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Record Reviews1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 | 0-9| A| B| C| D| E| F| G| H| I| J| K| L| M | | N| O| P| Q| R| S| T| U| V| W| X| Y| Z| < Prev Section | Next Section >  RSS Feed
CLINT MAUL:
Ninguna Amplificación!: 7”
Clint Maul is the kind of country singer who might bristle at the title, for as Tom Russell said, “Don’t call me no country singer, those are poison words these days.” His voice might be seasoned by years of whiskey and cigarettes, or the same spent screaming in a punk band, or both. The two A-side songs on this 7” are slow, worn-out, sad country songs played on acoustic guitar and harmonica, with the B-side picking up the beat slightly and taking the sound a little further from southern soil. This ain’t no alt.country or folk-punk, this is just country, the way it should be.
–Staff (Toxic Pop)
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CLIT 45:
2, 4, 6, 8… We’re the Kids You Love to Hate: CD
Musically this ain’t so bad—kinda derivative but well executed post-U.K. hardcore fodder —but lyrically there’s zippo to write home about, with hollow rebellion against an undefined enemy being the order of the day. Ultimately, there’s precious little here to differentiate them from thousands of other parrot punk bands screaming about not surrendering, fighting back and getting drunk, safe as any heavy metal band and about as original and creative. Considering the label, I was kinda hoping for something as inspiring, or at the very least as literate as a Youth Brigade album. Sad to say that isn’t the case.
–Jimmy Alvarado (BYO)
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CLITCOPS, THE:
The Harder They Cum: CD
This is angry, vile, vulgar, and venomous rock’n’roll thunder-roar from a sick, twisted, and seedy skull-pummeling perspective! It’s wild, primitive, primal, and raging auditory deviance loudly overloaded with full-throttle bowery-punk sonic self-abuse! Damn straight, these sadistically blistering songs are a berserk fitful whirlwind of sexually demented musical mayhem that fractured my skull, imploded my internal organs, singed my flesh, and curdled my blood. I will never piss a straight line again. I’ll no longer sugar-coat thick wads of snot before thunkin’ it directly from my alcohol-worn esophagus into the aghast, wide-open eyes of authority. I’ll never, ever aspire to be anything more than a disastrously drunk, sexually perverse, swaggerin’-proud, standin’-tall sonuvabitch, thanks to the soul-stabbin’, gut-stompin’ sounds of this decadently divine disc! Yes, it’s inherently obvious: The ClitCops have sonically possessed my soul. –Roger Moser, Jr.
–Guest Contributor (Intensive Scare)
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CLOAK / DAGGER:
Piñata: 7” EP
Decent enough punk stuff here. None of it is by any means over the top, but they are solid in their delivery and the songs don’t suck.
–Jimmy Alvarado (Grave Mistake)
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CLOAK / DAGGER:
Don’t Need a: 7” EP
My introduction to this band was the terribly great We Are album that came out a few years ago and I haven’t really looked back or heard a bad song since then. Three songs are on this disc, one of which is also featured on their latest album Lost Art. The other two are exclusive to this release only. I would dare to call this hardcore, though I’m sure some would say differently. It’s fast but not thrashy and it’s tough but not agro. The energy and passion is definitely there and that’s more than I can say for what passes as hardcore these days. Let me also take time to thank the fine folks at Grave Mistake for including a download coupon for the songs on this record. Spending as much time in my car as I do, I appreciate the convenience of having the songs burned onto a CD-R when I just can’t wait to get home to listen to the vinyl.
–Juan Espinosa (Grave Mistake)
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CLOAK DAGGER:
“Surf Song” b/w “Concentration Camps”: 7”
A kickin’ intersection of melodic hardcore and streetpunk. I bet they rip it live. The A-side is quite a feat—it’s not a song so much as a collection of hooks in rapid succession. On the downside, I’m getting a “style over substance” vibe here, like maybe these guys shop at Urban Outfitters and “just wanna rock.” It’s on Jade Tree and there’re only two songs. The lack of a lyric sheet doesn’t help, neither does the fact that the B-side is called “Concentration Camps” and, from what I can make out, it’s about girls. That’s in really poor taste, dudes.
–CT Terry (Jade Tree)
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CLOAK OX, THE:
Prisen: CDEP
Fairly middling alt-rock. Kinda reminds me of that weird period when people were paying more than a hundred dollars for “grunge” Pendletons and bands were trading in their screamers for more nuanced vocalists to go with them walls o’ Marshalls and lattes. The music here’s more or less okay for what it is, but—and I freely admit that it could be the final mix, or my stereo or some other variable over which the band themselves had no control at all—the “clean” quality of the vocals cause them to stand out in ways that detract from any “edge” the band might be able to muster.
–Jimmy Alvarado (Totally Gross National Product)
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CLOAK/DAGGER:
We Are: CD
White hot abdomen-tearing record from this Richmond four piece. If you like Black Flag, B’last, and even a little Scream, this may be the band to singe your eyebrows off. “Walk the Block” and “Set the Alarm” really aimed for the gut. But this one never lets up from start to finish. Gritty, stark, and real. Goes great with black coffee in bed with a hangover.
–Sean Koepenick (Jade Tree)
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CLOAK/DAGGER:
Kamikazes: 7”
One of the newest releases from Grave Mistake and this is definitely a winner. I listened to Cloak/Dagger’s We Are CD from Jade Tree and couldn’t really find anything I liked about it, but I guess all you have to do is take one song, slap it on one side of a 45, throw a Modern Lovers’ cover on the B side, and suddenly we have the future of rock’n’roll. That may be an exaggeration, but these songs are still devastatingly original, driving rock’n’roll that knows how to manipulate a guitar to its new expected potential.
–Daryl Gussin (Grave Mistake)
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CLOAK/DAGGER:
Lost Art: LP
Killer punk rock with dissonant hardcore and garage in the guitars. It reminds me of the late ‘90s, when clean-cut hardcore kids added catchy punk to their music, and bands like Kid Dynamite and The Explosion were born. While this album can feel safe, stylish, and tidy, there’s no denying how much ass it kicks. This will appeal to a lot of tattooed people, and for good reason.
–CT Terry (Jade Tree)
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CLOCK HANDS STRANGLE :
Distaccati: CD
I really liked this album because it’s bouncy with gloom, Walt Whitman references, and random trumpets. Think Dramarama, early Modest Mouse, and Delta Spirit, which is a great band from San Diego. The lyrics are really good little stories with a very well-recorded soundtrack. This album is easy and fun to get lost in, creating an audible space in which to hide from your recurrent reality.
–Rene Navarro (Chocolate Lab)
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CLOCKCLEANER:
Nevermind: CD
Noise rock in the fine tradition of bands like Jesus Lizard and the Cows, with a moment or two of straight-ahead punk rockin’, such as on “NSA.” Not bad.
–Jimmy Alvarado (Reptilian)
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CLOCKED IN:
Tied to the Mast: CD
This is fast, furious, and hard-hittin’ punkrock unruliness with a slight bit of a crunchy metal edge to it (think a thrashin’ Hot Water Music crossed with the Rollins Band on meth steroids). It’s packed to the gills with such frenetic raging fury that my knees uncontrollably knocked together, my teeth frightfully chattered like a speed-addled skeleton, and the hair on the back of my neck stood straight on end after just one listen. Then I had the sudden compelling urge to madly leap around the room and repeatedly smash my head into the walls while the brutally blistering sounds of Clocked In noisily blared outta my stereo speakers over and over and over again. Even though I’m now bloodied, battered, and bruised beyond recognition, I just can’t get enough of this ferociously spectacular sonic slaughterhouse. I’ll see you in the pit, kiddies. –Roger Moser, Jr.
–Guest Contributor (Radical)
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CLONE DEFECTS:
Blood on Jupiter: CD
You can tell by the thunderous introductory Japanese drums (Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai sample?) that this album is going to change the status quo – not a mere pretty faux marble finish here, but an all out wrecking balls to the wall deconstruction of all present day conventions in rock’n’roll. The Clone Defects hail from the Detroit scene but enough of the waxing rhetoric on the regional proto-punk influences (everybody’s pimply brother and gay dad has to cite the MC5 and The Stooges as their inspiration these days. Heck it’s just damn good rock’n’roll for misfit punks, not some flowery review composed by some sweater wearing college boy with a vinyl fetish! So, in honor of my homosexual father, I will NOT compare the Clone Defects to the aforementioned bands, thank you.) Clone Defects have done much damage to many ears in the Midwest during the Horizontal Action Blackout shows, where they stole the show with singer Timmy Vulgar’s drunken rock icon-in-the-making antics and the band’s trademark disaster-core art punk. The title song throttles one over to the other side of the room while this writer finds it as inspiring as speedtrap sex on the 134 over the hills of La Canada. There’s a dire urgency in the music along with a frayed and decayed moral sentiment from this band and it lends a perfect disenfranchised aura to an already fucked up world. If you’re a fucked up fucker who’s been fucked with, fucked, and fucked over, fuck this fucking shit and buy the album. You’ll be heartened to find a band that translates all your frustrations into a solid CD full of that vitriol and seething anger encapsulated into a three minute punk rock song. Clone Defects also slow it down a bit so you can reflect on all the shit and piss that’s been shat and pist on you by life. At times, it’s reminiscent of the Gun Club, other times it’s like a Hank Williams 78 played on 33, coming off bad speed. Besides, isn’t that why we are punk rockers anyway? Enough of all the pretty punk shit going around – life sucks, I’m ugly, poor, uneducated and criminally insane, get me this album! P.S. Nods for the Berlin Brats cover. Killed By What?
–Namella J. Kim (Tom Perkins)
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CLONE DEFECTS:
Shapes of Venus: CD
I have come to the conclusion that this disc is the work of madmen; that Timmy Vulgar howls like a cross between Darby Crash and perhaps Iggy Pop (except in his more venal moments ["Fill My Fridge"], when he sounds like a cross between Darby and Handsome Dick Manitoba); that this whole unholy consortium of brain-damaged proto-iconic protoplasmic rock iconoclasm is the sonic equivalent of one of those finger paintings made by retarded people that immediately appears to be both a work of abject genius and inarguably worthless, simultaneously. Taken in small chunks, there aren't really any completely unexpected musical moves thrown at the listener here (except for the production, which is so filled with wig-outs and left turns and monkeyshines and miscellaneous fol-de-rol that it almost brings to mind the proactive eclecticism of the Sgt. Pepper/Pet Sounds era, albeit an order of magnitude removed), it's just, in the larger picture, all the song parts are stacked, assorted, arranged and mutilated in completely unfathomable fashion, like a Lego™ tower built with the smallest blocks on the bottom and widening as it gets higher. I mean, "Ain't No New Buzz" starts with fingersnaps over an introduction not dissimilar to that of "Ghosts of Princes in Towers" by the Rich Kids, and the fingersnaps are OFF. Not off with EACH OTHER, off with THE BEAT. And YOU, the listener, will have NO idea whether or not the off-time fingersnaps are a work of demented, evil genius, or merely the product of completely incompetent fingersnappers. Overgrown juvenile delinquents who were too rock-damaged to know that they weren't supposed to like Guided By Voices peeling wheelies across rockdom's brain, or just, like, pro wrestlers trying to sound like the Wipers in a smash-up derby? My stodgiest analysis yields few results! AMERICA TAPS OUT IN SURRENDER! TIMMY VULGAR IS THE HARDEST ROCKING CLINT HOWARD STUNT DOUBLE IN NORTH AMERICA! One can't help but wonder if this is what Flipper would have sounded like had they been a product of the contemporary Detroit scene. Can't one? BEST SONG: "I Rock I Ran" BEST SONG TITLE: "Ain't No New Buzz" FANTASTIC AMAZING TRIVIA FACT: I have also come to the rather troubling conclusion that, for better or worse, Detroit is the new Seattle (why is this so troubling? Well, because, first off, that makes Steve Mariucci the new Mike Holmgren, which in turn might actually make Barry Sanders the new Ahman Green. Needless to say, THAT'S a hell of a thing).
–Rev. Norb (In The Red)
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CLONES:
Need a Wave: CD
Punky pop that owes more than a little of its sound to ‘70s power pop and ‘80s new wave. Would’ve had no trouble finding its way onto a Powerpearls comp if it had been released two decades ago.
–Jimmy Alvarado (Dirtnap)
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CLOROX GIRLS:
This Dimension b/w Animal Eyes: 7”
This one’s all about the packaging—red, one-sided square vinyl with the b-side hand spray painted with the band’s name (try downloading that on MP3)—because both of these songs have been previously released. (“Animal Eyes” is a cover of lead singer, Justin’s, dad’s old L.A. band, the Defenders, who sung it when they played here.) All that said, the Clorox Girls are fungal. I didn’t find them insta-brilliant nor whoah-kill-me-great right from the start, but there was this nagging tickle that made me put their records back on over and over again. What could have been empty, calorie-free agitated pop has proven to be rattling, spastic punk in the vein of the Cheifs and Weirdos that gains weight and nutritional value the more it gets played. Real and really good. Recap: fuckin’ cool artifact—one that I’m keeping—but not essential if you’re in it just for the tunes.
–Todd Taylor (Jonny Cat)
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CLOROX GIRLS:
This Dimension: CD
Late ‘70s, giving-Rodney Bingenheimer-a-boner punk. It’s the type of punk that took all that messy sausage of bloated, self-indulgent rock and turned it briskly inside out, revealing a new beautiful ugliness. Out sprung songs that last shorter than guitar solos. Pop with nails and claws spawned, all while celebrating barely being able to play an instrument, but without fear. L.A.’s Dangerhouse label comes to mind—especially the song structures of the Eyes and Weirdos. The Clorox Girls play songs that are terribly full of hooks, and are so bold, sure of themselves, and gamboling that it seems like 2005 came a year after 1978 for these three guys. Slot them in with some of the early bests and there’s no mold on the packaging. No small achievement.
–Todd Taylor (Smartguy)
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CLOROX GIRLS:
J'aime Les Filles: CD
First off, if these guys really believe the line from their press bio that attempts to sonically link them with Chuck Berry, Ritchie Valens, and Howlin’ Wolf, they gotta be HUFFING Clorox®, not merely bleaching their hair with it. Truth be told, the band currently actually sounds like a cross between two other Portland bands, the Wipers and the Exploding Hearts—although curiously both overtly punker and overtly popper than either of them. Punky and poppy, with proper reverence for strong tunes of brief duration, yet with still a pervasive Wipersly aura of sadness and minor chords and shit and some weird fetish for French pop music tossed into the mix to throw the hounds off their trail. I like the band, but have always been troubled by the fact that none of their songs are particularly memorable. Case in point: I’ve listened to this disc numerous times, but am currently re-inserting it so I can see what is the… BEST SONG: Oh yeah, “Dreaming of St. Kiley.” See, I knew that, but forgot it. Weird. BEST SONG TITLE: “Boys Girls,” because I have issues with “Le Banana Split” being a cover not originally performed by the Banana Splits. FANTASTIC AMAZING TRIVIA FACT: The liner notes include this statement: “MMM. 17 TV.”
–Rev. Norb (BYO)
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CLOROX GIRLS:
Self-titled: 7” EP
Four tracks of lo-fi, straight-ahead
punk rock here. The three mid-tempo tunes were good, but the last track,
a raver called “Trashy Daydream,” is the pick of the litter. That
tune alone makes his worth yer green. Better act quickly, though, ‘cause
there are only four hundred of these puppies out there.
–Jimmy Alvarado (Jonny Cat)
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CLOROX GIRLS:
Demos, Rarities & Early 7”s: Cassette
I had to take some large steps back when these guys first came out. I remember buying their first LP amid all the hype that was heaped upon them by some starved folks supposedly in the know. It was okay, but nothing earth shattering. The hype put them at a dangerously high level they had no way of actually living up to. Some years later, I get this for review and after the dust has settled, I can fully appreciate the Clorox Girls, and sort of understand the initial hype. I can’t tell you which early 7”s are on here, or what’s rare, but I can tell you this stuff is pretty damn good. Punk rock with a great rough recording that gives the songs some serious bite. They can be tough and dirty with songs like “Hitman” then suddenly blow you away with some power pop, like “Eva Braun”, and “In My Mouth.” The songs on the second side have a bit more refined quality about them, but still retain the teeth of the early material featured on side one. I’ll hang on to this tape forever, perhaps. I kind of wish I would have kept that first album...
–Matt Average (Burger, burgerrecords.com)
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CLOROX GIRLS:
“Genocide” b/w “Bad Girls”: 7”
First release from the Clorox Girls in quite a while, but it sounds like the beat never stopped for these (at the moment) L.A. stompers. Punk-fueled power pop with a small nation’s supply of attitude. It’s been a long road since Maurice’s Little Bastards, but this is still punk as fuck. –Daryl (45 RPM/Hovercraft)
–Daryl Gussin (45 RPM/Hovercraft)
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CLOROX GIRLS:
“Genocide” b/w “Bad Girls”: 7”
A double dose of power pop-infused punk rock from Justin, Richie, and friends is what you get on the new Clorox Girls 7”. The formerly Portland (and formerly Bay Area) -based Clorox Girls have settled in to Los Angeles quite nicely, recording these tunes at San Pedro’s Cali Mucho studio with (now bassist for the band) Kid Kevin and co-released by the Pedro studio’s label, 45 RPM. Poppy, bouncy, singalongs with the best harmonies in punk continue to make their mark with tunes steeped in the tradition of the Dickies’ and Buzzcocks’ catchiest. Nice to hear new tunes from band following a two-year hiatus. These fit in nicely with the rest of the band’s work and hopefully serve as a teaser for a future full length.
–Jeff Proctor (Hovercraft/45 RPM)
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CLOROX GIRLS, THE:
self-titled: LP
In a perfect world,
Dangerhouse Records never would have gone out of business some twenty years
ago. Or that Robbie Fields, without the threat of violence or a lawsuit, would
actually pay the bands that help keep Posh Boy in business. The Clorox Girls –
I’m assuming, named after the song from Red Cross’ first self-titled 12” EP –
would have fit perfectly in with either label. They actually owe more than a
passing blush to that version of Red Cross, too (whose members were to go on to
Black Flag, Bad Religion, and Redd Kross). This LP has captured the overall
feeling of a really cool attitude that punk still seems so full of possibility
and fun, even though things look like shit and so many people claim that all
the intellectual property’s already been gentrified for arenas or strip-mined
of any value. The songs on this LP are both wide-eyed and tough. Arty
flourishes are kept it check by the fact that the songs rock all the way
through, even when they slow down. The haiku-like, borderline paranoid lyrics
provide a nice amount of traction to the bounce. Much more realized than their
7”, which I liked a lot, too.
–Todd Taylor (Smartguy)
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CLOSET DRAMA:
Dream State: CD
You know those movies that come along every now and then about a group of outsider kids who decide to form a band, get some attention, and start their rise to fame playing stuff that sounds pretty much like a Disneyfied version of punk with a dash of indie-rock and emo to make it palatable for the masses of status quo teens who will hopefully buy up movie tickets and oodles of soundtrack CDs? Guess what this reminded me of. All told, catchy, watered down, and professional-sounding in all the wrong ways.
–Jimmy Alvarado (Closet Drama, closetdrama.fourfour.com)
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 | 0-9| A| B| C| D| E| F| G| H| I| J| K| L| M | | N| O| P| Q| R| S| T| U| V| W| X| Y| Z| < Prev Section | Next Section > | |
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