I Love a Mans in a Uniform: Reviews of new albums by Uniform, Weak Signal, Liberty & Justice, Tenue, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Faucheuse, and more!
Actually, not "and more." But, trust me, what's here is plenty.
Welcome to a new Abundant Living! No 6,000 word essay this time around (sorry). I’ll eventually get around to writing about the recent shows I attended (Jane's Addiction were awful. Pulp were fab.), but I’m trying to get back in the swing of having this newsletter come out in a semi regular fashion. And who doesn’t like album reviews? It’s not like you can just click a button and hear music and judge for yourself. So let me help you make wise decisions next time you find yourself at the Virgin Mega Store with $9.99 burning a hole in your pocket. If you do need to read a novella from me, last newsletter was about Panthers and the Aughts, and you should read it if you haven’t. Also, on account of either Freddie deBoer or someone imitating him getting in touch via Instagram, I added a small correction to my Pitchfork piece from February. Who doesn’t like a nice correction?
Uniform - American Standard (Sacred Bones)
On its title track, American Standard begins with Michael Berdan shouting acapella about the meat which hangs from his body. A youth crew of men in their forties shout his words back at him. The effect is something akin to the Creed of a United States Marine (also known as the Rifleman’s Creed: “There are many like it, but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.…”etc.) except that the rifle in question is the singer of Uniform’s body itself, and Berdan’s body is about as far from being his best friend as he is to being its master. At one minute and ten seconds, as dictated by Ben Greenberg’s perverse arrangements, the first instrument on the album is heard. I don’t know if the instrument is bass, guitar, or synth but it sounds like a bullfrog. Or a stomach consuming itself.
At almost the exact middle point of the track’s 21 minute run-time, after spending a fair amount of time describing an ever-tightening psyche and a (presumably) metaphorical insect with a parasitical relationship to his hand, with the self-lacertaing dread leavened only Greenberg’s recurringly encroaching riff (which, if one has fond memories of a being oceanside as a child, can be quite soothing) and the Salad Days synth chiming under the choruses, Berdan howls “The bug stretches its neck/Up toward my face/Like my face was a fucking sun/Like my face was a fucking sun.” While acknowledging the band’s own claim to “moving beyond SWANS worship,” the M.Gira song, “God Damn The Sun” does come to mind. The SWANS song is a reasonably well-tread (albeit pretty great) story of betrayal and ocean-spanning romantic failure. Gira has a bad case of dead ex-friends and broken hearts, caused by an indifferent God and a chick. On “American Standard,” Berdan’s wrenching howl is aimed solely at his own flesh. He makes clear that some external drama would be a welcome relief from his own broken mind.
Mind you, “God Damn The Sun” is off of an album that Michael Gira (incorrectly) dislikes, so it’s not like Uniform’s press kit is lying. Because American Standard is indeed a different animal than Uniform’s previous albums. Joined by Brad Truax (of Home, Interpol, Black Sabbath Cover Band Rehearsal, your ex girlfriend’s call history, etc.) and more Mikes than the mind can comprehend inhabiting a single band, Uniform has transitioned from a purely kicking ‘n’ screaming concern into a more meditative throttle. While Greenberg is still angling for a guitar sponsorship from John Deere and Berdan still sounds like he’s auditioning for every SST/Alternative Tentacles band that was too scary for the bros, Uniform’s fifth album—as the Quietus pointed out in its positive review—is, within the confines of the genres the band plays in and themes the album explores, their most pleasurable to listen to. Without (tbc) taking an iota of weight away from Berdan’s lyrical content (some of his—starting at a high bar—finest work, written in collaboration with B.R. Yeager and Maggie Siebert), the band has been growing more confident (and less willfully alienating) on every record and, now—whether from Greenberg’s genre-agnostic guitar heroics or Truax’s dubby melodicism—the sound itself is almost welcoming. At least to anyone who ever wished the songs on Rudimentary Peni’s Death Church album were rewritten for a literal church service. Plus: no matter how oppressive the vibe might run, one really can’t say enough about how having two drummers (especially two drummers as gifted as Mike Sharp and Michael Blume) makes everything sound canonically like surf music. In the case of Uniform, said surfing is being done atop an avalanche made of industrial runoff, but it’s still—in the jargon of the sea—”up.”
Whether the band might come to regret setting a song cycle, thematically devoted to its singer’s battle with bulimia nervosa, to a gorgeous, borderline transcendent crawl and follow that with some of the band’s most accessible potent thrash-attack, is to be determined. Hopefully Uniform’s record release at Bowery Ballroom, where some drunk asshole decided to treat Berdan’s frighteningly vulnerable solo performance (at the beginning of “American Standard”) as an invitation to sing along, was an anomaly. I still remember, as a teenager, reading the singer of Midnight Oil talking about how some fans thought “Beds Are Burning” was about being really good at fucking. That said, I’m not super worried. Beautiful and moving as “American Standard” is, I don’t imagine it’ll be on the soundtrack of Euphoria any time soon.
EDIT: There seems to be a little confusion as to whether I actually like the above album. Maybe I should start using numbers (or being less self indulgent in my descriptions). I decline to do either! But, just this once: American Standard gets a 9 (out of 9). I love it.
Full Disclosure: Berdan is a friend, but we’re not “Put Zack on the list for Orchid” friends. Ben Greenberg is also a friend. He produced/mixed Zohra’s solo album. He and I also used to look a lot alike, to the point where I joked about him being a younger version until he got contacts, started working out, and became more successful than me. I don’t hold any of this against him, in that I don’t wake up in the morning wishing him any specific harm. But, in both member’s cases, the reader can rest assured that if the new Uniform album was bad, I’d savor—like a dark chocolate—damning it with faint praise.
Weak Signal - Fine (12XU)
Sharing a no-nonsense sensibility with beloved (by me) acts like Dream Syndicate, Galaxie 500, and Eleventh Dream Day, this NYC power trio (Mike Bones and Sasha Vine on guitar and bass/violin respectively, Tran on drums) make a very smart (in both the “intelligent” and “snazzy” sense) meat and potatoes music. Calling a band “meat and potatoes” is not generally considered a compliment. Probably because we all hate the English. But meat is very popular and potatoes are fucking deliious. And I have a rule of thumb about not insulting anyone whose last name is “bones,” any Max Fish survivors, or any band with a drummer who goes by one name. Anyway, both the band’s press agent and back catalog make clear that simplicity is considered to be a high virtue. Love and Rockets told us the same, so it must be true. With that, hopefully everyone will grok what I’m saying. “Fine” too is a word that invites interpretation. If Weak Signal are implying that their new album is merely OK, maybe they’re not so smart after all. Maybe “Hella Good” was already taken.
Because on Fine, Weak Signal ably follow their own set blueprint, which they’ve established on three previous (also very fine, in the fancy-way-of-talking, intended-as-high-praise sense of the word) LPs. The songs are either delicate paisley underground melodies, played with enough chugga-chugga to supply a slash-fic novella where Freddy Madball puts his hair up and transforms into a sexy librarian. Or the songs are delicate melodies played delicately, but still with Luna-esque sharpness to cut through Mary Chain wash. The only exception between the two modes is “Terá Tera,” where the vocalists engage in the kind of melancholic dandelion-folk you’d hear in a ‘60s youthsploitation romance as the camera zooms in on some flat-haired beauty experiencing some heavy duty ambivalence. None of this is to imply a sameness of the songs. Just that Weak Signal cares about the hook and the feeling, and everything else is load bearing. Weak Signal has an ethos which they’re proud of, and rightfully so. If “meat and potatoes” feels diminishing, compare them instead to a drink with all the necessary ingredients; glass, ice, alcohol. (I don’t know if anyone in Weak Signal still drinks. For the most part, I don’t either. But presumably everyone remembers the appeal.)
Liberty & Justice - LOCKED IN (Contra)
Look, guys, a lot of skinhead/skinhead-adjacent heartache (pertaining to recent revelations of some sociopath-coded skinhead bands being, in fact, sociopaths) could have been avoided if everyone agreed that the two best contemporary American Oi! bands are—regardless of what the mainstream skinhead press may claim—Chicago’s Lost Legion and Houston’s own Liberty & Justice. Wanna know why? BECAUSE OI! MUSIC ISN’T SUPPOSED TO BE HARDCORE. IT’S SUPPOSED TO HAVE CATCHY SONGS. Which both of those bands have, by the monkey-bearing barrel-load. Lost Legion has cornered the market on esoteric dark-Oi! And, in L&J’s case, the songs are track after track of tuff-minded, end-time party rockers. Mind you, despite having spent the equivalent of a small nation’s GDP on Sheer Terror merch (btw their new 7” is killer), I’m a poseur by both trade and disposition. So maybe this is street punk or maybe it’s just rock and roll. I dunno what it is, exactly, but I know I love it with the joy of a skinhead, nine drinks deep at the bar, who just got jostled by a punk wearing the wrong kind of shoes.
Tenue - Arcos, b ó vedas, pórticos (Zegema Beach Records)
A bunch of comments on the Tenue’s bandcamp page mention how this skramz outfit incorporates jazz influences into their emo-violence (lol) crust ballads. I assume the kids say “jazz” because there are horns and the drummer occasionally hits the rim of the snare. And also because the kids are too young to remember the Virgin Suicides soundtrack. ‘Cos the melodies underneath Tenue’s brutality ain’t Dave Brubeck, they’re ‘70s AM radio. Now, I’m on record as being not super crazy about critics going gaga over certain black metal emoters throwing the shittiest parts of “Layla” on top of their Envy envy, but if West Coast Libertarian Metal helped pave the way for this album, maybe it’s not so bad after all. Cos this shit rules. Basically it sounds like if Halo of Flies Records’ pressing plant fucked up and pressed a bunch of Herb Alpert brass onto some Light Bearer LPs, resulting in an Afternoon-ly Delightful Tragedy. (Since this review is mainly me being a jerk, I should make clear that I find this album extremely moving. Highly recommended!)
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Wild God (PIAS)
Wrote a review for CREEM Magazine and, (other) saints be praised, it ain’t behind a paywall! I’ll prob (def) write more about the album at some point, but I think this bad boy will do for now. So read it! Unlike 90% of the other reviews of the album, I didn’t just copy and paste the press kit! Which is pretty neat even if, despite it being entirely positive, that means that the man’s publicists haven’t included it in the updated press kit. Guess they don’t want a Zack to thrive. (But seriously, is there an artist alive who inspires more sheesh-y writing than Nick Cave? Maybe Arcade Fire? Actually, definitely Arcade Fire.)
FAUCHEUSE - Rêve Électrique (Symphony of Destruction)
D-beat isn’t a genre that prioritizes originality. Not an insult; originality just isn’t super important to bands that embrace a genre named after the patented drumbeat of a particular band (that formed nearly half a century ago). Honestly, if more bands from other genres called the genre they played “so-and-so-beat,” I’d respect them more. At least I’d be able to spend less time with a thesaurus, trying to find another word for “sounds like the Lemonheads.” Anyway, d-beat is always fun and rarely more exciting than listening to Discharge (which, tbc, is always fun. Just rarely mind blowing). So the fact that Faucheuse hew close to d-beat’s template, while still sounding like their own darn selves makes this Bordeaux band pretty great. That they do so without resorting to the usual methods d-beat bands use to signify that “we’re not like the other dis-girls” (i.e. treble, “psychedelic” guitar lines, more treble), makes Faucheuse pretty exceptional. The methods they do resort to—a burly organ sound, a charismatic and melodically inventive singer—wouldn’t exactly be considered groundbreaking in other genres but, like I said, the d-beat punks have their own priorities. Easily one of the best punk albums of the year so far.
(Oh yeah, I heard about Faucheuse via Maximum RocknRoll. This album will deservedly probably end up on a bunch of EOY punk lists because it goes so darn hard. Be sure to check out MRR so you don’t have to depend on culture vultures like me to tell you what the punx are getting up to. https://www.maximumrocknroll.com/reviews/)
THANKS FOR READING. Watching my friends get substack rich is beginning to hurt my feelings, please share and subscribe (and, hey look, Ghost added a tipping option). Also, please consider subscribing to CREEM. The new issue is beyond terrific. Thank you!
PS. Zohra is playing w/ The Giraffes & Netherlands @ TV Eye on September 28. It's the record release for a new Giraffes album and should be a hoot. C u there!
