TWAS 159: Girls! Girls! Girls!, Verago-go, Chelsea on Fire, January, Sara Mann, Purrr, American Measles, Sweetie, Ashera, Serum, Big Monster Fish Hook, Gel, 3 1/2 Girls

[glenn mcdonald]

The War Against Silence
www.furia.com/twas

I Tell You I'm Sick of Oasis Just as Much as You
The War Against Silence #159, 12 February 98

various: Girls! Girls! Girls!
Verago-go: Flight 45
Chelsea on Fire: Once Is Never
January: See-Thru
January: Keep Me From Sleeping
Sara Mann: Sara Mann
Purrr: Pussy Power
The American Measles: Shover the Cupcake
Sweetie: Dried Fly's Blood
Ashera: Essence of Life
Serum: Dirty Girl Scout
Big Monster Fish Hook: Collecting Bugs and Pieces
Gel: Gel
3 1/2 Girls: Rule

various: Girls! Girls! Girls!

Because I don't go to live shows much (and, moreover, because I almost
never go to live shows by bands I don't already know), I always have a
strangely skewed understanding of my local music scene. A band might have
a massive, passionate local following, but if they don't put out records,
the chances are good that I'll never have heard of them. To be honest,
local rock scenes are one of those phenomena, like professional wrestling
and representative democracy, that, though I concede readily that they
exist, basically mystify me. Dingy local nightclubs are an abysmal way to
see a band. The better the club, the better the band's equipment, and the
greater the band's experience (and reputation, and thus the club's
willingness to accommodate them), the better the sound quality of the show
will probably be, but by the time those factors reach the stage where the
band's live sound is on the same order of magnitude of intelligibility as a
studio recording, the band is probably big enough that you heard them
somewhere else first. Bands without albums, who are, tautologically, the
ones for whom concerts are most essential as an exposure mechanism, will
generally, often through no fault of their own (though sometimes they
cooperate), sound terrible in concert. High volume and small spaces are an
acoustic disaster, however popular the combination.
And yes, I understand that sound quality is often not the point. As
any thirty-year-old who's left a club muttering, crossly, that the kids
paid more attention to slam dancing than the music will have already
observed, live rock shows, particularly by bands with even a tenuous
connection to punk, have a significant communal-experience aspect that has
nothing to do with arrangement subtleties and everything to do with
celebrating whatever melange of quasi-political defiance, lifestyle
idiosyncrasies and wide-eyed aspirations currently comprises Youth. A big
part of the point of concerts is that there are other people there, having
the experience with you. The volume of rock shows is as critical an
element of this shared experience as large movie screens are to
movie-going; a rock concert commands your attention, simply and in a sense
elegantly, by subjecting you to so much sensory overload that you can't
focus on anything other than the sound even if you want to. The visual
pyrotechnics at arena shows, to extrapolate, are an attempt to augment the
sonic bombardment, necessarily less intense in a less claustrophobic space,
so that the overall experience will be as immersive. Drinking, especially
heavily, also helps delineate the distinction between normal life (which,
presumably, is confronted more soberly) and grand pagan ceremony.
But for me, that all makes concert-going even less appealing. I don't
drink (at all, never mind heavily), and I have a correspondingly deep
mistrust for mass rituals that rely on artificially-induced irrationality.
Swaggering rock-star bravado, though arguably an indispensable component of
rock and roll, is to me one of the form's least endearing traits, and
floodlit stages and crowds of hysterical acolytes are not, in my opinion,
conditions that tend to improve art. Some great art has been done for
which this is the only appropriate context, but for every moment of truly
transcendent populism, like approximately the entire population of Scotland
singing "Loch Lomond" along with Runrig, or Peter Gabriel being borne,
hand-to-hand, over the crowd during "Biko", as if it is Stephen Biko's
coffin they are carrying, and the song is emanating, literally, from his
spirit, there are a hundred examples of the abjectly mundane (Kiss being,
to me, the quintessential one, but feel free to pick your own)
masquerading, by virtue of a sort of colossal Marshall-stack
shadow-puppetry, as something magnificent. Most of the art that affects me
most strongly comes from an artist struggling against their environment,
not basking in it. Concerts are capable of this, certainly; my memories of
seeing Mark Eitzel, Tori Amos, Lisa Germano and Low play (not, mercifully,
together) will be with me forever. But these are exceptions, memorable in
no small part because they were anomalous. You may well find similar
exceptions among your local populace, but in general, at local concerts you
will find rock bands being rock bands, flush with probably-unwarranted
self-confidence, which was thrilling when I was fifteen (and it was Blue
Oyster Cult, flame-spouting Godzilla behind the drum kit and all), but
which came to seem embarrassing to me long before I was old enough for my
age to be an adequate explanation.
Happily, though, the very thing that steers me away from the local
club scene also results in my enduring fascination with how the local music
community is projected into the recorded dimension. The smaller the
distribution of an album, the greater the likelihood that the band doesn't
really know what they're doing, and while this is as good a recipe for
catastrophe as any, great risk can also precede great triumphs. Most bands
putting out hesitant, hopeful, self-released EPs aren't proficient enough
at studiocraft to produce bland and undifferentiated mush, even if that was
their inclination. More often than not they sound overwhelmed, terrified,
inept, self-conscious and willfully oblivious, and I'm a lot more
interested in hearing how people face those emotions (if we can call inept
an emotion) than I am in hearing how they cope with raw adulation.
(Perhaps if my day-to-day life involved more adulation, I'd feel
differently.)
So I support Boston rock in my own obsessive way, by buying virtually
any local release I don't have some strong reason to believe I'll hate.
Random discoveries, which for a club-goer would come in the middle of
six-band-no-cover Tuesday-night marathons, for me more often occur on
compilations. Boston is blessed with two local labels that seem to me to
have mastered at least parts of the art of compilation-making. Castle von
Buhler, who were responsible for the benefit albums Soon (1994), Anon
(1995) and Nigh (1997), produce lavish, breathtaking physical packages,
notable both for artwork into which as much effort has been put as the
music, and an astonishing stylistic coherency in which the art and the
songs both participate. Curve of the Earth have more questionable
packaging instincts (I expect there's a way in which the doe-eyed
schoolgirl and neon strip-club signs on the cover of Girls! Girls! Girls!
are supposed to be ironic, but I can't see what it is), but have assembled
two (the other being 1994's Girl) of the very few compilation albums I find
myself listening to repeatedly, without programming a few more track-skips,
each time, until there's nothing left.
The collective rationale of Girls! Girls! Girls!, as with Girl before
it, is that all the songs are written and sung by women. I'd like to think
that by now this would be a somewhat silly idea, akin to an album of songs
by people who are shorter than the median height, but as the presence,
among twenty-four female-led bands, of twenty-one male drummers attests,
there are still some gender stereotypes remaining to be beaten out of rock
culture. The encouraging detail, I guess, is that if somebody had played
me this album without mentioning the title or the backstory, I'm pretty
sure it wouldn't have occurred to me that there was a gimmick to it. I
don't doubt that there are a couple dozen great Boston bands fronted by
male singer-songwriters that I haven't heard of, either, but I don't miss
them while I'm listening to this album.
Girls! Girls! Girls! doesn't appear to have been compiled with quite
as strict a notion of stylistic consistency as the Castle von Buhler albums
(which focus on Boston's gothic underground), but Boston does have
discernible tendencies and traditions, which even a random two-dozen-band
sample is bound to reveal. High volume and high speed are currently both
at a premium, to the extent that much of this album would qualify, as long
as you don't feel that female vocals preclude this, as hard rock, often
bordering on heavy metal, as if the national legacy of L7 has ended up
being a more profound influence than that of Hole or Veruca Salt.
Keyboards have customarily been dismissed, around here, as inappropriately
effete, and of these twenty-four bands, only three are not basically
variations on the standard three- or four-person vocals/guitar/bass/drums
configuration. The local heroines, I think, are Tracy Bonham and Jennifer
Trynin, whose fiery "The One" (two years before it appeared on The Burdens
of Being Upright, the album that earned Tracy a Grammy nomination) and
disarming "Everything's Different Now", respectively, were the
centerpieces, I thought, of Girl.
The compilation opens, without preamble, with the thudding
"Candycane", by Verago-go, singers Isabel Riley and Jen Diamond's odd,
frail harmonies drifting uneasily over Isabel's ragged guitar, Jen's
growling, percussive bass and drummer John Lakian's square, relentless
stomp. The jangly opening of Cherry 2000's "Rodeo Clown", which sounds a
lot like REM's "Seven Chinese Brothers", turns out to be a feint, and the
rest of the song, a furious roar over which Leah Blesoff weaves an ethereal
cummings recitation, is dense and deliriously noisy. Ramona Silver's
trebly "BJ's Got the Butterflies", something like a cheerful Liz Phair, is
one of the few understated interludes, but it's followed by one of the most
torrid, "Chelsea on Fire"'s raging "Wig", on which singer/guitarist Josie
Packard manages a chilling heavy-metal wail halfway between Robert Plant
and Geddy Lee, and a maniacal wah-wah guitar groove like Vernon Reid doing
a Peter Frampton imitation.
I knew two of these bands already, the first of which is Mistle
Thrush, who are defectors of a sort, since I first discovered them on the
Castle von Buhler compilation Soon. Their textural keyboard atmospherics
are a little out of character in this company, but the propulsive rhythm of
their track, "Stupid Song", from their 1997 album Super Refraction, would
have been even more incongruous on Nigh, so I guess this is the right place
for them. Planet Queen, who follow with the fitful, jagged "Don't Say
Anything", are one of the bands that remind me most of Tracy Bonham, though
the loud parts of this song are slower and darker than most of Tracy's.
Track seven is where the compilation suddenly turned, for me, from a
collection I listened to in browse mode, mentally taking notes about
individual bands to investigate, to an album worth listening to in its own
right. I don't like everything on it, but I don't like everything on a lot
of albums I like, and the three-song run that begins here, were a single
band responsible for it, would have been enough to get this album onto the
short list, at least, for my 1997 top ten. It begins with January's
galloping, succinct "Fuzzy Sweet", guitar buzzing thickly through
relentless hooks as Christine Zufferey's breathless short-meter rhyme
schemes skitter overhead. Bringing the disc to work resulted in my
distractedly chanting "Fuzzy, fuzzy bitch / Psycho lunatic" to myself, not
quite under my breath, for many minutes after hearing this song, which
perhaps wasn't the best idea. The middle song of the trio is, I think,
this album's most decisive answer to "The One", Sara Mann's brash, sturdy
"Little Premonitions", with an even more outrageous, slinky wah-wah guitar
riff than "Wig"'s, Sara's clipped delivery and an adept backing from
Letters to Cleo's rhythm section combining to also remind me vividly, and
pleasantly, of Jen Trynin. And the set concludes with the cathartic
head-over-heels sprint "Whole in the World", by Half Cocked, who, when I
realized that their name comes from the fact that two of the four of them
are men, assumed the mantle, abandoned when Miles Dethmuffin changed their
name to PermaFrost, of my vote for the Boston band with the worst name.
Malachite, the original standard-bearers of Boston all-girl heavy
metal, in the old Black Sabbath sense of the term, whose "Mother" opened
Girl, are no more (twice over, since Swank, their partial successor, have
also disbanded), but Purrr (another name I dislike, but at least one whose
spelling quirk does not, like Ghoti Hook, cause you to look for them in the
wrong bin) seems more than happy to take over, updating the sound with a
little stronger dose of Slayer's version of metal. Singer/guitarist Eve
Evol, who is credited with "vocal shredding", has the hoarse yowl and the
goofy pseudonym death metal mandates, and the band produces a credible
sledgehammer assault that complements lines like "What were you thinking /
When you turned the knife in? / When you crucified her / Innermost organs?"
nicely. Emily Grogan's measured, staticky "No Hitch", by way of respite,
edges back toward pensive pop, but even it has bursts of seething guitar
racket. The spirit of the Pixies, which is almost always lurking somewhere
nearby, whenever a Boston band combines punk guitar drive with singing that
smacks of mental instability, takes on corporeal form, briefly, for the
American Measles' deranged semi-love-song "Carlo", sung by Julie Chadwick
in a preposterous throw-away cartoon sneer (as the song fades out you can
hear her say "I think we can totally erase that one") that the band, in a
fit of genius, retained.
Two of the album's least characteristic moments arrive together, as
Betwixt, the one band represented on both Girls! Girls! Girls! and Castle
von Buhler's Nigh, contribute an eerie, skeletal "Seahorse" (produced,
surprisingly, by Boston legend David Minehan, formerly the leader of the
Neighborhoods, one of the several great Boston bands whose attempt at a
national breakthrough went absolutely nowhere), and the studio-duo Sweetie
provide the album's one sampler-and-programming exercise, "It Happened
Again (A Sequel)", a social-responsibility rejoinder to MC 900 ft. Jesus'
classic arson chronicle "The City Sleeps". Metal thrash is back, though,
for Shiva Speedway's off-kilter "Below the Belt", and Ashera's merciless,
shouty "Puppy Dog Tails". The album's oddest interlude, by far, is Kate
Frend's intricate multi-tracked bluegrass-gospel banjo-and-voice solo
"Pigeons", which sounds like something unearthed from another era (and
state).
The mood darkens, then, for the last quarter of the collection.
Serum's becalmed "Sloe Candy" is somewhere between Throwing Muses, goth and
slide-guitar blues; Big Monster Fish Hook's harrowing "Green Light" could
be a Low song, albeit one performed, necessarily, at five times the speed
Low would have used; Curious Ritual's ringing self-determination
admonition, "Get With It, Girl", the other song I knew already, is
musically buoyant, but lyrically disturbing; Goliath's muted "Baby" has
some of the Feelies' melancholy, shuffling reserve; Gel's brittle,
machine-groove "On the Brink" could be what you'd find if you scoured the
processing blur off a Curve song. Lest you forget metal, there's one more
brutal rant, 3 1/2 Girls' uncannily Celtic Frost-esque "Bitchslap" (except
Thomas Gabriel Warrior would have thought of a more macabre title), and the
collection ends, as something of a compromise, on the Foundation's
meandering, rattling, trance-like "You're Beautiful", alternately metallic
and oblique, with ex-Think Tree keyboardist Krishna Venkatesh providing a
trumpet part that seems, at times, to have intriguingly little notion of
what's going on in the rest of the song.

Verago-go: Flight 45

So taken was I with Girls! Girls! Girls! that I went back out, the next
week, with the list of participants in hand, in search of more material by
any of them. So far I've been able to track down records by about half of
the bands. This is a risky tactic, as bands this early in their
development often don't even have a style for the compilation track to be
indicative of or not, but the gesture, my way of apologizing for not coming
to these people's shows, was worthwhile to me, whether I turned out to like
the individual albums or not. Verago-go are one of the bands that, if I
hadn't set out to pursue them all, as policy, I probably would have left
alone. Their songwriting involves a bit more anti-melodic evasion than I
usually like, and the artlessness of their playing seems to me to have a
deliberate awkwardness to it, as if they could write more appealing songs,
but for some reason consider it beneath them. After a few exposures,
though, I've started to discern the internal logic in the style, and become
fond of a number of moments here, like the underwater bass pulse of
"Venus", the cymbal splashes in the terse "Stars of the Road", the lurching
accelerations and decelerations of "Speedracer", the key-jumping hooks in
"All My Pretty Ones", the Geraldine Fibbers-ish "Ophelia", the Fugazi-like
edginess of "Blue Night", the sulky bass line of "Little Girl", the
acoustic lament "Liquid Love" and the frenetic clatter of the abstract
nine-minute instrumental finale. The record is even less approachable than
their compilation track (which does not appear here), and if I'm not in the
right tolerant mood when I put it on I have to turn it off again almost
immediately, but albums with epic drum solos on them have become scarce
enough that I take what I can get.

Chelsea on Fire: Once Is Never

I really hoped that Once Is Never was going to be forty-three minutes of
the same preternatural howl Josey Packard displays on "Wig", but it's quite
possible that that would have been as wearying to listen to as it would
have been to record. Unfortunately, though, the standard set by "Wig"
makes me impatient with anything else on the album that doesn't at least
aspire to its level of vehemence. This is unjust and unrealistic, but
about half the album succeeds anyway. "Twist" is slower, but no less
forceful; the vocal parts in "Extra Heavy Sin" are subdued and distracted,
but the sputtering, spasmodic guitar is an arresting contrast; "Superman"
sounds like Janis Joplin singing with Solitude Aeturnus; the stentorian
punk blast "You're Mine" is menacing and sharp; "7:11" (not its length) is
like Veruca Salt (circa American Thighs) trying to figure out how a female
Rage Against the Machine would work; "Breech"'s music crashes and surges
intently, but Josey's erratic narrative refuses to cooperate. And the
airy, elegant acoustic finale, "Carousel", though nothing I'd have expected
to find here, could be the seed of a completely different future for the
band, altogether.

January: See-Thru

The find of this batch, for me, was definitely January. Christine Zufferey
sings with a throaty rock confidence that makes me wonder, wistfully, what
happened to the solo album ex-Tribe singer Janet LaValley was supposedly
working on, and the band plays like Rush with a shorter attention span and
a keyboard allergy. This self-released half-hour 1996 EP, the band's
first, has a couple questionable digressions, notably the deadpan
monster-rock cover of the Chocolate Factory work-song "Oompa-Loompa
Doompadee-Doo", but it's also got the sawing 3/4 churn of "Take Me There"
(like a missing chapter from Rush's "Cygnus X-1"), at least the fourth
completely unrelated song called "Joyride" I can think of (after Roxette,
Tribe and Havana 3am), one song ("See With") that starts out like Throwing
Muses but then breaks into the kind of bellowing, addictive payoff that I
invariably find myself wishing, vainly, that Kristin Hersh's songs would,
and the slashing punk anthems "Standstill" and "Anywhere", which each have
at least twice as many chords as they really need, with the result that
they sound a little like Social Distortion run through a pitch-shifter
operated by a mischievous hand.

January: Keep Me From Sleeping

By the second EP, a year later, from which their compilation track, "Fuzzy
Sweet", comes, the balance of power in the band seems to have shifted: the
music, centered now around buzzing guitar riffs that remind me much more of
Sugar than Rush, has been substantially streamlined, while Christine's
singing, conversely, has taken to almost Kate Bush-like falsetto
flourishes. There are two more strident, simmering waltzes ("Fleece" and
"Little Fish"), dizzying vocal octave-shifts on the uneasy "Magnificent",
and calculated sliding sighs on the somber "Naphtalene", but the song that
single-handedly justifies the disc, for me, is the last one, "Dinosaurs", a
perfect example (like Tracy Bonham's "The One", actually) of how a single
good guitar hook can redeem any amount of otherwise pointless musical
filler. The ticking, jazzy verses of this song serve absolutely no
purpose, that I can tell, other than to build anticipation for the
explosive choruses. Probably there's a way to construct this song so that
the verses would be more interesting, without losing the tension between
the verses and the chorus, but I really don't care. The song drifts, and I
hang, poised, waiting for the chorus' monolithic riff to slam down, as long
as it takes. The bass starts pulsing, foreshadowing, and I start
rehearsing the critical couplet, "You've got the spikes / I've got the
mighty roar", as if dinosaurs are some sort of collaborative hallucination
(which in a sense I suppose they are; the hundreds of plastic ones lining
my bookshelves are certainly not there because I care about the intricacies
of paleontology). And then it's time, and I'm flailing on the hook, stuck
as firmly to this one as to "Smoke on the Water", "Jailbreak" or "Immigrant
Song".

Sara Mann: Sara Mann

The rest of Sara Mann's five song EP, from which "Little Premonitions"
comes, turns out to bear very little resemblance to it. "Gameboy" shares
"Little Premonitions"' Tracy Bonham-ish urgency, but where "Little
Premonitions" is all rock strut, hung on Michael Eisenstein blaring guitar,
the remaining three songs are far quieter, based on Mann's gentle
piano-playing and soft, pretty singing, more akin to Joni Mitchell or Paula
Cole, depending on the era, than Bonham or Trynin. It's clear which of the
two styles has more commercial potential (although then again, after
Paula's success, perhaps it isn't), but I'm hoping Sara has a day-job she
likes, which will shield her from temptation.

Purrr: Pussy Power

Purrr, on their six song EP, blow through nineteen minutes of unadulterated
metal so firmly in keeping with their compilation track, "Butcher's Wife",
that I have to concentrate to remember which of the six it is. Like
Malachite before them, Purrr's notion of metal also owes a debt to Boston
powerhouse The Bags, who sped metal up and gave it a bit of bouncy punk-pop
levity; as they shout, with barely concealed glee, "I've got pussy power"
(lyrical subtlety is not their forte), I can easily imagine their audience
adapting the clenched fist salute that traditionally accompanied the Bags'
anthem "Pioneer". Elsewhere, though, as on the "War Ensemble"-like
"Rosemary's Baby", they seem intent on demonstrating that the outcome of a
boys-vs-girls war, even with Slayer on the boys' side, is far from a
foregone conclusion.

The American Measles: Shover the Cupcake

The American Measles are the second resounding success from this
experiment, for me. I admired "Carlo", their Girls! Girls! Girls!
contribution, for its crazed energy, and I was glad at least one band
seemed to explicitly acknowledge Kim Deal's pivotal place in the history of
women in Boston rock (Kim's listing herself, on the first two Pixies
records, as "Mrs. John Murphy" now seems like a bit of prescient sarcasm),
but I wouldn't have staked much on the chance that that one song's novelty
appeal would translate well over the length of a full album. As it turns
out, it doesn't have to, because the band has a few more influences in
reserve. Their songwriting, though jokey enough at times to suggest the
Ramones, takes itself seriously enough at others to remind me of the
Slingbacks. Julie Chadwick's manic, guileless delivery means that
comparisons to the Muffs are probably inevitable, but the impish spirit of
the songs also invokes Too Much Joy. The caterwauling "Chinese Girls" has
traces of Wire, "Stoic" sounds like some of the early Go-Go's demos (but
better played), "Rockets" has hints of Penetration and "Chicks on Crack"
can probably trace its roots back to the Au Pairs. "The Z" is
out-of-control punk as venomously derisive as the Sex Pistol's "Pretty
Vacant", and the choppy "Mirth the Baddie" and the circling, heartfelt "No
It's Not" are surprisingly sturdy rock songs. The centerpiece, though, for
me, is what seems to me like the album's best synthesis of punk attitude,
pop craftsmanship and rock surge, the infectious, exasperated "God Took My
Bike". It could be a disposable one-joke concept, but Chadwick seems so
sincerely convinced, when she howls "That fucker took my bike", that an
all-knowing deity has perpetrated this trivial affront, that in a
roundabout way it's one of the most pious lines I've ever heard in a rock
song.

Sweetie: Dried Fly's Blood

I had no idea, at all, what to expect from Sweetie's album, since their
track on the compilation was, for musical purposes, essentially a cover.
After listening to it, I'm still not sure I know what to expect from it.
Parts of it sound like they would like to be Nine Inch Nails, and other
parts sound like Think Tree is more what they have in mind, but Sweetie
haven't Trent Reznor's destructive exuberance, and they don't leave me
feeling like I'm in the grip of an evil genius, the way Think Tree did, and
my tolerance for sampler collages stranded somewhere between the two isn't
high enough for this to hold my interest.

Ashera: Essence of Life

From "Puppy Dog Tails", which isn't on this album, I expected Ashera to be
straightforward metal, much like Purrr. This is partly true, as "Essence
of Life", "Syphilis" and "Moments of Weakness" all boil with metal rage.
"Buckout" is geometric and introverted, a little like Lida Husik, which is
intriguing, but then "Under My Skin", "Pomegranate", "Bang", "Buy Your
Friends" and "Driver" are all strangled blues jams, in the same general
mold as the John Spencer Blues Explosion, which happens to be one of the
few styles of music I absolutely cannot abide. But then, just when I'm
about to junk the album, it ends with the jangly pop gem "Soft Society" and
the languid mid-tempo ballad "First Hit", which sound like the work of
another band entirely. So now I'm hoping they'll make an album.

Serum: Dirty Girl Scout

The focus of the Castle von Buhler compilations, over the course of the
three of them, has drifted steadily away from the end of goth that produced
atmospheric pop, towards the genre's minimal, experimental extreme. This
shift has stranded a few bands that now no longer qualify as goth, most
obviously Mistle Thrush and Curious Ritual (sirensong escaped only by
disbanding), into whose company Serum arrives as welcome (I think)
reinforcements. "Church of Elvis" is stern and moody, the echoey,
throbbing "Angeldust" is haunting and distressed, "Suckerpunch" is like
"All Along the Watchtower" performed by wraiths, "Fireball" is choppy and
spinning, "Deja-Vu" keening and swirly, and "Sloe Candy", their Girls!
Girls! Girls! selection, heard in the context of the rest of the album, has
more of the ghostly pallor of Big Star's "Holocaust" than I noticed on the
compilation. The audience for this album is probably about the same as the
audience for Mistle Thrush and Curious Ritual, but since those two bands
have only three albums and two EPs between them, one more hardly seems
excessive.

Big Monster Fish Hook: Collecting Bugs and Pieces

Out of thirteen albums, only two of them really do nothing for me. This is
a really good ratio. Big Monster Fish Hook's, however, is the other one.
Any isolated minute of their quiet, acoustic music, finger-picked guitars
and assorted toy instruments, seems very pleasant, but I too quickly become
impatient, and expect the songs to evolve, which they don't. If the
repetition doesn't bother you, I suspect this is a very soothing record.
If a soothing record irritates you, though, it's pretty hard to salvage.

Gel: Gel

Gel is the third band of the three, from this batch, that I will now
pursue, dedicatedly, for the rest of their lives. Their compilation track
is also the one that seems the most perplexing to me, now that I've heard
what I assume were their other choices. Far from the stiff, cheesy
drum-machine loop that propels "On the Brink", the other four songs on this
EP are charged and anthemic, descendants, to me, of one of my favorite odd
branches of Boston history, the great Rubber Rodeo. There isn't much
that's countryish about Gel's sound, which on paper is closer to the Mistle
Thrush/Curious Ritual/Serum alliance, especially instrumentally, but the
soaring chorus harmonies on "Only One" remind me of Trish Milliken's
impassioned "Heartbreak Highway", the twists at the ends of the choruses of
"Phasehead" remind me of Rubber Rodeo's "Souvenir". Elsewhere, the slow
bass flow of "Home" and the twinkling acoustic guitar lattices of "Imbolc"
both clash, attractively, with the songs' frantic vocals. This isn't
enough evidence for me to tell what sort of band Gel will really become,
but half of the fun is discovering them early enough to wonder.

3 1/2 Girls: Rule

My survey concludes, appropriately enough, with the last of Curve of the
Earth's own bands (Verago-go and Chelsea on Fire were the other two), the
three-woman/one-man metal quartet 3 1/2 Girls, whose name is only
marginally less offensive to me than Half Cocked's. "Bitchslap", their
song from Girls! Girls! Girls!, is absent from this short,
Minehan-produced, five-song EP, and in fact nothing here quite reproduces
its death-metal grind. "Straight-Edge Boy" is a little like a double-speed
"War Pigs", "Bacteria" is more like a cross between Anthrax and the Dead
Kennedys, "Chris B. (Wake Up, It's Time to Die)" is bellowed, thumping and
White Zombie-ish, "Forget It" is dark and turbulent, and the thrashing
"Denial" offers the following fairy-tale revision: "You fuck with / The
Frog Prince, / You'll find out / What pain is". "In denial!", singer
Sunshine [sic] Volz sings, over and over again as the song fades out, and I
take this to be an indictment of anybody who ever hid from their
responsibility for their own destiny behind the notion that kissing a frog,
if you can just find the right one, is a substitute for self-awareness and
moral resolution. And if our choice for role models comes down to pale
princesses holding their breath for the lottery results, and berserkers
who've traded swords for guitars and daises for nightclub stages, I guess I
harbor more fondness for rock and roll bravado than I thought.

Copyright (c) 1998, glenn mcdonald

The War Against Silence is published weekly at www.furia.com/twas, and
posted to the newsgroup rec.music.reviews. It may not be distributed
elsewhere without my explicit permission.