The Dutchess & The Duke - 'Never Had a Chance' b/w 'Scorpio' (Hozac)

For some reason I was really taken by She's the Dutchess, He's the Duke, the first of two albums from this Pacific northwest pair. The "duke" sings lead over hard-folk strumming, with the "dutchess" doing backing vocals, and that's about it. He has a real early-Stones affect to his voice, and the whole exercise feels pretty retro -- but with really, really solid songwriting. This single continues the feel, starting with 'Never Had a Chance' which is good, set up over a twangy guitar part accompanied by a tambourine or some other such percussion. But it's the b-side, 'Scorpio', that kills. It's a sad, simple look back at lost love, with a dual-vocal chorus of 'I'm a long, long way from you / my heart....' that's incredible familiar, derivative even, yet un-pinpointable. The Duke truly dominates this band - his vocals are double-tracked even - but as soon as this song ends, I start it over. I'm fairly certain that this pair has split up and he's gone on to make records as Case Studies, who also made a pretty good album. On pretty green vinyl, too. Let the early 60s live on forever.

The C&B - '1991 pre-Shadow Ring recordings' (Siltbreeze)

These early recordings aren't a shock to fans of early Shadow Ring - the same broken songforms and production techniques that characterise their first few LPs are audible on these four tunes. 'Kent Custer' (which contains the lyric 'shadow ring') is built around household percussive flopping and a a repetitive, dumb 3-note acoustic messriff. It's practically 'City Lights', but it's actually the C&B, which was short for The Cat and Bells Club. There's some tapework but not much interest in dark, searing electronics or the strange collages that exemplify later work by these guys, but that's okay. As a strategy against cohesion, 'Cave of Ice Cats' is unparalleled. I've never been to Folkestone but I can envision a dingy, cold room where these two kids were sitting around a dictaphone bashing about, the stale smell of old cigarette smoke clinging to everything. The audio dropouts are very much an essential component of this 7", but the volume dips and the tape decimation that gives the acoustic guitar such a thin, broken tone. 'Father's Dead' tells the story you'd expect while someone makes sandwiches. We hear a glimpse of terrestrial TV in the background while Harris tells his tale, and there's maybe a bit more of a sense of traditional spoken performance here than we'd ever get later (think 'Lighthouse'!) I'm so, so glad that this came out though the contents aren't surprising in any way whatsoever. Torches forward for the future, or what the future was from here.

The Better Automatic (Resin)

Out of the three main blogs here (for LPs, CDs and 7"s), I think this 7" one is probably the most fun. The LPs and CDs I keep pretty 'clean', as I freak out pretty much annually and sell/toss things. But 7"s get away with murder - I don't notice what I have, often forgetting about them entirely -- and thus you get weird records like this, which I have carted around with me for 10+ years now. The Better Automatic are a now-forgotten band from Washington, DC who I think I set up a show for in 1998. When they came through they were a fun, lively mod-pop band (or at least that's how I remember them). This 7"s downplays melodic hooks in favor of punchy, more shouty vocals and anthemic guitar pricks. It's almost impossible for me to listen to this without thinking of Fugazi, but not because of the DC connection - because the vocalist sounds exactly like Guy Piccioto and the songwriting resembles 'Margin Walker' more than a little. That's not to say that these songs about Buckmister Fuller and sock monkeys are without their charm - and I can see the 17-year-old me getting really excited about this - but listening now, it's just begging to be forgotten. I don't know why they reminded me of the Jam live - maybe they changed sounds after this 7" came out, or maybe my memory is just extremely faulty. I also realise that this is the type of record I should be digitising and uploading MP3s of.... this project decided not to do that, because otherwise I'd end up digitising my entire record collection and that's way more labour than I'm willing to commit to. But what's the point of reading my poorly-written 3 sentence review of this band if you can't hear it yourself? I highly doubt anyone else out there is gonna be ripping this. So, if you really want to hear The Better Automatic, comment here and maybe in the new year I'll get to it. (oh, how promising!)