St. Johnny - High as a Kite (1993, Caroline)

I haven't talked about St. Johnny on these pages, at least not much. These Connecticut by way of NYC noiseniks were worthy of significantly greater attention, both in the blogosphere and generally speaking.  1993's High as a Kite (perhaps these lads were self-referential to their own mental state?) functioned like a bona fide debut album but it actually compiled from a trifecta of early singles and previously unreleased clatter.  And what a glorious din St. Johnny concocted, not unlike equally squalling but tuneful contemporaries Monsterland, Sometime Sweet Susan, and pretty much every other mid-90s headache wallowing in that post-You're Living All Over Me sort of hangover. They were adept enough to insert just enough poignant melody amidst feedback-addled screeds "Stupid" and "Go to Sleep" to get me stoked for their nearly as impressive 1994 premiere LP, Speed is Dreaming, coming down the pike c/o Geffen Records, of all labels.  Some comparatively sensitive, slacker-esque feels were the icing of St. J's dissonant, bittersweet cake.  Again, we should have made them a bigger priority than the vast majority of us did. 

01. Go to Sleep

02. God in My Head

03. Highway

04. Velocity

05. My Father's Father

06. Matador

07. Black

08. Stupid

09. High as a Kite

10. Ashes+Slashes

11. Unclean

Hear

A few restored links.

By request.

The Acid Drops - 7"

American Standard - Wonderland & 7"

Aviators - Deed to a Ranch ep 

Jim Basnight and the Moberlys - s/t ep

Beat Temptation - Concerned About Rock Music?

The Bent Backed Tulips (Dramarama) - 7"

Bring Home the Lobsters - tape

Paul Collins Beat - live NYC 1979

Diodes - Survivor  

Doll Congress - s/t ep

The Donner Party: Complete Recordings -  Disks 1 & 2

Drive - covers 7" 

The Figgs - Rejects & singles

Fingers - Video Games ep

For Squirrels - Baypath Rd & demos

Gem - Hexed & I Am a Tree ep 

Glass Eye - Huge ep, Marlo & Christine ep

Gentleman Jesse and His Men - Singles and Rarities

Greg Kihn Band - Next of Kihn

Gunbunnies - Paw Paw Patch

Hummingbirds - LoveBuzz & singles 

Husker Du - Zen Arcade demos/outtakes & Psychepowerpopapunk   

I Can Crawl - Desert

I-Rails - Panharmonium, Nine Songs From Nowhere, Unfocused, Valentino Says, Same Old Me 7", live 1990 

The Iodine Raincoats - I Wonder ep 

The Killing Field - Courage tape

Killjoys - Starry, Gimme Five, Melos Modos, One Night and a Morning After

Lines - Standby ep

Lonesome Strangers - Lonesome Pine  

Math Bats - Bat Day ep

Nashville Ramblers - The Trains 7" (MP3/FLAC)

Native Tongue - s/t ep

New Sweet Breath - singles

Todd Newman - Too Sad for Words & Temporary Setback

The Nines - demo tape 

Nuns of the Great West - The World Ain't Safe ep 

Odolites - Chimes 7" & Persistence of Memory

One Plus Two - Once in a Blue Moon 

Orange Humble Band - Down in Your Dreams ep

Our American Cousins - demo

Poole - two eps

Prodigys - Another Lazy Wednesday

Raves - Past Perfect Tense 

The Records - A Sunny Afternoon in Waterloo & live Dallas 1979

Retriever - Greatest Moments of Doubt & Three Second Stereo ep

Rollerskate Skinny - Trophy & Novice eps

The Seen - Under the Sun/In the Rain/

Shins - Nature Bears a Vacuum ep

Something Blew - s/t ep

Sometime Sweet Susan - Fuse, Point ep & The Coming Lights 

Stag - Kickstart the Ramparts

Swimming Pools Q's - Pow Wow Hour

Trikona Frame - tape 

UV Prom - Field of Vision ep

V. Card - Pool Shark ep & 7" 

Velocity Girl - singles  

Venus in Furs - Real Moral Fibre

Ward 8 (Winter Hours) - tape

Wishes and Water - s/t ep

Wishing Wall - Maybe  

Wolfie - Necessary Sailing tape

V/A - Been There, Done That

V/A - Power pop special: Paul Collins Beat, 20/20, Sinceros live 1979

V/A - Powerpearls Vols. 4 & 5

V/A - Propeller

Sometime Sweet Susan - The Coming Lights (1995, Futurist)

Milwaukee's entry into the '90s noise-pop sweepstakes, Sometimes Sweet Susan, was a commendable one at that.  I base that assertion on the band's first two wide-scale releases, Fuse in 1993, and the Point ep following a year later, both fairly consistent offerings of wiry dissonance and feedback with a thoughtful melodic subtext that was often smothered amidst all that bittersweet rancor.  The Coming Lights dropped in 1995, and by and large, it truly was the proverbial "difficult second record."  The initial volley of tunes ("Beauty Screams," "Somewhere West of Here," etc) capably fulfill the promise of those earlier disks, but Coming Lights slowly unravels into an anticlimactic haze of insular meandering, underwritten lyrics, and material that just hadn't come together yet.  Ironically, the album inadvertently functions as microcosm of Sonic Youth's downhill trajectory on Geffen Records, starting out quite well, then mediocre, and ultimately...fizz.  I'm still sharing Fuse and Point from a 2008 post which you're encouraged to investigate here if Coming Lights' better moments move you.   

01. Beauty Screams
02. Somewhere West of Here
03. Diver
04. Ambivalence
05. Monkey Boy
06. Grover
07. Capo Song
08. The Grainery
09. Jaws of Life
10. XB
11. Collapsing Stars

Hear

Viola Peacock - The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (1996, Bedazzled)

Hard to believe, but it's taken me over a year to get around to following up my initial Viola Peacock entry from last summer.  At the time I remarked that this Ann Arbor, MI troupe had come to the table in 1995 bearing moderate dream pop inclinations, in keeping with one of their home states finest exports of the period, Majesty Crush.  Well, fast forward to 1996 for VP's first (and from what I gather only) proper full length, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, which illustrates the trio's desire to skew further into the vicinity of downer indie-rock, sans much of the woozy tremolo.  The result is an album with lengthier pieces (four surpassing the seven-minute mark in fact) and an unmistakably contemplative ethos.  If you're an aficionado of the droney, albeit tuneful soundscapes concocted by New Radiant Storm King, Sometime Sweet Susan, or even early Afghan Whigs, it would behoove you to give this a spin.  

01. The Big Slip
02. An Angel a Week
03. February
04. The City Behind Us
05. Burnt
06. Gael
07. Chemical Babies
08. Downtime
09. The Old Universe

Hear

Singles Going Single #166 - Sometime Sweet Susan "Kendall" 7" (1994, Futurist)

Milwaukee's long departed Sometime Sweet Susan weren't shy about pushing their collective distortion pedals to the metal, so to speak.  A sinewy amalgamation of quasi dream-pop and the kind of distortion-ridden sprawl Sonic Youth were wont to lay out circa 1990, SSS left a rather indifferent public with two eps, and just as many albums before dissolving into the ether by the mid-90s.  Nearly three years ago I shared the group's Fuse long-player and Point ep, their two most representative recordings.  This single features "Kendall" from the ep, along with the slow-burning non-LP flipside "Tilt-a-Whirl." That latter track firmly subscribes to dissonant, quiet/loud/quiet aesthetics, mildly hinting at Slint and Rodan.  I apologize in advance for the annoying vinyl static.

A. Kendall
B. Tilt-a-Whirl

Hear

Viola Peacock - This Way to the Alley Where They Eat Your Heart ep (1995, Bedazzled)

Viola Peacock were an Ann Arbor, MI trio who were typecast as shoegazers, but beyond the requisite plumes of woozy feedback and gauzy tremolo that typify the genre, they were a pretty damn fine indie rock band at heart.  Like another Michigan outfit from the same era, namely the late, great Majesty Crush, Viola Peacock were equally as concerned with song-structure as atmosphere, if not more so.  An even closer comparison would be Milwaukee's defunct Sometime Sweet Susan, who I profiled a couple years back.  VP also issued a full length, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, which I'll get to at a later date, but for now, soak in this ep.

01. Eating Her Eyes
02. Colder
03. Nothing's Beautiful
04. Giving My Head to Her
05. All Discussions End
06. She Stops the Clocks
07. Postscript: Landscape With Car Crash

Hear

Sometime Sweet Susan - Fuse (1993) & Point ep (1994)

Whomever has tried to kill-off the memory of Milwaukee's Sometime Sweet Susan over the last decade-and-a-half has done a pretty damn good job. In fact, a Google search predominantly pulls up links for dozens of references to a psychotic, hardcore-skin flick from the late '60s that the band usurped their moniker from. I suppose I can rationalize the trio's lack of web presence by virtue of them burning out just before the WWW truly became ubiquitous, but anyway...

Taking their barbed cues from legends like Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, and to a far lesser extent Smashing Pumpkins, Sometime Sweet Susan manicured a scalding amount of dissonance and unruly guitar feedback into something relatively listenable. This isn't to say their debut, Fuse is an unremitting hook-fest. Hardly in fact, but bubbling up from all the noise is the tuneful charge of "Blanket Kiss," which I like to regard as quintessential, indie-rawk gold. For the album's unlikely finale, SSS obliterates Madonna’s “Justify My Love” into an all out shronk-fest, retaining the lyrics and precious little else.

The melody quotient is raised a few notches higher on the even more consistent follow-up ep, Point, that is if you subtract about 15 minutes from the clamorous, meandering "Cecille B. Dumbshit," which in itself totals the better part of a half-hour. The four much briefer cuts that sandwich it are worthy of your respect, particularly if the aforementioned Fuse left any positive impression on your frazzled eardrums.

Sometime... called it a day after their second full-length, The Coming Lights in '95. More recently, singer/guitarist Jim Warchol delved into this curious musical project. 

 

Fuse

01. Piss Take

02. Blanket Kiss

03. 20,000 Volt Monster

04. Installer

05. Beam

06. Crush

07. Hacker Vibe

08. Justify My Love 

 

Point ep

01. Kendall

02. Pathological Liar

03. Tannery

04. Cecille B. Dumbshit

05. Point 

 

Fuse: Hear

Point: Hear