temporary Residence at the end of April, and has gotten knocked up for an aeolian glide that has brought accolades from Pitchfork  and Stereogum, as well as this absorbing analysis by popmatters.

This isn't really a surprise. Begun in 2003 by guitarist/vocalist Ryan Patterson, Coliseum has been impressing people with release after release of gripping post-punk/punk rock/loud music/whathaveyou, both in and out of Louisville. Coliseum put out a split seven inch with Superchunk, goddamnit. They were signed to Relapse Records. Their albums are produced by fucking J. Robbins of Jawbox. Echelons have been reached for this band. We always figured they'd return, and they did it boulderish.

Sister Faith is a distorted kit that checks the simple truths of life: death, sorrow, pain. But its not all raw screams. Patterson has graduated passed the level of needing to impress with tilted nongagged anger. It's one of those moments in a discography that seems to capture the energy and grueling effort a band has been cranking through for 10 years and lord over that experience with a personal mantra that glues the treatment together perfectly. Robbins understands this sort of music. Bands like Jets to Brazil have benefited from his input, as now does Coliseum.

Oddly, I knew of Ryan more through his other bands. Black God fucked my mind up at 2am at Cropped Out a couple of years ago. And Whips/Chains destroyed me at a house show in 2012. Plus, we managed to work a few months together at one of our favorite places in Louisville: Wild and Woolly Video.

The Sister Faith record release party for Louisville is tonight, Friday May 10 at Zanzabar. Opening will be Tropical Trash and Anwar Sadat. I'm gonna mouth off and go ahead and say it'll be one of the loudest and best band battles of  the year. I appreciate Ryan taking some time to fire back some answers to some questions.

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American Gloam: It's been interesting getting to know you and Evan [Patterson] separately since I moved back to Louisville a few years ago. I was just curious if you two have ever collaborated. I know there was the split seven inch between Coliseum and Young Widows, but I meant in the same project (this question might prove some ignorance on my part right off the bat, but I'm willing to throw that out there)...

RYAN: Well, Evan and I did bands together since we were kids, but most notably Evan formed the National Acrobat which I joined after about a year. The Acrobat was one of our first bands to receive a fair share of acclaim and tour a bit. After that band broke up, I started Black Widows with Rob Pennington, Evan was upstairs at our house while we were practicing and since we didn't have a bass player he came downstairs...and joined the the band. Black Widows eventually became Black Cross and we did a couple albums and a lot of touring. Evan also started Breather Resist during that time and I started Coliseum shortly after that. We haven't played music together since Black Cross ended but we often talk about it. I'm sure it will happen again eventually.

AG: What separates Sister Faith from House with a Curse? That popmatters.com article describes the changes since the first album, but from a songwriter’s point of view, what do you feel the biggest differences were between what you have to say now and what you had to say 3 years ago? Or, yeah...lyrically what has changed over the course of the albums?

RYAN: The approach to both records is essentially the same but I guess we always get better as songwriters and players... I think we knew more of who we are as a band during the writing of Sister Faith. House With A Curse was pretty adventurous for us but it maybe lacked on fun a bit, it was really dark and dour, while still being a damn solid record in my opinion. My point of view changes daily, or at least expands with age and exposure, so the lyrics change accordingly. Sister Faith was great affected by death, loss, confusion, and ultimately love and hope.

AG: That being said, what about the changes in musicians between the last album and now.

RYAN: Kayhan Vaziri joined the band on bass and we clicked into gear in the best way possible. He and Carter, our drummer, are lifelong friends and have played in countless bands together so their chemistry is incredible. We were all operating at the same level and able to make these songs the best they could be.

AG: I’m so impressed (and jealous) that you have recorded with J. Robbins of Jawbox, a band I listened to in the 90s. What would you say he has brought to the sound of Coliseum? To me, it makes perfect sense, considering the sound of Sister Faith. Bands like Jawbox and Shudder To Think and even up through to stuff like Jets to Brazil, Robbins brought a mixture of post-punk aggression mixed with extremely personal lyrics, which I feel is existent on Sister Faith.

RYAN: J. helps us perform at our best and make the songs as good as they can be, makes them sound great, documents them in the best way possible. He feels like a fourth member of the band, he's a great collaborator, a great friend. He makes you better by being supportive and excited, also by helping to create and capture very wonderful tones and sounds of the instruments, amps, and vocals. J.'s bands were big influences to me, along with a lot of the bands he recorded like Kerosene 454 and Monorchid, and the bands that were his peers like Girls Against Boys, Fugazi, Shudder To Think, etc. He's the perfect match for what we're doing because we're coming from the same perspective and in some ways he's part of what shaped that perspective in us.

AG: How long is this tour and how do you plan on keeping your sanity during it?

RYAN: This tour is never ending! Well, this specific run is about five weeks across the Eastern part of North America, then we'll head back to Europe & the UK for a couple weeks to do some festivals over there, then come back and do some midwest and East Coast stuff before finally going out West again, then probably going back to Europe! I just try to stay as chill as possible, get as much sleep as I can, stay healthy. It can be difficult but luckily I have great bandmates and we all get along really well.

AG: Are you or will you be working anymore with Black God?

RYAN: Yeah, Black God and my other side project Whips/Chains are still active, but both bands are mostly on hiatus for the rest of the year. Black God just finished our third 7" EP and it will come out sometime later this year on No Idea Records.

AG: Only asking you this knowing we're both huge movie nerds: were you a Ray Harryhausen fan? He was one of my biggest idols. Been on my mind a lot since his death yesterday. Seems like someone you might have been into. Just curious.

RYAN: Of course! I grew up with stop motion and Harryhausen's effects and the people he inspired. I loved Clash Of The Titans as a kid, along with the Sinbad movies, all the various monster and dinosaur movies he did, Might Joe Young...all that stuff. It was such a big part of movie magic, it didn't seem real - it seemed beautiful and magical. I really hate CG, I'm tired of it and mostly bored by it. I love practical effects, even when they aren't that great. I'll definitely miss Ray Harryhausen and hopefully stop motion won't die with him.

New Bravado - "Unconcious Afternoon EP"

We were funneled onto a blindingly bright Highland Ave, blocked and zoned for Record Store Day. "This band is amazing" my friend spat at me in a hoarse voice. "But I think I'm too high for something this heavy this early in the day."

It isn't that the band is too heavy. It's that the sun is too bright on this cold Spring day, and this a band that should play in dark with fumes, mimes and splayed lights mythologizing them. A picnic band, New Bravado is not.

They had already started. I was a block away and gated a jog to get to the sidewalk in time. After hearing Unconscious Afternoon in my kitchen I got impressed and was intent on witnessing. While Ben Lally's subsequent band Benanthrope blends twists on singer-songwriter material, New Bravado is a pan into fuzzed psych-rock with no inhibitions to that end.

Coffee, short breath, gangrened eyes from the foisted Great Glarer above, and New Bravado is playing at something like noon and oh shit who just handed me beer and wine and the band splays a sidewalk, bending into a space groove. Did we just huff some black ice car air fresheners?

Unconscious Afternoon, New Bravado's debut EP, eats the living flesh and spirit that is Hawkwind, Sabbath, Blue Mountain Eagle, and the 60s/70s fuzz-psych galley. "Death Wobble" mumble sideways with Ben's sweeping vocals, cinch-ringed to a saddle of heavy rock, but sputs any frills and just power chords Thunder and Roses-style into a neurine groove that isn't pretentious, ironic or knuckled. "Nobody Saw Nothin'" isn't a reference to but just sits and stirs in some cosmic shit. The opening wriggle of flange and toms that is the title track eventually lashes to an exotic crease before securing itself to a chorus that makes the drive of the song corrugate with a blend of psychedelia, doomish rock and biker speed that you forgot where you started. 

New Bravado has gotten into the same wind that local favorites Old Baby are kiting, and deserve as much attention. A show between the two would be magnificent; I think their muses interact somewhere in the atmosphere.

Heavily recommended.

New Bravado will play their EP release party at Zazoo's on Friday May 10 with special guests Adventure, The Screaming Hand, and Ancient Warfare.


Bonus interview with Ben Lally:

me: So, when did New Bravado start, how, who came up with the idea, what was the motivation, what was the original intent of the sounds, has it changed?

bEN:  Our bass player Adam Copelin did all of the tracking, editing, mixing, and mastering. The tracking we did over at my house, or "Veggie Beef Stewdio" as I sometimes call it.
I was wanting to do something a little more rock focused than Benanthrope; write for and play out in another outfit that wasn't going to sound the same; something that would allow me to get different ideas out of my skull -the louder, more guitar heavy, rockin' ones especially. I gathered up my tunes like that and called some homies. Adam Copelin, Jason Walker, Colin Kellogg, and I started playing music in late Spring last year as The New Bravados.

Originally, as a base, the songs felt early garage, early psych, early metal, and early punk (Sonics, Stooges, Velvets, Black Sabbath, Zepplin, early Stones, early Floyd) without going specifically in one direction, but starting in a good place. Structurally those first songs we still play haven't changed a bunch, but after practicing every week for a few months, and playing shows they became more bright, thick, nasty and modern. They've been a great proving ground to help us realize our sounds and where we can take them.
Two out of six songs on our debut record were completely written together as a whole band; tracks 1 and 4. And, all of the first ones sound a lot cooler now than they did before everyone sprinkled their magic on them. We've all come together and shared in the process of the songs' evolution and their recording. With a little help from our friends as well. Most notably the invaluable help of Ezra Kellerman on artwork.

That's what I love about this band and where I think it's going: there's an organic, collective creativity and comradery. Everyone brings alot to the table and plays their hearts out. You can hear that on the record, engineering and all. We're working on more tunes now and I'm excited to see where our process will take us.

Interview with McKinley Moore of Natives

Natives has been racing through a liver extract of loosely tightened psych-punk abandonment for a couple of years now. Theirs is a barn of sound, literating a Stooges-cum-John Wilkes Booze rhythm-pound that eventually bleeds an immortal quitch-grass of noisy barrages that swing into a lawlessness of hallucinogenic night talk through three guitars. Behind that curtain of guitar is McKinley Moore, who was OK to talk about their upcoming show at the Louisville Palace as part of the Faces at the Palace series on Friday April 12.

me: What has Natives been up to since Loose Secrets came out? Is there a new recording in the future? What format, if so? What are you going for sound-wise? Any changes? Catch us up on Natives. Obviously, the addition of William from Anwar Sadat is a big deal. How did that come about? What changes has it led to in the sound of the band? Is this Palace show your first live performance with him?

McKinley: Since Loose Secrets came out, we received and accepted an unsolicited invitation to play last years SXSW festival. That was a lot of fun, even though I'm pretty sure it took some years off of my life.

After we got back, we played pretty heavily for a bit and then decided to take a bit of a break from playing to regroup and try to write some new stuff. We've only played once in the past 6 months and that was in Cincinnati w/ our bros The Harlequins.

We definitely plan on making a new record. We already have more than enough new material, so hopefully it happens soon. Not entirely sure about the format, but hopefully it is vinyl again. We were pretty adamant about totally self-financing and self-releasing the first EP. That was a lot of fun and a great experience, but since none of us are rich, we're hoping not to go that route this time around. Sound-wise, I think we're still in the same ballpark, but the new addition is definitely changing things up a bit. William is a beast. He's young and has a ton of energy so it has been a lot of fun. I love Anwar Sadat. I think they are pretty much the coolest shit around. We've all been friends with some of those dudes for a long time and have played a lot of shows over the past couple years, so its awesome having him with us. And yes, this will be his first show.

me: So...will you be debuting any new songs at the Palace show? How did you get hooked up with that bill?

I'm curious, and you can strike it down as me being way off, but sometimes I hear a bit of an Albini-influence in Natives. I actually never got to see you play until AFTER Loose Secrets had come out, so never saw your first shows. I was just wondering where you're sound came from in the first place. As in, when Natives started up, what was the goal as far as any kind of grounded aesthetic to the material. Or was there a goal? Maybe it was more, "let's just see where this goes." I know for a lot of projects I've been, there usually the "let's find the sound," even if its framed by "ok, we're playing around in these genres."

McKinley: We've got a couple new songs that we've been working on and we might play and a couple that I don't think have ever been played locally, so everyone should hear something new that night. As far as how we got hooked up with the whole thing... A good friend of mine, Sydney O'Bryan, is the marketing director at the Palace and set up this whole series. For my day job, I am a glass artist and she used the be the event coordinator at Glassworks. She and I worked together on setting up the first rooftop concerts there in the years before the business went under. All the ones we did were very successful and she's a fan of the band, so I was stoked to work with her again. She let me put the bill together and I know I always get bored at shows where all of the bands sound alike. So I wanted to make sure it was a diverse representation of things going on in this city. Greg from Karass is a friend and I've been really into the stuff they've been making since Dennis Stein (electronic musician Introvert) joined up. And a while back another Sydney, from the Debauchees, sent the band a facebook message saying nice things about us and that they would love to play with us sometime. So I went and checked them out and I really couldn't believe they were that good. I helped put them together with Gill Holland and get them a record deal and now we're finally making the show happen. So, needless to say, I'm really excited about the whole thing.

As far as our sound goes, I don't think there has ever been any sort of goal. It started with Matt Filip and I jamming in his basement all the time after the Invaders had called it quits. Drew joined up pretty immediately. It is pretty much built around the fact that we're all friends and we're hanging out all the time anyway. With 5 people in the band, it tends to pull into a lot of different directions. A couple of the dudes grew up listening to punk, a couple rock and pop, and I'm into more psychadelic stuff. I think all of those influences have helped to turn into this thing that is sometimes tough, sometimes weird and sometimes catchy. I've always been a fan of something Josh Homme said along the lines of "Music should be tough enough for the boys and sexy enough for the girls." And the Albini thing is interesting and makes a lot of sense considering how Loose Secrets was recorded. Most of the credit for that would have to go to Mike Bridavsky at Russian Recording. He definitely comes from that school of recording engineers. When we made that record we had enough money to go to the studio for 2 days total for recording and mixing. We practiced until we had those 5 songs locked down and we recorded all the instruments live at the same time in the same room. Most of them we got on the first take. And when it came down to mixing, we let Mike go at it alone and then listened to see what we thought should be changed. I don't think we made a single change.

Natives will be performing at the Louisville Palace on Friday April 12 with Karass and The Debauchees.

Life Partner - "Dead Wrestlers"

We're stuck in muck. Muck that is slowed down by a non-going Winter. It's eating us all. We're queached in a dumb Winter that has quarantined us in a quicksand pit. Trying to lift our legs and relieve ourselves. But we're stuck in this.  Nothing but wintry discharge. Fucking stupid. Held back.

In this Winter bullshit, the "Dead Wrestlers" tape is a fucking godsend. Like, no, really: GODsend. Like there is a GOD, and everything you thought was bullshit was actually real and the Steve Martin joke about how everything you thought was bullshit that I just repeated was real, and there was a Heaven and Angels and that bullshit was real, and you were handed a cassette from this bearded muscular man from a cloud in an linstock hand firing fucking music at you from beyond reality.

I saw Life Partner something like a year ago at the Chestnut House.That place has died. Life Partner lives. LIVES. And he/it/they still LIVE in the muck, making tuned-down beast-clomp-tempo observations that amount to simple truisms that make a stuck Winter possible to survive. I think he's somewhere still in Chicago-via-Louisville. Doesn't matter. This is mayo for the soul. It's quid for the consciousness, dripping putridly on your fly at 3AM.

This tape is actually more upbeatish than that last one I procured, "Dogs." This one finds the guitars and drums turned up more. Faster tempos. We're still succumbing to Aaron Osbourne's qualmy life view, but it's a life view I subscribe to. These are visions that happen when you don't believe what you see, hear and especially what you do on a daily basis. And you don't care. It's a garage-punk-grunge-rock-fuk all that communicates some sewn honesty.

"Dead Wrestlers" is in direct lineage to "Dogs," but finds it finding more of its own findings, and not fighting it. Bigger. Actually, my main compliment is that there are more songs here to enjoy from Osbourne. His songwriting is to the point; lyrics don't fuck around. Straight to the stab. Doesn't make chopsticks in getting to the coffin. Quaalude vox over downstrummed distortion. Depressocore? No. I find solace jammed in this heavyhanded heartedness. Let's invent new genres. Gloomrock. Bummergazer. Shut up, me. Stupid Kids. That's me. Don't listen to me.

And is the song "Life Champion" referencing Sophomore Lounge mates Giving Up and State Champion? Am I scouring too much into this? That song has the optimism I look for with Aaron: "I'm giving up, your god is dead."

Osbourne writes some goddamned catchy choruses here while addressing the foothills of regular shit that happens in regular life, and it's what I appreciate about his songwriting. I mean, Jesus, "Live for the Day": It's honest and "you have no plans for the future, you're a loser, that's how it is."

So highly recommended. Or lowly recommended. But, really.

Available on Sophomore Lounge and at Astro Black Records.

Plastic Melodies - "PM"

The dishes are not done. Lunch is not made. I get distracted by certain by things in my queue, including this minimalistically-packaged debut from Plastic Melodies, a recently migrated Louisville two-piece that is part of a new bunch of bands that are chopping quickly into the meat of experimental music in this town.

I believe these two are from Bowling Green, but don't quote me. It was whispered in my ear through the spread of talk when I witnessed them for the first time perform at the Rudyard Kipling opening for local crud-punk band Opposable Thumbs back in 2012.

I have an immediate interest in a two-piece; the chemistry that has to exist between the two musicians and the work they need to pull off to fill spaces often punctured and colored by multiple members can be a pressing and magnetic dynamic. Plastic Melodies takes this chore to heart and ups the ante by instead of harkening to the norm of a guitar-drum duo, choosing to confront the chaos with a bass and drum instrumentation. And the spaces are filled fully.

David Lucas slaps, pulls and strums his bass guitar until it turns into a different animal entirely at times. There are nasty distortions and clean pops that encircle each other through his expert use of effects, making the instrument sound like two guitars instead of one, gripping rhythms and leading the songs simultaneously. It's pretty magnificent to watch and hear. His tones double on each other, pounding a hellish punk into the strings. Meanwhile he shrieks and sings, sometimes as though from a tome written by Frank Black, pursing through the creep these songs file into your spine with a throb that is is energetic and driving.

The beat is bound together by Bridget Knight, whom I believe actually has four arms, limbing them around the percussion in an aggressive pound that marries the bass and cracks through the songs, bleeding onto the streets outside the club, quavering the room. These are big drums, and Bridget plies, wheels and rolls around them, blanketing the elbowroom of the music with a heavy quash.

"PM" runs like two bunkies driving a bull-train through any expectations. The album moves quick, each song running under three minutes. It's a loud, fast trail drive that never delivers less than punches. A heavy, Mephistophelean rock record that reads quick and perfect. 

It's heartening to see Louisville being held up by the happening of young bands like Plastic Melodies and The Debauchees. It means only good things are still to come and we are in no danger of things slacking here.