Records

No Radio Signal

The Shoulder Lane · Hazard Zone · 1979

Recorded in two nights in Amarillo, with the pedal steel tracked last and, according to the sleeve, louder than the engineer advised. The engineer was wrong. Dee Ochoa's steel is the weather on this record: it comes in across "Amarillo at 3 a.m." like a front off the Caprock and leaves "Long Way Home from Alpine" sounding like the last forty miles of something. Wade Tolliver sings plainly and does not oversell a line, which is rarer than it should be. "Fort Stockton Tire" and "What's Your Twenty" are working songs written by people who did the work. Ten songs, no filler, and the best country record we have heard from Texas this year.

Frances Odegaard · No. 314, Sep 13, 1979

Get Saucy

Spanking The Sauce · Back Door · 1979

Six members of one New Orleans restaurant kitchen, the dishwasher included, recorded in that kitchen after close over two Mondays, with the tape machine on the pass and the microphones hung from the pot rack. You can hear the hood fans. You would not want it otherwise. Nothing starts until Rosalie Fontenot's bass does; Louis Duplessis keeps time with a soup ladle and sings like the last ticket is out. Hieu Tran's saxophone solos run the length of a ticket time, which is to say no longer than necessary. On the second Monday the neighbors called the police about the volume. The officers waited at the back door for the end of the take. So will you. "Order Up," "Mop Bucket Strut" and "Last Seating" are the ones to start with.

Celia Marchbanks · No. 314, Sep 13, 1979

First Proof

Black Russian Blunt Cake · Mapleton Avenue · 1979

A seven-member band from Boulder, two of them drummers and one of them a lyricist who does not perform, issued on its own Mapleton Avenue label. Five songs, none in a hurry. "The Recipe Calls for Patience" sets the terms and "Folding Table" keeps them. Teddy Rusk's organ is the reason to come back; the rest of the band is still finding the edges of the room. They sell cake at their shows. We mention this because their audiences do. Somebody in Colorado should give them a long Saturday. Somebody here should keep an ear out.

Joanne Whitcomb · No. 314, Sep 13, 1979

We Were Definitely There

Spitting Frogs · Lily Pad · 1979

Two nights in a San Francisco ballroom, both of them long, both of them recorded. The title was chosen from the tapes, as a precaution. "Twenty-Minute Jam (Condensed Version)" is, we can report, condensed. "Ballroom, Late" is the truest thing the band has released, and "Fog Bell" closes side three the way the fog closes a Sunday in the park. If you have been, this will put you back on the grass. If you have not, it will give you a fair idea of what you missed, and of how long you missed it for.

Nathan Greer · No. 314, Sep 13, 1979

Working the Kitchen

Black Russian Blunt Cake · Mapleton Avenue · 1981

The second record from Boulder's seven-member kitchen band turns the volume down and the patience up. Acoustic guitars forward, harmonies tighter, lyrics (by Wren Holloway, who does not perform) about dough, sugar and time. "Slow Rise" runs eleven minutes and earns all of them; the refrain is two words long and you will be singing it by the third pass. The cover is a photograph of a wooden rolling pin on a floured counter, which tells you exactly what you are getting. If First Proof was the band finding the room, this is the band at home in it.

Frances Odegaard · No. 365, Aug 27, 1981

Cumberland Grandstand

Fiddle & Flag · Falling Water · 1981

Cut in two days in Nashville by a five-piece from Cookeville, Tennessee, and sold, until now, off a card table at county-fair grandstands. It opens with "Grandstand Boogie," which is the best two and a half minutes of fiddle music we have heard this year, and closes with "Under the Bunting," which is what it sounds like. Clayton Redmond sings and plays the fiddle; Kay Ashworth plays piano, sings harmony and wrote every chart, and it shows in how nobody gets in anybody's way. "Ferris Wheel Waltz" and "Saturday in Sparta" are small-town songs written without a trace of condescension toward the town. That is harder than it looks.

Celia Marchbanks · No. 365, Aug 27, 1981

Eight Hundred Miles

The Shoulder Lane · Hazard Zone · 1981

One day's driving, as the drivers tell it. The title is a distance. The record makes no claim as to the hours, and neither will we. The Shoulder Lane's second record is better than its first in every way that matters: Dee Ochoa's arrangements leave more room, Wade Tolliver's voice has more road in it, and the songs know exactly where they are. "Coffee and a Logbook," "Caprock" and "Weigh Station Open" are the heart of the record; "Steel at Midnight" is Ochoa's showcase and the finest steel playing on any record this year. Somebody on the interstate is going to wear this one out.

Sam Teague · No. 365, Aug 27, 1981

Bait Shop Blues

Two Stinky Fingers · Franklin County · 1981

A blues four-piece from Apalachicola, on the Florida Panhandle, whose first record was sold out of a bait shop and whose second reached this office wrapped in a page of the local paper. It is a raw, unhurried, entirely sincere Gulf Coast blues record. Curtis Ladner sings and blows harmonica like he has the rest of the afternoon. Roy Thibodaux's slide guitar is the best thing on it. The drummer, who is credited as Damp and only as Damp, takes a solo on the third track that lasts seven minutes. We timed it. Nobody stopped the drummer, and by the fifth minute we did not want anybody to.

Ruth Abernathy · No. 365, Aug 27, 1981

Equal Light

The Trees Have Unionized · Old Growth · 1982

The center of a three-part story and the more remarkable for being so plainly the middle of something. Side one, from "The Convening" to "Your Neighbor's Sun," is warm and generous and very beautiful; "The Vote" and "Hatchet, Axe, and Saw" close it. Side two is a single twenty-two-minute suite that moves with the slow certainty of a meeting where the outcome was decided before anyone sat down. Curtis Reave's voice carries it; Ambrose Teller's twelve-string threads it; Emerson Roth's drums keep the minutes. The band has declined every request to explain the record. Having heard it six times, we understand why, and decline as well. One of the year's essential records.

Frances Odegaard · No. 397, Nov 18, 1982

Crew Change

Burning Dead Dinosaurs · Caliche · 1982

Five rig hands from Odessa and Midland who play hard rock on their days off and recorded this debut over two sets of them, between hitches. The title song was written in a pickup at the gate at midnight, waiting for the next tour to come out, and it sounds like it: tired, wide awake and loud. Rhonda Pike's rhythm guitar is the engine, and it does not idle. Jesse Ruelas plays the leads like he is paid by the foot. "Make Hole," "Ninety Feet Up" and "Caliche Road" are the ones the payday crowd in Odessa already knows. The rest of the country should catch up.

Sam Teague · No. 397, Nov 18, 1982

Turlock Runs Sideways

Cracked Out Squirrel · Overload Tapes · 1982

Ten songs in twenty-two minutes from a hardcore four-piece out of Turlock, California, recorded in two days in Modesto on a four-track that was, the band says, already broken when they arrived. The engineer left after the first afternoon. The band finished without him. Nothing on the record holds a tempo for longer than a verse, and nothing repeats a section on purpose. Wanda Pesce's guitar is a sustained act of will. It is not for everyone. It is not trying to be. "Sixteen Songs (Then Nothing)" is the best title we have seen this year and the song is not far behind.

Leon Szabo · No. 397, Nov 18, 1982

Applied Alternation

Alternate Squirrel · Skittish · 1982

The debut from a new wave four-piece in Lawrence, Kansas, with a stipulation we have not encountered before: no two pressings are to be identical. The band had the master re-cut between runs so the record would not repeat itself. We obtained two copies. They are different. Both are good. Roni Klepp's vocals are cool and slightly ahead of the beat; Kip Hessler's synthesizer and tape work flicker in and out like a bad connection, on purpose. "Nervous System" is the single, if there is one. We cannot promise you will hear the version we heard.

Ruth Abernathy · No. 397, Nov 18, 1982

Every Heading Has a Reason

Punishment Vectors · Scope · 1984

Eight songs, recorded over four Sunday afternoons in an American Legion hall, by five working air traffic controllers. It is a heavy metal record in the classic, twin-guitar manner, and it is also the most specific record about a job that we have ever heard. Sal Mucci and Rita Zarnowski's guitars are tight enough to share a sector. Frank DeLuca sings like a man who has given ten thousand clearances and wants this one heard. "The Read Back" and "Marine Air Terminal Blues" are the standouts; the closing suite neither confirms nor denies anything and is the better for it. Recommended to anyone who has ever been told to expect further clearance.

Frances Odegaard · No. 448, Nov 1, 1984

Don't Ask

Spanking The Sauce · Back Door · 1984

The third album from the New Orleans kitchen band is the longest and the best. It was written during the band's Friday-night residency at a neighborhood club and tested on the Friday crowd before anybody went near a tape machine, and it shows: every one of these songs knows exactly when the floor is going to move. "In the Weeds" and "Mise en Place" are as tight as anything the band has done; "Friday Floor" is the closest thing to a hit they are likely to allow themselves. The band still plays in its kitchen whites. We are told it owns no other stage clothes. It does not need any.

Celia Marchbanks · No. 448, Nov 1, 1984

Two Birds

The Seagle · Wingspan · 1984

A five-piece from Corpus Christi with two ideas and the nerve to put them on the same record. Side one is close-harmony soft rock of the shoreline-at-sunset kind. Side two is cold, gridded synthesizer music. The sleeve does not say which side is which, and after a while neither does the listener. Marisol Treviño's keyboards hold the two halves together better than they have any right to. "Seawall (After Dark)" is lovely; "Coastal Patrol" is not lovely at all and is the more interesting song. A band arguing with itself in public, to promising effect.

Abe Lindell · No. 448, Nov 1, 1984

Airworthy

Heir Worthiness · CAA · 1984

Sixty-eight minutes in six movements, flute-led and symphonic in the grand manner, about the inspection and certification of an aircraft. The sleeve gives the band's address as London. The postmark on the press kit was Dayton, Ohio. We report both. Whatever its origins, Airworthy is a serious and handsomely made record that takes its subject as seriously as the people who sign the logbooks do, and it rewards a full sitting. Bring a chair. Do not get up.

Dwight Ellery · No. 448, Nov 1, 1984

Seventy North

Fiddle & Flag · Falling Water · 1985

The second record from Cookeville's grandstand band is a road record written by people who are always glad to get home. Kay Ashworth's arrangements are clean as a swept porch; Cap Redmond's fiddle is warmer than on Cumberland Grandstand and his singing more relaxed. "Two-Lane Country" and "Silver Coach" will be stuck in your head by Tuesday. "The New Post Home" and "Mama Kept the Porch Light" are as plain and as moving as anything on country radio this year, and better written than most of it. "Fiddle Fire" closes the record at a tempo that would get the band arrested in some counties.

Frances Odegaard · No. 469, Aug 22, 1985

Second Batch — Live at the Fox

Black Russian Blunt Cake · Mapleton Avenue · 1985

Recorded at the Fox Theatre in Boulder over three nights in January, and the first record to capture what this band is actually for. The first disc gathers the songs. The second is a single unbroken jam of forty-seven minutes that begins with "Kahlúa Morning" and passes through three other songs into country that has no name. The drum duet between Martin Ochoa and Phil Dunaway in "Rolling Pin Blues" should be studied. We have heard longer nights from this band. We have not heard a better record of one.

Joanne Whitcomb · No. 469, Aug 22, 1985

One Tree Standing

The Trees Have Unionized · Old Growth · 1985

The last part of the Missoula trio's forest story, and the quietest. Most of the record is aftermath: "The Managed Wood," "The Canopy Authority," "Subsidiary," even and orderly and dim. Then there is a grove that kept its own counsel, and then one tree. The closing movement is a minute and forty seconds of a single sustained chord and two words. The label printed the lyrics; the band asked it not to; the compromise is a typeface you have to work to read. We worked. We will not tell you the words. We will tell you it is worth the work.

Dwight Ellery · No. 469, Aug 22, 1985

Ask for the Order

Powered by Sheer Righteousness · Stemmons Audio Programs · 1985

A Dallas five-piece that plays sales conventions, and this is its first audio program: one cassette and a twelve-page workbook, sold at the back of the room. Every song runs as long as a walk-on, a coffee break or a lunch line, because it was written to. Denise Haldane, who plays keyboards and directs, times everything to the second, and the band is tighter than most of what we hear from Los Angeles. Gary Lindquist sings "Every No Is Closer to Yes" as though he believes it, and by the end of side two we were not sure we didn't. We did not complete the workbook.

Sam Teague · No. 469, Aug 22, 1985

You Didn't Find Us

Blackmarket Kittens · Backdoor · 1986

Recorded in three days, and you would not know it except for the drums, which sound like they were recorded in a room that was a little too small, which they were. Everything else is exactly right. Roxanne Delacroix sings with total command and not a note of pleading. Dani Morel is the most exciting guitarist we have heard this year, and she does not waste a bar. "Open Side Door," "Better Than the Headline" and "The Room Is Not Right" are as good as glam-edged rock and roll gets in 1986. The production is thin. The songs are not. Find it.

Frances Odegaard · No. 502, Nov 27, 1986

Stacked Out

Burning Dead Dinosaurs · Caliche · 1986

Released in April, the month the rigs came down in the Permian Basin, and recorded in a week because, for the first time in five years, nobody in the band had to be at work. It is the Odessa rig-hand band's third and, they tell us, last record, and it is a hard one to listen to if you have been anywhere near the oil patch this year. "Ten Dollar Oil," "Last Payday" and "Rig for Sale" are exactly what they say. "Plug and Abandon" closes it. Rhonda Pike's rhythm guitar has never been faster. A record about the end of something, made by people who were there.

Sam Teague · No. 502, Nov 27, 1986

Basement Diplomacy

Nope Rope from Screwthatistan · Consulate · 1986

Three days, one storage unit in Austin, and the cost of the tape. Side one is a party; side two is the same party, angrier. A funk-punk four-piece with a bassist, Priya Nair, who could hold together a much less disciplined band than this one, and a lead guitarist, Lorraine Vukovich, who appears to have been told about restraint and to have declined. The liner notes give the band's home and decline to give a mailing address. "Give Me the Funk or Give Me Death" is the opener and the thesis. Loud, sweaty and very well played.

Leon Szabo · No. 502, Nov 27, 1986

Exit Ramp

The Shoulder Lane · Hazard Zone · 1986

The Amarillo band's fourth and final record. They have pulled over. Eight songs, the last of them recorded with the engine of the last truck Wade Tolliver drove idling in the parking lot outside the studio; you can hear it under the last verse, and nobody asked him to switch it off. "Groom, Texas," "Turning In the Logbook" and "Mile Marker 142" are the best songs they have written. Dee Ochoa's steel on "The Lot at Closing" will take you apart. The sign-off is on the record, too. We will not quote it. You know it.

Celia Marchbanks · No. 502, Nov 27, 1986

Claws Out

Blackmarket Kittens · Backdoor · 1990

The title song was made up on stage in Detroit during a show that was meant to last forty-five minutes and lasted three hours, and it is the best rock and roll song of the year. Everything else on Claws Out is nearly as good. "Velvet Claw," "More Glass Than Necessary" and "Good Call" are tight and furious; "You Girls" and "The Third Time" settle a score with great precision and no wasted words. Suki Park's bass on the title track is a lesson. The production is thin. We do not care, and after the first side, neither will you.

Ruth Abernathy · No. 608, Dec 20, 1990

Morning Colors

Fiddle & Flag · Falling Water · 1990

Named for the flag raised at first light on every Army post, and made by a band that has stood for the anthem before every show for eleven years. Morning Colors is about service, homecoming and the people who wait, and it is never once loud about it. "Folded Thirteen Times" and "The Ones Who Came Home" are as fine as anything Cap Redmond has sung. "Short-Timer's Calendar" will make a veteran laugh and then not. The record ends with "Benediction," Kay Ashworth alone at the piano, and we sat through the silence afterward without moving.

Celia Marchbanks · No. 608, Dec 20, 1990

Annual

Mechanical · Thrust Reverser · 1990

Named for the inspection, not the calendar. Three songs from five certificated aircraft mechanics in Wichita: "Run-Up," "Compression Check" and "Vibration (B-flat)," which is about a disagreement over a note and is the heaviest thing we have heard since we stopped counting. Everything is tuned to A440. Everything is in time. Emmett Ostrander's engine recordings sit under the guitars like a second rhythm section. Industrial metal made by people who can tell you what every noise on it is.

Leon Szabo · No. 608, Dec 20, 1990

Airworthiness Directive

Mechanical · Thrust Reverser · 1992

A mandatory record, in the band's telling, and in ours. Four songs from the Wichita mechanics, each one tighter than the last. "Magneto Drop" and "Left Mag Only" are a matched pair, the second running on half its ignition and still running clean. "Carb Ice" is an instrumental in which nothing happens loudly and everything goes wrong. "Firewall" closes the record at a volume best described as structural. Compliance was not presented as optional. We complied.

Frances Odegaard · No. 647, Jun 18, 1992

Good Behavior

Incarcerated Kittens · Barbed Wire · 1992

The Huntsville, Texas, four-piece's most optimistic record. Two of the songs are in a major key. The band has not said which, and after several listens we are not certain either. Tammy Rhodes sings like she is reading a statement into the record; Carla Benavides plays slide on a glass whose origin, the band says, is not on file. "Porch Light," "Piney Woods" and "Letters from Conroe" are the warmest things they have done. "Parole Board Waltz" is the strangest and the best. Hard-rock blues with nothing to prove and a good deal to say.

Sam Teague · No. 647, Jun 18, 1992

More Sass

Sass Master Flash · Flash in the Pan · 1992

Last year's debut from this Atlanta five-piece was described by several critics, though not by this magazine, as too much. More Sass is the answer. It has more. Tasha Merriweather raps with absolute control and does not raise her voice once, because she does not need to; Kendrick Holloway's turntables and Monique Battle's live bass give the band a weight most hip hop records this year can only sample. "Feedback Noted," "The Correct Amount" and "Dial It Back (A Refusal)" are the response. "Same Again, Louder" is the closing argument. We find it persuasive.

Teresa Vail · No. 647, Jun 18, 1992

A Second Look

The Reno Sessions

Stompin' Kittens · Creep Show · 1992

We did not review this record when it appeared in 1992. It was recorded live in Reno, Nevada, in the last week of a summer residency. Why the Memphis rockabilly four-piece was in Reno, the sleeve does not say, and we did not ask. Darla Pruitt, Ruby Vance and Mae Ellison, who plays drums standing up, sing three-part harmony around one microphone, Lou Ann Tate slaps the upright bass, and the four of them play like the floor is going to give out, which in Helena, Arkansas, it once did. "Two A.M. Set" and "Truckee River Stomp" are the new ones; "Heel Down (Reno)" and "Reverb Is God (Reno)" are better than the studio versions. Six songs. Not one too many. The band stopped the following year.

Celia Marchbanks · No. 738, Dec 14, 1995

The Boneyard

In BRRRRRRT We Trust · Cost-Plus · 1995

The third record from Tucson's most technically informed band, and the one where the subject and the music finally weigh the same. Four songs, the A-10 section alone running twenty-two minutes. "Type 1000" is grave and slow; "Under the Spraylat" is grim and fast; "The Warthog Is Not Beautiful (It Is Correct)" is the mission statement and the best thing they have recorded. Elaine Kowalczyk's drums end every fill with a single closed stroke of the hi-hat, back to baseline. Industrial metal with the paperwork in order.

Leon Szabo · No. 738, Dec 14, 1995

Quittin' (The Final Record)

Quittin' Snakes · Kountry Mart Parking Lot · 1995

The Jacksonville swamp-rock band's fourth and, by the title's own account, final record. There are no snakes in the title. We make nothing of that and invite you to do the same. Bobby Ray Durrence has never sounded more at ease; Dale Conner, who we once watched play forty minutes on three strings, has all six here and uses them. "Waycross Is Not That Far (But It Is)" is the best song they have written. The reprise at the end is short and does not say goodbye. It does not have to.

Celia Marchbanks · No. 738, Dec 14, 1995

One More Show

Critter's Gonna Critter · What Are You Gonna Do · 1995

There have been several more shows since this record came out. The title was aspirational in the wrong direction, and the Mobile band seems entirely at peace with that. Dale Whitfield is down to fewer bandmates than he started with, and the songs say so plainly: "He Didn't Say Why (Bobby Left for Biloxi)" and "Stopped Showing Up" are kind about people who left, which is rarer than it should be. "The Sandbar (Charlie's Room)" is a thank-you to a venue, and a good one. A small, decent record by a band that has always known what it is.

Abe Lindell · No. 738, Dec 14, 1995

Cease and Desist

Machine Gun Kitty · Loud & Loaded · 1995

Named after a letter the Olympia trio received from a law office, which is reproduced in full on the inner sleeve. We read it. The band's reply is the record. Pip Delacroix sings and plays guitar like she is answering point by point; June Okafor's bass and Beth Lindqvist's drums are the tightest rhythm section in the Northwest. "Received and Filed," "Without Prejudice" and "Signed Under Protest" use the letter's own language against it, cleanly. "Safety's Off" closes the matter.

Frances Odegaard · No. 738, Dec 14, 1995

Glazed and Forgiven

Church of the Holy Donut · Risen Dough · 1996

It is either the most sincere or most absurd thing we have heard this year, and by the fourth listen we had stopped needing to decide. The Winston-Salem band's second record is heavier, longer and better than the first. Ray Stubbs's drop-D guitar is a warm, low wall; Donna Pickett's first recorded scream arrives exactly when it should. Carol Ann Dupree's thirty-two bars of double kick at 172 beats per minute on the title track are theologically load-bearing. "Patterson Avenue" is a hymn to a street corner and means every word.

Teresa Vail · No. 756, Aug 22, 1996

The Ancient Ones Know Our Name (They Don't)

God's Lunatics · Kvlt Nonsense · 1996

A CD-R from a black metal band in Tulsa, Oklahoma, issued in an edition of twelve. We have one. We are told nine are known to survive, and ours is one of the nine. Terry Mullins screams with real conviction about winters considerably colder than any in Oklahoma, and Dale Hensley's drumming is fast, committed and recorded in what sounds like a garage, which it was. Whether or not the ancient ones know the band's name, the band knows exactly what it is doing. Hard to find. We would not try to talk you out of it.

Leon Szabo · No. 756, Aug 22, 1996

Below Minimums

Red Screen of Death · Hobbs Time · 1996

The Prescott, Arizona, thrash band's second record, made in a real studio in Phoenix after a debut cut in a flight simulator bay. This is the one where they got better. Wes Tarkanian's guitar tone was, we are told, two months and most of a student loan in the making, and it was worth every hour. More important, Danny Ocampo has stopped shouting and started briefing, and the songs make sense as a result: "The Impossible Turn," "Task Saturation" and "Behind the Airplane" are about the mistakes pilots are trained to avoid, sung by people who are training to avoid them.

Frances Odegaard · No. 756, Aug 22, 1996

Non-Negotiable

Sass Master Flash · Flash in the Pan · 1996

Recorded after the first request to dial it back. Nothing was dialed back. The Atlanta band's fourth record is its most composed and its most commanding: Tasha Merriweather sets out the terms on "Terms," restates them on "Non-Negotiable" and declines a counteroffer on "Counteroffer Declined," and the band behind her, with Lorraine Pugh's keyboards newly forward, is the tightest in Southern hip hop. "Auburn Avenue" is a love letter. "Closing Statement" is the last word, and it is meant to be.

Ruth Abernathy · No. 756, Aug 22, 1996