Mark Arm Brings the Monkeywrench to London
Lean, lank, laconic. Moonlighting Mudhoney singer Mark Arm is all three, still. He knows when to snarl and when to hold back. Okay, he may not leap around with such carefree abandon as during his prime, but he sure the hell has presence. He sure looks sharp, in the classic Iggy sense. Electric Children, the Monkeywrench's second album, may have taken eight years to appear (all the band members were kinda otherwise engaged) and be almost completely composed of garage standards and heavy psych/blues fallouts that sound like they've been written 1000 times before, but it doesn't matter. The feeling is what counts. And the Monkeywrench has feeling in trumps.
Arm smiles indulgently as a rabid Tim Kerr from the Lord High Fixers jostles and wrenches a thousand different styles of feedback from his guitar and an overloading amp. Kerr is out of sight. Some of his fingers are gaffer-taped, others have metal tips. How else is he going to shake his guitar hard enough? The smile on Kerr's face as he rampages around the stage, chucking his instrument into the audience for fans to bang along to on "Thirteen Nights," is cheering. "Sugarman" is the best full-on freakout I've witnessed in too many a long year?Kerr's unstoppable now as he rushes about, throwing in wonderful dissonant discords to complement Arm's almost ghostly vocals.
The evening is such fun. Sure, it might be retro, but hell. All of life is retro if you want to take that tack. Arm grins widely as guitarist Tom Price (Gas Huffer) and bassist Steve Turner (Mudhoney) sing a few off-key yeah-yeah harmonies on "Day Trader Shuffle." It's all Turner can do from not donning his 10-gallon hat. It's beyond the ken of any of us not to put our arms around the memories, as the band rushes through Arm's electrifying "In the City Tonight." Loney's raw-throated classic "Love Is a Spider" and "Great Down Here," Turner and Kerr thrashing through the jams like the Groundhogs, MC5 and Blue Cheer had never split the scene. Lubricated Goat drummer Martin Bland is so heavy on the floor he breaks the bass drum pedal within seconds. Like grunge never happened.
Everett True
Negativland's current "True/False" tour is their first time out in seven years, but it might as well have been twice as long. Nearly everything they did tonight showed a Negativland stuck in a world of their own making that hasn't changed politically, culturally or technologically in 15 years?in pop terms, that's a couple of generations. If they were a group of musicians, this might be taken as a sign of devotion. But since Negativland are media critics, a self-described "loose aggregation designed for maximum musical aggravation," their state can only be seen as arrested development. The first few skits of the night staked out Negativland's basic critical plan and cultural reference points. First was their longtime MC and Over the Edge radio show persona, Crosley Bendix, a facile Ronald Reagan dodderer who might have been a slightly clever character when they first used him nearly 20 years ago; next came a church-lady/televangelist type who delivered a funny affirmation of motherhood centering on her son getting scalded by boiling animal grease; then the full "band" did a long series of numbers, using all available audiovisual multimedia, based on 1970s McDonald's commercials and the Coke/Pepsi cola wars.
The "True/False" tour, the group has said, is supposed to be made up of mostly new material. So why does it all seem like a college art project, circa 1986? Nothing from the show suggested that the group has had any contact with the problems or major topics of the 1990s?the new world order, the demise of the Cold War, multiculturalism, the Internet, the new gilded age or Clinton-era centrist politics. In the 80s, I guess, artistic dissenters had easier social targets. In those days, as anybody can tell by glancing at a Dead Kennedys album cover, all it took was some clip-art of wholesome 50s advertising to convey the idea that American culture is a stifling, conformist media dictatorship.
Even the tools Negativland used in performance were out of date and curiously old-fashioned: they had slide and film projectors for video, and "cart" tape machines for audio that should be familiar to anyone who has done time in college radio. The sounds seemed lifted from Art of Noise records, and the band and crew walked around in white scientists' jumpsuits that, again, made them look like extras in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 short. It all came across like a repeat of Kraftwerk's much-hyped tour a couple of years ago, which was fun but left me with the feeling that these once-creative people had given up on making their music relevant to our time and instead crawled back into a 20-year-old model of cultural dissent. For both Negativland and Kraftwerk, what was once futuristic and subversive has been rendered just as quaint and nostalgic as the cultural enemies they once lampooned.
Ben Sisario
The concert, which premiered works by Edward Ruchalski, Miya Masaoka, Marc Mellits and Toby Twining, was being broadcast live on WNYC's New Sounds. This meant John Schaefer was onstage announcing each piece, interviewing the composers and generally adding an air of lugubriousness to the proceedings. The evening showed off the grab bag of techniques and approaches found in the amorphous realm of "new music." But it was also a chance to get reacquainted with the qualities that make classical music, well, classical: an elegant economy of gesture, an unabashed devotion to beautiful sounds.
Marc Mellits' 5 Machines stood out on these grounds. Reminiscent of Reich's work, but with even more complicated cross-rhythms and syncopations, it featured lovely percussion work by Steven Schick, particularly on marimba. This was music as sensual as it was intelligent; I saw audience members swaying, nodding, making little motions with their hands. The visceral appeal of the five-movement piece also highlighted what classical music has in common with rock and pop. Movement four was like a machine going out of control, with a pounding left-hand piano ostinato and loud, percussive strumming. The fifth movement made wonderful use of Miller Theater's acoustics, with the All-Stars stopping abruptly so we could hear the sound die away, then resuming their play. These two movements were a shade over-the-top for my taste, but they clearly pleased the audience: Schaefer couldn't be heard over the thunderous applause, whooping and whistling that greeted the work's conclusion.
Toby Twining's Chrysalid Requiem was not as successful. On paper it looked intriguing, to say the least: a setting of the Latin Mass using just intonation, a system that employs microtones or tones in between those found in traditional major, minor and modal scales. There was also some singing of partials like that of the Tuvans. But the ensemble didn't seem entirely comfortable with the challenging piece: it felt bogged down, diffuse, unfocused. The sound of the 12 vocalists (six men, six women) was unaccountably thin compared to the All-Stars. The main merit of the work was probably in exposing the audience to the text of the Mass, printed in Latin and English in the program. Who could resist lines like, "How great the trembling will be, when the Judge shall come, the rigorous investigator of all things!" Twining's piece is scheduled for a performance later this summer in a church, and I'd be willing to give it another chance there.
This concert as a whole made me think about the importance of venues. It was a free concert. Miller Theater's door was open to the street; in theory anyone could walk in, and in reality anyone did not. Bang on a Can is known for embracing a broad variety of popular and unpopular musics, and it has helped to create and nurture a diverse and dedicated musical community in this city. It's a floating community though, and in some ways an invisible one. Imagine a New York without crippling commercial rents and restrictive zoning laws. What if BOAC had a regular venue, one that could accommodate both this concert and last year's sellout date featuring DJ Talvin Singh? What if the venue had banners and signboards telling passersby what was going on? What if you could hear the music from the street? What might the people's commissioning fund look like then?
Eva Neuberg
And it's going to happen. At first I was annoyed, finding MF Doom's show so packed it was solid bodies from the stage to the door. Up front it must've been about 120 degrees, and as most in attendance were fat, drunk, bratty white indie-rap kids, the place stunk to high hell and elbows were being thrown like frisbees during Freshman Week. Throughout the opening acts El-P, the fat, bratty white MC of Company Flow, sat on a stool on the stage, waiting for his guest verse, as if that's a cool thing to do. The act before MF Doom got the crowd all riled up?it was Cage, another fat, drunk white guy. He was all right. He and El-P both did political rhymes, getting all angry as if they were the victims of racism instead of the beneficiaries. Like Jigga says, that's cool with me, but how about passing the mic to headliner MF before my bratty, out-of-shape ass needs to go find a stool of its own?
Here's an MF Doom political statement, from the verse he apparently wrote in prison, that kicks off the mind-boggling "Doomsday": "While Sidney Sheldon teaches the trife to be trifer/I'm trading science fiction with my man, the live lifer." It took me a few months to figure that one and lot of other puzzling MF Doom lyrics out, but at Wetlands I was surprised to hear the drunk young man behind me shout every word along with the star, directly into my ear. Just like at that Mudhoney show 10 years ago, only this time I know what it means.
Doom doesn't do "Doomsday" but he does do "Rhymes Like Dimes" and "Hey!" and nobody left after Cage, everybody knows the material. MF's wearing a Jets jersey, a straw cowboy hat and a bandanna over his face (sidekick MF Grimm is decked out in camo and a gas mask) and he keeps bitching about the mic sound, which is better than fine. At one point he screams up at the sound booth, "Do I have to reveal my true identity?!" and pulls the bandanna off.
It takes about one minute of set opener "Operation: Greenbacks" to ascertain that the man can flow in real time every bit as uncannily as he does on wax?replicating jagged stream-of-consciousness so realistically the rhymes would sound incidental if they weren't so slick. The 3-D effects he pulls off via counterpoint between his vocals and samples are in operation as well. So goddamn far off the grid this guy is and his songs work like little pop snacks. Both guys I managed to convince to buy the album and I agree wholeheartedly: Listen to MF Doom and you will find extremely alien sentiments bouncing around your head at odd hours, and you will find the experience edifying. Operation: Doomsday is the only rap album I ever even heard of that wasn't given out free to any person or organization, and it seems the guy doesn't do interviews, but he's reaching people. After 20 minutes he asked his road manager?asked him into the mic so everyone could hear?if they'd gotten paid yet, if he in fact had the money for the Wetlands show on his person. The guy nodded, and MF Doom was gone, away from the b.o. smell and the dopey white kids like me who only wanted a few more numbers, who?c'mon?paid for at least a few more, and who really want nothing but the best for him.
Adam Heimlich
"People think that the world revolves around money, but they're wrong," shouts the musical mack as the crowd yells approval. "The world revolves around pussy. Of course, you've gotta have money to get pussy. You've got to look good, you've got to smell good. Then you can get pussy."
Tonight, Williams pulls out most of the stops. A medley of old hits?"Tail Feather," "Pass the Biscuits Please," "Greasy Chicken" and classic proto-grunge blues number "Bacon Fat" among them?is followed by some slick dance moves and a rant on how he can help us all achieve pussy nirvana. In fact, he's begging us to let him achieve pussy nirvana on our behalf. His band?some members of Australia's nasty rockers Beasts of Bourbon and a few Kim Salmon backing musicians?are excellent, especially considering they'd only been practicing for three hours beforehand. They're as snarling and greasy as you'd want. As Williams rasps on the opening track to his genius 1998 album Silky, "I'm agile, mobile and hostile." You better believe it.
Everett True
"Most people provide answers," Stew said, near the beginning of the set. "We provide questions that you already have the answers to."
Those questions concerned the desperate optimism of people who keep going back to rehab, women who deserve better than the men they end up with, the implied sexuality of children's toys, destroyed relationships and the dark side of television news anchormen?observations on the absurdity of postmodern life, and of what people go through to survive it. Stew leads the Negro Problem, a band from Los Angeles that has put out two albums, Post Minstrel Syndrome and Joys & Concerns, and he's one of the most thoughtful and humorous songwriters to come along in years, following squarely in the tradition of skewed and sarcastic social commentary as perfected by Randy Newman and Ray Davies. In their world, and Stew's, life's incongruities come out in the details, whether it's in somebody's personal story of denial and frustration or in snapshots of the larger civic sphere of the rich fucking the poor, while the middle class fucks anybody it can.
At this show, the second of five Wednesday-night gigs the band held in a broken-down, "Unplugged" form?they were only three, though the band has been known to stretch to as many as six?at the Knitting Factory's intimate downstairs Old Office, alienation was the theme. Stew opened with "Ken," the story of Barbie's boyfriend, born gay in a plastic-toy factory and doomed to live a manufactured, phony life. "My name's Ken and I like men," he sings. "But the people at Mattel, the home that I call hell, are somewhat bothered by my queer proclivities." Ken resigns himself to putting up the act of living in your children's bedrooms and loving Barbie, but he dreams about loving G.I. Joe. "I'm your corporate toy, cursed to bring you joy," he says. "So fa-la-la-la, la-la, la-la, la-fuckin'-la."
Later, Stew played a brand-new song called "Come on Everybody, Come," that was a preemptive strike against the moneyed types who are all but destined to gentrify his comfortably cheap and hip neighborhood in L.A. "Come on everybody, come on and fuck up my neighborhood," Stew explained before playing the song, "because you're just going to do it anyway." It was the best song they played all night, and featured excellent backing vocals by Stew's bassist and backup chick, Heidi Rodewald.
Throughout the show, the band's sound was fresh and direct, just guitar and bass for most of the songs, with some minimal keyboard work by Rodewald in spots. They had a drummer, who sat twiddling his thumbs for much of the night while Stew stole the show with nothing but his wry sense of humor and his knack for telling tragicomic vignettes. Stew should learn from this experience: it was much better than the band has ever sounded on record, on which they seem to be afflicted by the L.A. Band Syndrome, tinkering with the songs way too much in the studio and diluting the strength and beauty of the songs themselves. Onstage here, Stew had no lounge-band horns or synth effects to throw into the mix, and it was for the better. He had to rely on his guitar and his voice?a poignant tenor that on "Joys & Concerns" is tampered with too much, at times actually sounding like Ozzy Osbourne's helium falsetto. It took Ray Davies 30 years to figure out that he doesn't need his band at all. Let's hope Stew doesn't take that long.
Despite their bizarre affectations, U.S. Maple transcend mere conceptual success. Nowhere is their depth, irreverence and physical impact more evident than in a live setting. Their Talker-heavy set at Tonic boasted a seismic bottom end, a percussive propulsion and a visual ridiculousness that prevented the show from becoming an arty bore. In fact, it is arguable that U.S. Maple needs to be seen, as well as heard, to be fully appreciated.
Lunging at the air, feeling himself up and gesticulating both wildly and slyly, frontman Al Johnson hissed and seethed like a Komodo dragon. He grunted and whispered harshly, as if he were singing his cut-up lyrics backwards with a mouthful of someone else's bloody teeth. Wearing a purple t-shirt and fighting to keep his oily bangs out of his face, he rasped some of the most sublime syllables ever forced from the throat. Drummer Pat Samson battered his kit in deliberate fits and starts, like a pro who was consciously making mistakes and misplacing his accents, then forming new beats from his repeated errors. He often kept time against, rather than with the rest.
Guitarists Mark Shippy and Todd Rittmann appeared diametrically opposed. The former, slightly plump and draped in a baggy suit, often stood around daydreaming, his moppy blond hair flopping over his eyes. To his right, the slim, confrontational Rittmann hammed it up grotesquely, darting about in his crimson velvet vest and matching choker. Visions of sodomy no doubt danced in his head as he puckered his ruby-red lips, scowled and blurted out abrupt, angry-bored cues to his accomplices. But his contrived behavior couldn't overshadow his unconventional skill; his fingers blurred as he picked at the bridge of his modified stereo-amped Les Paul with deranged dexterity. Both he and Shippy detune their instruments to favor only high-highs and low-lows. Their double-time trebly leads and subsonic, hanging chords suggest amplified rubber bands. Coupled with Samson's constantly accelerating and slowing tempos, the effect is delightfully nervewracking and shrill, yet also spacious and rich; you won't notice that U.S. Maple doesn't have a bassist.
Everything about the music is totally wrong, but it works like a charm. Last summer, touring with Pavement, U.S. Maple drew jeers from agitated college squares. But, like Flipper and Royal Trux before them, they turned their attitude into infamy. A month or two later, they became darlings when they joined an unannounced Sonic Youth during a sold-out night at the Knitting Factory. The large crowd at Tonic also embraced them, but the receptive atmosphere hardly mattered: U.S. Maple still acted like they wanted to molest their fans, then go eat a ham sandwich or something. In this squeaky-clean era of politely quirky underground pop, thank God somebody still has the balls and brains to sound so twistedly intelligent, so coarsely negative and so obnoxiously cool.
So screw "common" knowledge and screw mainstream pop culture along with it. If you dig deep enough, you'll uncover a number of elders who have honed and updated their crafts while refusing to grow cynical, tiresome or lame: Michael Gira, Circle X, the Toiling Midgets, Daevid Allen and dozens of others who, despite their relative obscurity, haven proven that it's possible to mature without mellowing out.
Add the middle-aged members of High Rise, a discordant Tokyo-based power trio, to that list. Since the early 80s, bassist/singer Asahito Nanjo, seizure-guitarist Munehiro Narita and various drummers have been exploring the outer limits of chaotic heaviness and roaring velocity. The band is loosely identifiable as psychedelic punk, but their bombastic, distorted rush is smarter and more substantial, full of darkness, corrosion and unstable energy. Every one of their LPs swings like an electrified nutsac.
High Rise base their deceptively simple songs around hallowed, well-worn riffs, over which Narita solos anarchically, as if he were spray-painting obscenities across an ancient text. Their radical diablerie eludes simple classification, possessing a particularly Japanese affinity for information overload, quickness and noise. Yet despite their exotic pedigree and their prolific, confusing side projects, High Rise aren't import-bin anomalies who will appeal only to record collectors. Their wicked snarl is familiar enough to speak to anyone who likes three chords and a 4/4 beat.
Thanks to Squealer Revisited, a subsidiary of Virginia's Squealer Music (SquealerMusic.com), High Rise's most sought-after albums are finally obtainable and affordable. In 1998 and 1999, the label domestically issued the magnum opus High Rise II (1986), the slower follow-up Dispersion (1992), the self-explanatory Live (1994) and the more polished Disallow (1996), all of which originally appeared on Tokyo's PSF Records. Somebody is obviously buying the things; while the sweaty onlookers at Tonic included the expected avant-cognoscenti and hipsters, the audience also swelled with normals who just wanted to have their colons massaged by the wall-shaking vibrations of Nanjo's overdriven basslines and Narita's gurgling wah-wah fuzz. In fact, the evening went down as High Rise's first-ever sold-out performance.
Fortunately, Nanjo, Narita and percussionist Koji Shimura ignored the hoopla and got down to humorless business, tearing through a 45-minute career-spanning set. Barring the guitarist and bassist's matching leather pants and Nanjo's trademark sunglasses, High Rise aren't about poses, fashion or crowd-pleasing. They refuse to address or make eye contact with their fans. Encores are rare. The players look inward for inspiration, coming off as somewhat aloof, but deadly and focused. Onstage, they religiously stretch their material to the breaking point, nailing their verses and choruses while jamming into hyperkinetic infinity on the lengthy freeform sections that make their tunes soar. Call it harmolodic biker rock.
The Tonic date still wasn't adequately deafening, but it was thankfully louder than the group's intense but low-volume Halloween '98 show at the Mercury Lounge. In addition, the recently recruited Shimura's firm, workmanlike hand suits High Rise's dynamic far better than the jazz-flash of his predecessor, the flamboyant Shoji Hano. The sturdier rhythmic foundation calls more attention to the compositions' true essence?Nanjo's big, grumbling melodies and parenthetical vocals, bisected by Narita's phenomenally blurry peals, runs, hammer-ons and solos. High Rise's balance of businesslike nonchalance and frenzied skill should allow them to remain totally fucking mindblowing until arthritis sets in.
Jordan N. Mamone
Critics despise Bryan Adams. Initially the Canadian pop star was dismissed for being a radio-friendly version of Bruce Springsteen. Then commentators started comparing the gravel-throated crooner's body of work to Rod Stewart's fallow 80s period. The British public soon came to regard the affable songwriter as something akin to the devil after his maudlin ballad "Everything I Do (I Do It for You)" (from Prince of Thieves) topped the UK charts for months. In recent years, Adams has moved away from leather-jacketed rock, preferring instead to write chart-bound ballads for the ladies. This has caused even more ridicule. Recently, he's been experimenting with dance rhythms and duetting with the odd Spice Girl. Surely, this man is beyond the pale?
Not to judge from this performance in Melbourne. For starters, he has such a rapport with his working-class audience. Frequently, he stops a song and entreats his fans to sing louder, not continuing until he's satisfied the requisite volume has been attained. For the unrepentantly nostalgic "Summer of '69," the audience sang the first two verses, with virtually no accompaniment. It's touching to be privy to so many shared dreams. For "When You're Gone" he invites a starstruck female up onstage to duet with him: that she is unable to hit a single note only adds to the song's charm. On another occasion, the bassist/singer becomes diverted by a passing cricket, instructing his lighting engineer to shine a spotlight on the insect until it has scuttled to safety.
These diversions on their own would be enough to forgive Adams most of his crimes against music, but the fact is that he's actually not bad live. Especially when he keeps his music simple, stripped-back to a basic rock boogie that uncannily recalls Status Quo. Certainly, he's been taking lessons in presentation. The set is comprised of eight large amps placed either side of the drums, and a simple light show. The band is a similarly unpretentious three-piece. Even "Everything I Do" sounds fine-ish tonight, performed acoustically. Adams self-deprecatingly jokes beforehand that "it's the most famous song ever written for the didgeridoo," before intentionally messing up the start.
Everett True
Hank III's songs are just about getting fucked up and hootin' and hollerin'. Shelton Williams, 26, reportedly spent his early years with little or no connection to Bocephus or the rest of the Williams clan, raised by his mother. He hung out in Georgia and eventually played in some punk bands. Then he got the idea to masquerade as the scion of the Williams family of country music. His debut was The Three Hanks, released by Curb records in 1996, a piece of exploitation matched only by "There's a Tear in My Beer"?Bocephus again.
Tonight the Rodeo Bar is packed with people just dying to get one glimpse of the grandson of Hank Williams, and who can blame them. But there's nothing to see, or hear. The guy looks a little like Hank I. So do half the guys in here, minus all the arm-length tattoos. So he has a voice that sort of sounds like granddad. So what. Pinch your nose and you can do the same. On the Rodeo Bar's p.a. system, the low end of Hank's mic has been cut out to make his voice more closely resemble the thin whine of Hank I's old records. His songs are harmless ditties that chug along, a pantomime of his grandfather's music that is only half alive; what life it has is due only to its essential deviousness.
I would like to hear what the real Shelton Williams sounds like. He's got to have some real emotions. He grew up without a father and has a $300-a-week pot habit. Why this elaborate disguise? Why drop punk? If that's what he loves, and if that's where he's found his voice?not the voice of a relative he never knew who died nearly 20 years before he was born?then why not stick with it? I can think of no American musical descent more fascinating or telling than a line that goes from the proto-country of Hank I to the bloated glitz of Hank II to the punk rock of Shelton, the prodigal grandson. Come on, Shelton, let it out.
Ben Sisario
I attended the release party for the album, and what stands out in my memory is the sport coat worn by keyboardist Eric Morrison. It blew my mind, because I still have nightmares about catching Emerson, Lake and Palmer (or was it Powell?) on television when I was 14, and Keith Emerson had a jacket just like it. Emerson was even more pretentious than you can imagine; he quoted Copland and Mussorgsky in his solos, and then he'd walk around the keyboard and play from the other side. Just as a gimmick.
I'm not bringing this up because I have a problem with Morrison's fashion sense (I've been known to wear tweed myself), but because all those ELP associations didn't just flutter away after a few songs. As much as I wanted to believe that XIV was a clean slate, the roots are too deep. I should have known from the number of effects pedals before me that I would hear no spartan quartet. They opened with one of the two songs on XIV that I don't like, which is called "Children's Suite:3: Displaying Prizms" and sounds like "Point of Know Return"-era Kansas interpreting the E.T. score. The next hour and a half was an unfocused haze, but a steadily improving venture, in that its indulgences started to sound dirtier and druggier, more Spaceman 3 psychedelic than Gentle Giant psychedelic. At the end they were kind enough to finally perform the anthemic "Burden," the first proper song on XIV, but by then it sounded...well, too stripped down, too concise. Where were the keyboard flourishes, the layers of African percussion? I realized I'd been there too long, went home, and put on a Neil Young record.
Sean Howe
It must be difficult being Gillespie. People expect so much of you. Wanting to get higher. And higher. Expecting continual revolutions in the wake of 1991's epoch-defining Screamadelica. Never understanding that the secret of music is to get wasted and stay wasted. But they should take a look at Primal Scream. They should listen to records like the nihilistic Kowalski and much misunderstood Give Out but Don't Give Up. Primal Scream aren't about revolution, they just want to have fun. ("What is it that you want to do?/We want to be free to do what we want to do/We want to get loaded and have a good time.") Turn the lights on low, freak out. Play "Moving On Up," the whole crowd singing along. Rap like the genre's just been invented ("Pills"), inciting people to riot/dance with your fucked-up speech. Sink down into a deep, stoned trance with some of the funkiest bass riffs ever made by white boys.
Primal Scream may be on the cutting edge of dance, through their association with Chemical Brothers and David Holmes, but Gillespie, like Joe Strummer before him, is in love with rock 'n' roll as the Rolling Stones, Sly and the Family Stone and the MC5 defined it. Loud, in-your-face and aware.
Gillespie tonight barely says a word to his audience. He bobs and weaves and feints like a boxer who could be knocked down by a punch from the weediest of opponents. The muscle comes in the three guitarists?My Bloody Valentine's noise-terrorist Kevin Shields foremost among them?and massive, pumping bass lines from ex-Stone Roses Mani. They rage through a surprisingly lively version of "Rocks." It's no surprise they finish the evening with a highly charged version of "Kick Out the Jams!" Their whole shtick nowadays is an extended call to arms. To rock. Rock is almost dead, but you're still in love with rock 'n' roll. What to do? Pump the volume up, take the stage with a blistering, stunning array of strobe guns and flashing lights...and then pump the volume some more. Primal Scream are so loud they make teeth vibrate. The new single "Swastika Eyes" is almost enervating in its intensity, fully spiteful. And yet it's obvious they'd turn the volume up higher if they could. Primal Scream are such a cliched, classic rock band in so many respects?the guitar freakouts, the covers ("I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night"), the rock encores, the way Gillespie holds his tambourine like a younger, sleazier Jagger. But it's because they're so in love with rock 'n' roll that they have to keep reinventing the genre and creating songs like the four-on-the-floor "Exterminator" and jazz-centric "Blood Money." That's why "Accelerator" is so frantic and distorted, why "If They Move, Kill 'Em" sounds light-years ahead of its time. If Primal Scream stops, the rock might stop. And that would never do.
Everett True