Then I stumbled across “Wormwood Star” by Kim Phuc in the badlands of sparse MySpace portals. Listening to that track the first time, I honestly didn’t feel like writing a word; I felt like I wanted to do the following things in increasingly insane order: run through a goddamn wall, throw a trashcan through a store front, toss a barrage of molotov cocktails into the ground floor of some faceless corporate headquarters, and finally, start an anarchist collective with the intent of deploying vague plots of domestic terrorism against big business.

Granted, that line of thinking lasted about ten minutes, but the residual effects of the swaggering, white hot rage that radiated from that track lingered much longer. I don’t think I could have asked for a better song to soundtrack a dreary, unemployed Pittsburgh January, and “Wormwood Star” managed to sloppily cut through the bullshit of my rock critic pretensions like a rusty bandsaw. While trying to articulate an opinion on the song, and Kim Phuc in general, all I could muster to a friend of mine was this sentiment: “Dude, that song fucking destroys.”

And now, three years later, I was blown away by the fact that I saw the black, monolithic cover of Kim Phuc’s debut LP, Copsucker, released on Iron Lung Records in late 2011, sitting ominously on the display rack at Mind Cure Records in Polish Hill. The album, patched together from the slew of seven inch singles they accrued over an eight year existence, is a fantastic summary of the punk/post-punk sound lead singer Rob Henry and co. have been cultivating for the better part of a decade. And while band members have rotated over the course of Kim Phuc’s history (Henry and guitarist Ben Smartnick are the only founding members left) new additions guitarist Eli Kasan, bassist Corey Lyons and drummer Tom Payne are all Pittsburgh punk scene veterans from bands like The Mary Celeste, Forward Motion, and Aus Rotten.

With a phalanx of contributors coming from different points on the “punk” spectrum, Copsucker proves to be an eminently listenable, extremely immediate record that still manages to capture the raw energy of Kim Phuc’s intense live shows (full disclosure: seeing them perform live is not for amateurs). The metal/hardcore punk 1,2,3 punch of “Heathens,” “Prostitute” and “Black Triangle” has the group playing at their fastest and loudest, showcasing their lineage from underground heroes of yore (Black Flag, The Germs). The urgent, paranoid post-punk of “Equinox,” “23,” and “Razorblades” however provides a unique dimension to Kim Phuc’s energy: jittery but still pummeling guitar work coupled Henry’s confident songwriting and subtle ear for melody.

But the group still seems most comfortable channeling the sinister proto-punk of Raw Power-era Stooges on the lurching “Weird Skies” and the cocksure menace of “Wormwood Star.” The latter of which recieved a new coat of paint with slightly cleaner production (still not detracting from the song’s live-to-tape feeling grit) and a boost to Henry’s vocals, which illuminates some truly terrifying, Yeatsian lyrics, talking about summoning some unholy creation from the ether to terrorize the world “Second Coming” style: “I have made you from my thoughts/summoned you from the stars/set you loose to tear apart/you’re my wormwood star.”

In the end,  this batch of songs is the definitive document of one of Pittsburgh’s most revered bands. And while the production is a little tighter and the edges are a little cleaner from past releases, Copsucker is nothing less than the soundtrack to a riot, reverberating with the same unstable, white hot blast of punk fury Kim Phuc made their name on.

Also, check out the review over at Nakturnal’s Nak You Out blog: Kim Phuc – Copsucker LP Review 

Buy Copsucker here

Kim Phuc – “Wormwood Star”

Mellowhype’s first full-length BLACKENEDWHITE has proved to be both Odd Future’s latest document of incendiary weirdness and its greatest sonic departure. It’s also the first OF creation produced not by wheezing, wise-beyond-his-years ring leader, Tyler the Creator, but by Mellowhype’s own Left Brain.

While there are touchstones of OF’s now trademarked sound (distorted, sea sick string samples, burping 8-bit synth lines, shockingly misogynistic and violent lyrics) on tracks like “Primo” and “Brain,” Left Brain doesn’t hesitate to use all of the tools at his disposal: the Waka Flocka Flame-inspired gunshot riddled beat on “Gun Sounds” and “Dead Deputy,” the Charlie Brown Christmas sample and R&B hook on “Hell” and the MF Doom-styled jazz piano line of “Loco.”

Hodgy Beats, the rapping half of Mellowhype, does most of the heavy lifting lyrically, but doesn’t turn to the homicidally unhinged shock rap the crew has made their name on. Instead, his flow is airy and youthful, similar to the cocksure insouciance of Wiz Khalifa or Wale, but contains just enough edge to thrive within Tyler’s well established OF aesthetic.

BLACKENEDWHITE is a quality debut for Mellowhype and another striking release for the new princes of the underground in Odd Future, proving they have no intention of resting on their laurels won from a year of very intense, very well-deserved hype.

“Pindrop” opens Black Cobain’s Board Administration debut mixtape Now with some prescient words for, presumably, the east coast hip-hop masses: “Today is a good day for greatness people…we don’t got next we got now.” For followers of the Wale-lead, DC/Northern Virginia label, “now” seems like a slippery concept. “Now” was supposed to be the major label takeover of  Wale’s 2009 release Attention Deficit, an album that sold small and effectively bounced the District’s own go-go funk beat out of the commercial rap picture.

For Alexandria, VA native Black Cobain, newest signee to BA, “now” doesn’t necessarily represent the endless clichés of modern hip-hop that supposedly produce universal acceptance (money, girls, booze, auto-tune, club-ready techno beats, repeat). With a studied passion for the region’s rich heritage of overlooked soul and funk informing the majority of Now’s production, the Nirvana-monikered MC uses the easy flow of late 70’s DC go-go beat to effortlessly deliver sturdy verses tinged with self awareness and just enough thoughtful vigor. 

And while “Pindrop” does introduce Cobain’s first mixtape with some confident boasting, the beat, showered in twinkling guitar whirls that wouldn’t sound out of place on the Dolemite soundtrack, is so relaxed it reveals the quietly knowing, almost cocksure moments latent in Cobain’s best rhymes: “What’s your motivation?/everybody’s got a past/That we all got a past/flow fragile, pardon, you don’t want no broken glass.”

Absent from Now, for the most part, is the spastic double time percussion of 90’s go-go (which Wale famously sampled for “Pretty Girls”) as Cobain sticks mostly to the old school, wah-wah guitar and bass on tracks like “Perception,” “Afraid,” and “The Board.” The last of which shows Cobain at his most confrontational, twisting his liquid flow around devastating couplets (“I got this style notarized/and if they listen closely they know this mine”), subtle dismissals of posturing MC’s (“we don’t socialize/we just organize/we don’t know those guys”) and thesis statements (“I’m not them/they associates, n****/I’m a doctrine”).

In between the soulful throw backs, Cobain tries out a few different styles with varying success. A Neptunes-inflected party jam in “Bottles on Me,” the triumphantly stomping “It’s Cobizzy,” and the ominously glitch-laden “Tune In” all prove to be indelible change-ups, but the cream of the crop comes with closer and mixtape title cut “Now.”

“Now” proves to be the perfect combination of past and present: a slow-burn built on a tumbling horn-sample, simple break-beat and Black Cobain’s perfectly modulated flow. It’s a fitting and intriguing conclusion, especially as Cobain allows his confidence, slightly wavering over the course of 19 tracks, to finally degrade into paranoia (“Now I’m in discussions/ discussions within communities/it started as a dream/but they trying to Martin Luther me”).

All in all, the newest addition to the Board Administration shows his stripes and arrives on the scene exhibiting a maturity and clarity of vision that is practically unmatched among debut mixtapes. Pay attention people: this man is poised to make big moves in the DC/Northern VA scene, and hopefully beyond.

Black Cobain Now Review – Jenesis Magazine 

Big Hurry

Doused in shimmering guitar work and bass riffs, Big Hurry’s Gets Me Low ignites quickly to burn twice as bright for half as long. The short-burst, five-song EP has fiery lead singer Kelly Tobias and arena-ready drummer Dani Buncher unleashing searing performances that continue smolder with each listen. The beautifully anthemic title cut is a keeper, a dynamic indie rocker that effortlessly earns its track-one status. By Patrick Bowman

Greazy Duzit
Mucho Greazy (self-released)

Tongue-twisting emcee Greazy Duzit steps out of the shadow of Pittsburgh-based rap group Shindiggaz with his debut release Mucho Greazy, a hard, heady blend of esoteric street poetics and blistering underground beats. Keeping pace with Greazy’s hardened flow is Shindiggaz’ DJ Thermos, who produced much of the album, crafting dense tapestries of off-kilter samples anchored by varying drum patterns. Standout “The Name of That Tune” has the duo at their razor-sharp best. By Patrick Bowman

Run, Forever
The Devil, and Death, and Me (Solidarity Records)

Run, Forever’s full-length debut, The Devil, and Death, and Me, is a rough-and-tumble rocker, filtering Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run through decades of beer-soaked garage punk and just enough religious imagery to keep the proceedings on the edge of an existential crisis.  And while the track “A Sequence of Sad Events” reduces existence to just that, it possesses the dimensions of a life-affirming anthem, full of throaty calls to action and desperate demands for something more. By Patrick Bowman

Satin Gum possess the spirit of golden age indie rock in their bones. The Pittsburgh quartet have unabashedly become the torchbearers for the sound of late 80′s-early 90′s college radio, easily adopting the free wheeling guitar work, three-part harmonies and slacker persona that made bands like The Replacements and Pavement, and Dinosaur Jr. all but synonymous with the adjective “indie” for the better part of a decade. Their 2009 release LP contained flashes of 70′s power pop  gloss (re: Big Star, The Flamin Groovies) but tracks like “I Got a D.U.I. Babe” and “Dance Me Home” were ultimately beholden to waves of distortion pitched with melody, quaking with a current of romantic bombast just beneath the surface.

However, the five song blast of their latest release EP 2 completely embraces their American underground roots, passionately evoking patron saints Malkmus, Westerberg and Pollard while churning out one indelible rocker after another. Don’t get me wrong: these songs are not mediocre photo copies of “Cut Your Hair.” I truly believe Satin Gum are men out of time, not merely paying lip service to their influences but embodying them without cynicism or outward pretension.

Lead singer/songwriter Brian Spekis keeps the themes familiar; the perils/insanity of young love tinged with mystified humor. Sepkis can’t help but make each song about a girl, but a particular kind of (absolutely fucking ridiculous) girl. On “Hip Shake Heartbreak”  Spekis sings about the crazy chick with feminine wiles he can’t help coming back to repeatedly, lamenting winding up in her bed “right back where I began.” “Flea Markets and Libraries” details a search for that mousy bookworm who looks cute under her Lisa Loeb glasses. Spekis has her floating in and out of his dreams to chiming tambourines, asking “Where do I find her?/In the Country or in the city?”  He finally succumbs to her secluded weirdness and assumes she’s “talking to her cats instead of me.”

And finally on “Love Not of this World” it’s the girl whose more fascinated by science fiction than her current boyfriend, dreaming “of cruising with Hal 9000/reading lips and killing dudes one by one.” This is a girl whose turned on by Darth Vader and blowing up planets in far away galaxies, her sense of scale is a bit exaggerated. The fleeting emotions of the slacker kid pining after her are fairly insignificant when compared to the Galactic Empire.

My analysis may have seemed needless, but the songwriting demands this level of attention; each track is like a little vignette of immature absurdity, as Spekis and co. strike the perfect balance of longing and hilarious confusion amongst all those J. Masics power chords. All in all, EP2 is another step in the right direction for Satin Gum, a band who works their ass off to get their sound focused and memorable, wishing away 2010 like it’s Athens, Georgia in 1993.

Next show: We are Scientists, Bad Veins, and Satin Gum, 8/15 @ Brillobox

Buy EP 2 here

Satin Gum – “Flea Markets & Libraries”

Satin Gum “Love Not of This World”

Meeting of Important People’s 2009 self-titled debut release was a sketchbook of small details and stolen moments, stitched together as lyrically impressionistic vignettes and set against too many perfectly cultivated harmonies to count. The high points (“Mother’s Pay More” and “I Know Every Street”) offered glimpses of  a dreamworld populated by desperate youth and blood thirsty babes, detailing the lost nights and lost loves that never existed.

While that wistful album resembled something like  a book of  poetry, the group’s current effort, the seven song Quit Music EP available for download here, comes closer to a collection of short stories with each song possessing slivers of plot, drama and the fragile soul of small town life.  Lead singer/songwriter Josh Verbanets provides his characters with rousing backgrounds of British Invasion pop, bristling with moments of AM radio melody and world beating power chords.  Slowly, I could not shake the comparison to The Kinks and their small town/countryside opus The Village Green Preservation Society. Tracks after the jump.

Pieces of the story and town are small, but poignant: a father reconciling his skepticism and informing his sons to show hospitality to drifters looking for lodging  (“Training Song”), a man convinced he should shed all of his possessions and embrace Jesus as the messiah (“Jesus Song”), the boastings of status and reputation in a city that seems like a distant and unobtainable dream (“They Love Me in the City”),  a man’s fantasy of a perfect wife that, he claims, can focus his rudderless existence (“Country Wife”). Even the cover selected (Every Mother’s Son – “Come on Down to My Boat”)  tells the tale of a boy determined to impress the fisherman’s daughter by bringing her down to his boat.

The characters in these stories are grasping at fleeting notions of being a better person or doing bigger things, ideas that hit pretty close to home in Pittsburgh (the most small-town-like big city of them all). They may be running in place or only close to attaining the illusion of happiness, but their desire still has mass and weight. Of course, Meeting of Important People wouldn’t be Meeting of Important People unless they underlined all that existential dilemma with jaunty compositions of vintage power pop bliss,  littering these tracks with hooks and harmonies that would put most local acts to shame and slowly turning the sad irony of these meek characters into sincere hopefulness.

Meeting of Important People went back to their roots and assessed their influences with the Quit Music EP, resulting in their most fully realized and focused work to date.  It will be exciting to see the guys try these songs out in a live setting and with two upcoming EP release shows (7/24 21+ @ Thunderbird Cafe, 7/30 all ages @ The Warhol) we will all have chance soon enough.

Meeting of Important People – Jesus Song

Meeting of Important People – Country Wife

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion are six years from their last release and about 14 years removed from the eye of the storm they created. After the group’s initial three record output in the early 90′s that focused on fusing noise rock, hip-hop drum patterns and delta blues together by any means necessary ending with 1994′s Orange, the boys had varying results sprawling in every goddamn direction. Regardless, their live shows were legendary. Each set came down like a ton of bricks on fire, showering crowds with heaving masses of seething New York City rage and white hot blues swagger. And no one really attempted to challenge The JSBX’s persona as new age, hardcore bluesmen;  the group predated the short lived garage rock revival of  The White Stripes, Mooney Suzuki and The Hives (among others) by a good five years.

Until 1996, however, the pieces had yet to come together in the studio sessions to recreate the incendiary nature of the JSBX’s best performances. But with Now I Got Worry, The Blues Explosion finally coalesced their influences into a sweaty, volatile stick of dynamite, injecting the recklessness of their infamous live act into the raw production techniques that pumped up tracks like “Skunk,” “Wail,” and “Fuck Shit Up” with red levels of hairy distortion. The album is a shotgun blast of the Stooges proto-punk, Muddy Waters slide guitar and rockabilly’s cruising road-ready weirdness, easily sounding as fresh as it did 14 years ago. Tracks after the jump.

Shout Factory! has just released Now I Got Worry (along with seminal live LP Controversial Negro) as an expanded reissue, complete with 12 b-sides and unreleased tracks as well as four radio spots.  For JBSX super fans,  this volume is a must have, documenting almost the entire studio session that brought Now I Got Worry to fruition.  Coupled with the group’s reunion tour, which makes a stop at Diesel later tonight, The Blues Explosion is back on the radar, ready to recapture some of that raw, unmitigated insanity that established them as iconoclasts of independent, American rock way back in the 20th century.

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion – Skunk

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion – Love All of Me

Within Pittsburgh’s stable of underground rock bands, there seems to be a handful of factions that have organically formed.  These factions are by no means militant (nearly all of the bands in the scene appear to be friends or at least friendly with each other) but anyone paying attention to Pittsburgh’s musical output can certainly notice a trend. I’m painting with a broad brush, yes (and this is no way a dig at these bands), but I do see a distinction between the unabashed indie/power-pop coalition of Good Night, States, Donora, The Triggers, and Meeting of Important People (among others),  and the alt-country folks that include bands like The Harlan Twins, City Dwelling Nature Seekers and Boca Chica.

There are other groups that either straddle the line or reside in their niche a little more tightly than the rest (Lohio, Big Hurry, Satin Gum, David Bernabo+The Assembly) but for the most part, the lines are drawn. Within this interesting dynamic, enter Horse or Cycle,  a group that evolved from the bedroom project of lead singer/songwriter Liam Cooney into the current quartet comprised of Cooney, Rick Molsen, Steven Stens and Chris Ryan, four men who have done more than a few stints in a handful of the bands listed above. With their debut release The Flood Season, Horse or Cycle have managed to carve out their own little corner in the Steel City with an amalgam of swaggering rock coolness and boozy country romanticism, soulful, charging and world weary in the same breath. They are the closest thing Pittsburgh has to a super group and they play the part:  cool, composed and humming with the veteran’s confidence that comes with a few years of banging around the local scene.

The Flood Season focuses mainly on switching back between hazy, southern rockers like ”Oh Captain, My Captain,” a blatant honky tonk homage that eventually overcomes its initial muddled mix and evolves into a spirited country fried romp, and the straight up 90′s alternative rock of tracks like  ”The Last Days on the Block” which kicks the muscular drumming up another level and removes any strains of southern twang.

Horse or Cycle’s finest moments comes with a pair of tracks, “Two Hearts” and “Dreaming About the Vinelands of New York,”  that manage to find a solid middle ground between the insouciant alt-country vibe and the straight ahead, no bullshit rock.  The drumming on “Dreaming” pushes through the mix and makes way for both caterwauling guitars and towering solos while “Two Hearts” recalls Modest Mouse at their least goofy, swinging back and forth on a monster guitar hook and loping baseline.

The Flood Season is a a solid beginning for a band that’s been around the block a few times, but it still possesses a couple of tracks (“The Well,” “Bed of $100″) that  become mired hazy mixes and slower beats. If Horse or Cycle sticks to their guns (country-infused alternative rock, fast as hell and turned up to 11) the stage is set for a blistering sophomore release.

Horse or Cycle – Two Hearts

Horse or Cycle – Dreaming About the Vinelands of New York

Tom Fec, a.k.a Tobacco, is from Pittsburgh but he isn’t from Pittsburgh.  The 98′ Hampton High School grad isolates himself so significantly from any tangible sense of location that it’s hard to slap a Steel City label on his music.  His MySpace page formerly stated he was from “Rural Western PA/Vietnam.” Granted that is one absurd detail of many surrounding the enigmatic driving force behind Black Moth Super Rainbow (a band that revels in high degrees of anonymity)  but I can’t help embellishing this fact to explain the man’s entire creative persona: a maniacal solopsist, celebrating non-sequiturs with quixotic delight, determined to stretch his few remaining ties to reality well beyond their breaking point.

And with his May 25th release Maniac Meat, Tobacco deliriously pulls you down the rabbit hole even further, brashly slamming psychedelic electronic pyrotechnics into hard block, hip-hop beats and towering guitar wails, all the while making his 2008 release Fucked Up Friends look downright minimalist in comparison.

Maniac Meat is escalation of the highest order, not only building off Friends’ high points (“Street Trash,” “Truck Sweat” and “Dirt”) but completely obliterating any notion of the sometimes too-precious synth-psychedelia-folk of BMSR’s Eating Us in its wake. It’s a hedonistic fantasy teetering on the edge of a nightmare, capable of  both blowing up a dance floor and scoring Dario Argento’s Susperia. When Meat is pumping on all levels, Tobacco unleashes his primal urges in walls of garish, throbbing stomps, louder and more unhinged than anything BMSR has ever produced.

The opening track “Constellation Dirtbike Head” wastes no time, beginning its pummeling assault mid beat as Tobacco warns “don’t eat the berries around you/don’t eat the berries around you.” The bridge doubles as a synth/guitar freak out and drum beat break down, splashing hi-hats and snare fills before snapping back into its ominous rhythm. “Lick the Witch” and “Grape Aerosmith Feat. Beck” both bump amidst a similar, unusual sample: a unique hydraulic infused riff that fill the tracks with a robust volume and sounds as if something is deflating.

On “Aerosmith,” Tobacco deftly uses Beck Hansen’s (one of two tracks Beck guested on) vocals like ethereal calls from the fog, highlighting his innate ability to integrate the multiple moving parts of each song into a single cohesive whole. Fec’s knack for avoiding the pitfalls of kitchen-sink syndrome (knowing what tools to use when and how often) make the entirety of Maniac Meat immersive rather than overwhelming.

And while the heaving slog of “Sweatmother” shows Tobacco flirting with heavy metal, it proves to be Meat’s most  controlled and sinister track.  Ditching his usual vocoder, Tobacco performs with a slithering, breathy vocal on par with a voicemail from Jeffery Dahmer. Along with a walloping, electronica-drenched guitar riff and skittering 808 beat, “Sweatmother” is lean and terrifying, avoiding any sense of dreamy delirium and going right for the jugular.

“Fresh Hex,” the other Beck/Tobacco collaboration, is as cobalt cool  as “Sweatmother” is evil, a quick bumping bad-ass of a song pushed forward by Hansen’s white boy raps (“canary in the coal mine”). Tobacco lays off the dreamscape atmosphere and recalls the free wheeling vibe of hard charging Odelay cuts “Novocaine” and “Minus.” Meanwhile Beck is more engaging than he has been in years, backed up by snarling guitars and a thick boom-bap beat. It narrowly snags best of show from “Sweatmother” out of sheer coolness.

All in all, Tobacco has pushed his own genre forward by doing more than simply piling it on.  Yes, Maniac Meat is big heaping psychedelic-hop mindfuck, but it works because of its brash exuberance and party ready vibe; a mindfuck sundae if you will.  Without the fun button, Meat would be a bit of a trial for the senses.  But for Tobacco, it all begins and ends with keeping those endorphins levels in the red. After that, he’s got you by the balls.

Tobacco – Fresh Hex (Feat. Beck)

Tobacco – Sweatmother

The rotating band of Pittsburgh-based MC’s and producers known as Shindiggaz said hello to 2010 armed only with shit-eating grins and two pitch-perfect debut projects:  Prime Time Lineup and Saturday Morning Special, an absurdly hilarious couplet of mix tapes literally busting at the seams with nostalgic beats mined from late eighties-early nineties television theme songs.

Prime Time Lineup comes wall to wall with dismantled music from some of network television’s most iconic shows that includes Cheers, Family Matters, Full House, and Married With Children to name a few.  Saturday Morning Special features themes from the same era’s most popular Saturday morning cartoons that will have anyone in their twenties giggling with fan-boy nerdness.  Music from Ducktails, Inspector Gadget, G.I. Joe, Transformers and Thundercats all make appearances in various forms. Tracks after the Jump.

It helps that Shindiggaz feature a pretty deep bench, and with  MC’s Dutch Rollin Rebel, SoulDivide, Greazy Duzit, Zigzag, Kid A, Mr. Brink, producer DJ Thermos and frequent associate MC Liquid Bones all playing it straight and making their beats and verses work hard, Prime Time and Saturday Morning move well beyond mere novelties.  For me, the whole production amounts to an insanely fun romp through the warped reality of my childhood television memories; memories I can barely discern from those of my actual childhood. With that in mind, I reviewed my favorite tracks below, hope you have as much fun as I did.

Shindiggaz – Family Matters

Shindiggaz – G.I. Joe

Shindiggaz – Thundercats

Shindiggaz – Love & Marriage

Download both mix tapes here