Archive for Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

The First Great Album Of 2014 Is Here: Sleepy Sun’s “Maui Tears”

Posted in Music with tags , , , , , on February 9, 2014 by johnbuckley100

If T.S Elliott had been a fan of rock’n’roll he would have rethought this “April is the cruelest month” thing.  By April, the record releases are coming fast and furious.  January’s a different matter.

Which is why it is so fantastic that on January 28, Sleepy Sun released Maui Tears, which has gotten us through, oh, all sorts of things: snow days and cold, avalanches of work, that feeling when you are midway through writing your fourth novel where it seems you are still deep underwater, legs kicking, trying to get to the surface before your lungs explode, all the while worrying about the bends.  Oh, okay, back to Sleepy Sun’s great new album.

For those not hip to the band, just go check out “Galaxy Punk.”  It kicks with the force of White Denim’s “Drug,” a perfect pop song but also a showcase for the kind of virtuoso guitar playing that just saws its way through soft brain matter.

Maui Tears is constructed along the blueprint specs that Stephen McBean used in Black Mountain’s Wilderness Heart: there’s tuneful, exciting, straight-ahead rock’n’roll (“The Lane”) followed by acoustic balladry you might have found on early Led Zep, and then immersion into the headphone imperatives of metal-psyche.  “Outside” is, for our money, a better version of MBV than anything found on m b v.  “11:32” is a mere 4:10 worthy of punk-metal goodness, and on “Thielbar” you can catch a whiff of Black Rebel Motorcycle exhaust and it smells like… victory.

We really like this album not simply because there’s not a lot of other great new music to listen to — at least not until Temples’ rec comes out on Tuesday.  We really like this album because it is amazing.

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Secret Colours’ “Peach” Drips With Hooks and Talent

Posted in Music with tags , , , , , , on June 30, 2013 by johnbuckley100

Chicago’s Secret Colours have just released their second album, Peach, and it is everything that name implies — sweet, tasty, and a satisfying summer treat.  Their first album, Secret Colours, had sufficient reverb to qualify them to play at next week’s Bathysphere: A Psychonautical Voyage, wherein they’re paired with “new gaze” and neo-psychedelic bands like First Communion Afterparty. But if we are to rave about Peach — and get ready, cuz we’re about to — let’s first clarify what kind of band Secret Colours really are, and what they aren’t.

Based on Peach alone, they’re not a psychedelic band.  They are, at their roots, a riff-resplendent blues band with a gloss of pop chops that bear a stronger resemblance to Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Blur than to any of the bands they’ll play with in Minneapolis on Friday night.  But that’s good company to be in, and on Peach, there are no fewer than 10 songs you could easily hope would make it onto radio playlists from the ’60s – the Aughts.  Tommy Evans doesn’t have a distinctive voice, he just has a voice you could listen to for hours.  Similarly, guitarist Brian Stach cannot play a single note you don’t want to listen to.  Producer Brian Deck (Modest Mouse) has managed to harness good songwriting, great guitar playing, and charismatic singing to create a sound that, measure for measure, is always surprising.  “Wow,” you say, “I did not see that (riff/solo/shift) coming.”  Did we mention they are really young, and this is but their second album?

Since we’ve been playing the album, uh, nonstop for days, we do wonder whether they’ve simply got us under their spell, a band like, say, the Vines or maybe Jet, that, because they know how to pull together hooks and riffs and a purring voice into sonic candy, they lead you to gorge on empty calories, and you hate yourself in the morning.  Pretty sure that’s not the case here, as long as you accept them for what they are.

Bottom line: Secret Colours is a band like the Plimsouls that beguile you on the basis, essentially, of strong songwriting, singing, and guitar playing, and that’s enough.  Yes, some of the underlying song structure can, for a moment, make them sound like a generic ’90s rock band. They maybe could have pared the album by three songs.  But cast those doubts aside.  This is a band that is as confident, though nowhere near as obnoxious, as Oasis was two albums in.  Peach is an album you can play over and over again and still want to hear more.  They are much more commercial than a true alternative band.  But that’s just fine.  It’s a good thing when an excellent band becomes huge, as we — and they — have every reason to believe they’ll be.

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What Was Missing From The Tulip Frenzy 2011 Top Ten List: BRMC and The Vaselines

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , on January 3, 2011 by johnbuckley100

Usually by January 1, we’ve been turned on to several bands we missed that should have been on our Top Ten List.  This year there wasn’t a lot on the Uncut list that we would have put on ours — c’mon, Joanna Newsom #1? Not quite as bad as Portishead the other year, but yick — and as it turns out, our only regrets were not having been able to have put in Black Rebel Motorcycle Club or the Vaselines.

BRMC released both an excellent studio album (Beat The Devil’s Tattoo) and an exceptionally vivid live album.  Why didn’t they make it?  Why don’t we take ’em seriously enough?  Hard to say.  Maybe it was the way their entry point seemed too derivative of the Jesus and Mary Chain.  For some reason, we don’t take ’em seriously enough, yet we listen to their music, a lot.  A friend once referred to Oasis as a guilty pleasure, and I understand, though I’ve never doubted Oasis’ essential greatness.  I don’t think of BRMC as a guilty pleasure; I think of them as a superb band, and if you doubt just how great they really are, go to their website and for a pittance download their live album.

The Vaselines are another story altogether.  Tagged by no less than Kurt Cobain as his favorite band, it took a generation for them to get back into the studio, and after listening to Sex With An Ex, we’re sure glad they did.  Funny, wry, tuneful, smart, the Glaswegian duo reentered the scene without leaving a greasy contrail.  Too bad there wasn’t room for ’em on the TF Top Ten List.

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The Black Ryder’s “Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride”

Posted in Music with tags , , , , , on February 24, 2010 by johnbuckley100

Pedigree counts more at events sponsored by The Westminster Kennel Club than in modern day rock’n’roll, but well before the release of The Black Ryder’s superb first album, it was clear this was a well-bred band. At least Aimee Nash was a member of the Morning After Girls V. 1.0, (was her partner Scott Von Ryper as well?) and if an adjunct of class is whom you hang out with, The Black Ryder’s got an A-list social network — the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Black Angels.

More than a year ago, “Burn and Fade” showed up on their MySpace page, with BRMC’s Peter Hayes sharing vocal duties, and it immediately placed TBR on the matrix.  If the bottom axis is a band’s relative immersion in the Velvet Underground, and the right axis is where they fit on the continuum between, say, the Stones upward toward the gauzy reaches of Mazzy Star and Galaxie 500, just that first song showed The Black Ryder scoring high in the upper right hand corner.

Frustratingly for us Yanks with a hankering for Aussie bands — we veterans of the long wait for The Morning After Girls’ second album (sans Ms. Nash) — Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride came out in Australia in November, got rave reviews, but as of this writing, no American release date.  Tulip Frenzy went into emergency acquisition mode, checked our Antipodal contacts, and through extraordinary measures (Amazon, credit card, paying up for the Import), are pleased to give this debut report for the American cognoscenti.

The Black Ryder are the real deal, and if Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride had found its ways to these shores in 2009, it would certainly have nestled near Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound’s When Sweet Sleep Returned high atop the Tulip Frenzy Top 10 List.  (It wouldn’t have knocked Sonic Youth outta the top slot, for those geezers gripped it with gnarled paws.)

In the keiretsu connecting the BJM and the Dandys and the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, they’re already supplying guitar strings and guitarists (BJM’s Rick Maymi, fer example) to The Black Ryder.  Unfortunately, the production checklist didn’t include making sure the drums snapped, but they methodically went through every element relating to the guitars.  I think my favorite song so far is the throbbing “What’s Forsaken,” but honestly, hear any of these songs in a club and you’ll reach for your Shazam app.

Look, I thought the early Morning After Girls recordings were some of the best sounds that came out of that miserable decade we’ve just escaped from.  I would be prone to enjoy an album featuring someone from that lineup.  This is so much better: a lovely, mid-tempo mashup of the Dig! bands that never strains.  It fits the tempo of life between 7:00 and 10:00 AM, and then again after 9:00 PM. Does that properly place it?  Music to listen to in an urban apartment with rain slapping the streets, while tea is made.  (Yeah, that kind of tea, with cream and sugar.) Now if we can only get them to buy a ticket on a Quantas flight over to these parts.

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The Black Angels Prove Black Is Beautiful

Posted in Music with tags , , , on July 18, 2008 by johnbuckley100

I wasn’t much of a fan of Black Oak Arkansas, I enjoy but don’t need the Black Keys, and the Black Crowes leave me cold.  Black Sabbath?  Please. Still, I’m ready for a show in basic black.  How ’bout a triple bill of The Black Angels, Black Mountain, and BRMC? The Black Angels would probably have to go first to warm up the crowd, since they’re less well known than Black Mountain or the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.  Plus, they’d set the proper mood, which is to say, trance.

Austinites, they do not come from the same musical neighborhood as Flaco Jimenez.  It’s nice to know that after Roky Erickson, the words “Texas” and “psychedelia” don’t automatically lead to discussions about Tex Watson.  I think what really got me about these guys was “Bloodhounds on My Trail,” which is mesmerizing.  Think of “Hellhound On My Trail” done by a supergroup starring Lydia Lunch, John Fogerty, and Peter Green.

I’m not just trying to be clever about the links to Black Mountain and BRMC — these guys are jacked into the same amps both those disparate, not necessarily kindred, but nonetheless spiritually linked bands play.  Their debut album “Passover” brought comparisons to the Velvet Underground, Galaxy 500, the Gun Club, and Led Zep.  Can’t go wrong with those references thrown in the blender. Their second album, “Directions To See A Ghost,” adds the Fall’s descending guitar lines to the BRMC dynamic, and cops song structures from “Astronomy Domine”-era Floyd.  Alex Maas has this weirdly androgynous voice, and when the levee breaks, he slightly drowns in Robert Plant’s lower registers.

Missed them at the Rock and Roll Hotel, where I think they opened for the Warlocks — more kindred spirits.  When John Cale wrote “The Black Angel’s Death Song,” who knew that someday these guys would catch its wind?

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Playlist of 2007 Top Songs

Posted in Music with tags , , , , , , , , , on January 5, 2008 by johnbuckley100

Tulip Frenzy is not K-Tel.  We have no deals with labels, and we don’t advertise on late-night television.  But if we were to put together a playlist with two songs each from the 2007 Tulip Frenzy Top 10 List (c), here’s what it would be: 

  1. Ryan Bingham Album: Mescalero Songs: Bread and Water/Hard Times;
  2. New Pornograhers Album: Challengers Songs: All The  Old Showstoppers/Fortune;
  3. Wilco Album: Sky Blue Sky Songs: Impossible Germany/Let’s Not Get Carried Away; 
  4. Black Rebel Motorcycle Gang Album: Baby 81 Songs: Weapon of Choice/Coldwind;
  5. Apples In Stereo Album: New Magnetic Wonder   Songs: Skyway/7 Stars;
  6. Iron & Wine Album: Shepherds Dog Songs: Pagan Angel and A Borrowed Car/Carousel;
  7. Babyshambles Album: Shotter’s Nation  Songs: Deft Left Hand/Crum Begging;
  8. The Chesterfield Kings Album: Psychedelic Sunrise Songs: Up and Down/Outtasite;
  9. Eddie Vedder Album: Into The Wild Songs: Hard Sun/Far Behind;
  10. The Waterboys Album: Book of Lightning Songs: Crash of Angel Wings/It’s Gonna Rain;

Now, go to the iTunes Store and assemble.    

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The Official Tulip Frenzy Top Ten List Of Best Music From 2007

Posted in Music with tags , , , , , , , , , on January 2, 2008 by johnbuckley100
  • 10. The Waterboys “Book of Lightning”Who ever would have thought that the Waterboys would rock as hard as, and sound a lot like, Robyn Hitchcock?  This was a left-field surprise that went beyond a return to form, since never once had they sounded this good.
  • 9. Eddie Vedder “Into The Wild”Great movie, perfect soundtrack to it.  
  • 8.The Chesterfield Kings “Psychedelic Sunrise”Until the next Fleshtones album comes out (January 22nd), this is the garage classic of the moment.
  • 7.Babyshambles “Shotters Nation”Pete Doherty makes Amy Winehouse seem like she’s overly fond of 3.2 beer or something, but I was shocked by what an amazing album this is, the best Brit-rock album since Blur was functional.  We need to keep this guy alive.
  • 6.Iron & Wine “The Shepherd’s Dog”Music to listen to while getting tanked up on coffee, sitting in sunlight, while reading six sections of the Sunday Times.  That’s actually a compliment.
  • 5. The Apples in Stereo “Science Faire”The little pop-rock genius Bob Schneider made a good ‘un, rocking hard but not at Ramones speed, while still catchy as their soundtrack for the Powerpuff Girls.
  • 4. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club “Baby 81″Even in a year when the Jesus and Mary Chain came back at Coachilla, this was the best moment for off-kilter hard rock that I lived through.
  • 3. Wilco “Sky Blue Sky”Why put down Jeff Tweedy’s sobriety? With Nels Cline sounding like Tom Verlaine on a good day, this beautiful symphony of noise deserved a far, far better fate than the slagging it took.  (Funny how after putting it down, Uncut put it in their Top Five list…)
  • 2. The New Pornographers “Challengers”Another album hipsters gainsaid, yet still packed such an un-Canadian wallop, it’s a wonder the Arcade Fire didn’t do the honorable thing and just move to Paraguay. 
  • 1. Ryan Bingham “Mescalero”The best album of 2007 was by a West Texas songwriter named Ryan who was smart enough to embrace, not run from sounding like the great lost Whiskeytown album.

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