You may have noticed a change lately; things haven't seemed quite the same. When you go to the mall, there seems to be a new profusion of brightly-colored decorations hanging up. Down on the street, bells seem to be chiming more regularly than usual, and the population seems to be equally divided between wildly happy people and nervous, stressed out people. What the hell's going on? Oh right! Christmas is coming! Oh no – Christmas is coming! Chances are good that those stressed out people you saw on the street are the ones trying to figure out what exactly they should be getting for their someone special, or their wife, or their kids, or any number of other people for whom the average individual has to buy gifts. So what seems like it might be a good idea? Have you thought about it yet? Happily, we at Ground Control have, and have amassed a series of gift guides to help spark your imagination.
Tom Waits
Bad As Me (2CD)
(ANTI-/Epitaph/Warner)
The sounds of Tom Waits' past and present manifest immediately as the first horn section to appear in a Tom Waits song in years pipes up to open “Chicago” and kick Bad As Me into gear. The stuttering saxophone, trombone and clarinet supplied by Clint Medgen and Ben Jaffe blow in like a breath of fresh air here, but they're not the sort of fluid, jazzy stuff which flowed through albums like Swordfishtrombones or Rain Dogs. Here, the rhythmic, wheezing figures supply an anxious shuffle to the song, helps it move along quickly and adds fuel to Waits' own hope that “maybe things will be better in Chicago” expressed in the lyric sheets. With those first introductions made, the going gets weird as Waits revisits the corner of “Heartattack And Vine” to find it re-populated with eerie keyboards and a new crowd of “Raised Right Men” before getting lost in an uneasy, David Lynch-esque dream in “Everybody Talking At The Same Time.” As was the case in “Chicago,” none of these places or sounds is new to Waits, but the aged quality of the timbres in these songs implies that there has certainly been a lot of time passed since Waits last passed through, and times have changed. Looking at the aural landscape as a whole, the streets are a little darker and wetter, and there's even less cheer now than there was a quarter century ago. Even so, as he presses forward, the singer finds a hot juke joint on “Get Lost” and sputters and squeals along with his band on a bit of hot rock there before crossing the street to the low side of the road for “Face To The Highway.” These ideas get further expanded on the deluxe edition of Bad As Me as Waits offers just a hair more material (three additional songs). Some would complain that three more songs isn't worth the effort but, in listening here, they prove to be indeed; “She Stole The Blush” takes on a whole otherworldly quality as elements of “Hell Broke Luce,” “Raised Right Men” and “Back In The Crowd” combine and offer an excellent conglomerate and “Tell Me” plays even closer to a straight ballad (think “Hold On”) than anything else in this album's run-time before “After You Die” bottoms out on a disconcerting rumination on mortality. It could be argued that it's easy to understand how these three tracks were left off of Bad As Me – they'll likely be regarded as pushing further into one extreme of the album's sounds than anyone would be comfortable with – but they function well as the post-script appended to the deluxe edition, and will further excite any fan already acquainted with some of the songs on Bad As Me.
Deer Tick
Divine Providence
(Dine Alone/Partisan)
In this modern time of computer recording platforms, meticulous digital mastering, mp3-only releases and other such new-fangled gimmickry, it's not only good to know that bands like Deer Tick exist, it should be regarded as imperative that people hear Divine Providence, the band's new album. From the moment “The Bump” crashes into a listener's eardrums and opens the album, listeners will realize that all the fancy production tricks and presentation fixes cannot and will never take the place of good, solid rock songs made by a band who is clearly really excited to share them with listeners. Deer Tick is precisely that band and they never let a listener forget it anywhere in this run-time; here, guitar parts boil over and come close to overtaking drums (“Let's All Go To The Bar”) and lyrics achieve new levels of booze-y goofiness (“Clownin' Around”), all to the expressed joy of the band. In that way, it could be said that parts of Divine Providence are a willful, godawful mess – but actually hearing the results proves that this is exactly what rock needs: a little chaos to counter the perfectly sensible tenor of the mainstream music business. Like Iggy and The Stooges and The Replacements, Deer Tick has mastered the art of being the loose cannon – and Divine Providence is the perfect statement of that.
Thee American Revolution
Buddha Electrostorm
(Garden Gate/Fire Records)
Not unlike Deer Tick's bold statement against the staid common sense tactics of the modern music business, Thee American Revolution takes a similar (but much noisier) tack with their debut, Buddha Electrostorm. The pet project of Apples In Stereo frontman Robert Schneider, American Revolution stands as the most thoroughly unique of the singer's pastimes in that it is unquestionably the least meticulously constructed; yowling guitar parts leap out of tracks like “Grit Magazine,” “Little Girl” and “Sleepwalker” and slap listeners in the face with unrestrained treble but then the songs end before listeners are able to adjust or take offense. Some listeners may be put off by the complete change of pace the album represents, but complainers are advised to lighten up; after years (and years) of meticulously measured and delivered offerings from Schneider, some listeners of the right mind will (rightly) relish in Buddha Electrostorm as the singer lets his hair down and just lets go.
Strung Out
Top Contenders – The Best Of Strung Out
(Fat Wreck Chords)
Since forming in 1992, Strung Out has had the distinction of being the band who has achieved a tremendous amount, won a lot of fans and drawn a lot of praise but, when pressed, no one is ever sure how it happened. Maybe it has to do with the fact that Strung Out are a band who numbers “first” in many ways; they were one of the first bands signed to Fat Wreck Chords, they were one of the first bands to successfully cross punk rock and heavy metal without coming under too much heavy fire, and they were one of the first to grow a true grassroots name and reputation without being asked to jump to a major label when punk rock broke the second time. They did all that like good soldiers, but Strung Out only ever reaped a fraction of the rewards they were due. That's the first, most important value of Top Contenders; here, twenty-six of Strung Out's best and brightest songs have been collected together onto one album and offered as defining proof of the band's powers. It's a great listen and a great history lesson, certainly; tracks like “Firecracker” (which remains one of this writer's favorite punk songs, ever), “Blueprint Of The Fall,” “Swan Dive” and “Cult Of The Subterranean” all expose Strung Out as one of the shoulda-been-best punk songwriting outfits of the day, as well as one of the more solid bands of the day, musically. While cherry-picking great songs from Strung Out's catalogue is easy, Top Contenders also offers a little more to listeners by including three previously unreleased songs (“City Lights,” “Saturday Night” and “Here We Are” and illustrates that even the stuff left on the cutting room floor is worthwhile.
Lots of 'Best-of' and 'Best Of The Rest' compilations get released every holiday season, but it's a rare occasion that they're actually of interest to fans – usually they're just of interest to “the uncles of fans” and usually get purchased to put under Christmas trees on name recognition alone. Certainly, Top Contenders will sell a few copies for this reason too, but the difference is that Top Contenders has a good (not just a superficial) song selection; this comp can both reaffirm older fans as well as make a few new ones.
Pour Habit
Got Your Back
(Fat Wreck Chords)
Remember back around 1993 – right before the Dookie hit the fan and skate punk was equally given to being fun and shredding like crazy? Those were great days – the music was loud and fun and could melt your face off all at the same time. Things have changed a little since then – now either the music is focused on mainstream pop dynamics or the bands are too hardcore for their own good – but Pour Habit has issued Got Your Back now as a reminder; the record is rough and tumble, but also fun like a pool skate session at four in the morning can be. All of those images will spring pretty plainly to mind as “Dead Soldier's Bay” kicks the gates open on the record and immediately begins cutting speedy lines which contrast lyrics about military presence in America and leave them in the dust. True, there are messages here, but they almost seem like an afterthought; the focus if always on the anti-authority “skate” over the anti-authority “punk” and, after the overtly political stance that Green Day took for their last two albums as well as all the nonsense still ringing in everyone's ears following the Bush administration's reign of terror, that's just flat-out refreshing and instantly easy to get behind. Not only that, but Pour Habit doesn't just use a killer skate anthem as bait to lull punks into a false sense of security; songs like “East 69th,” “Gutterblock Boy” and “Teens Turned To Fiends” all uphold the glorious basics of punk rock (i.e. Being young and under-appreciated, skating, rebelling against a mistrustful system) and never seem interested in using them as a sales tactic or window dressing for some other purpose; they really seem to be genuine. Time will tell if Pour Habit ends up being succored into the professional ranks as so many other punk bands have done over the years but, at least for now, Got Your Back is the fun, comparatively light experience many fans will discover they've been craving when they hear it.
