Punk Gets Good Again, Again. Plus reviews of newish albums by Elucid + Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp
Who knew that punk would be good again so soon? I mean, besides everybody who was screaming at the top of their lungs, “if you don’t promise to keep Lila Kahn and at very fucking least tell us all a slightly believable lie about how you might at least consider sending 5% less napalm to the IDF, punk is going to be good again.” But apparently the Democratic Party heard that as, “we all loved the Sleater-Kinney album about 9/11 so much that you should campaign on a promise to not just continue the policies that made that classic album possible, but also bring back all the cover stars of the Rock Against Bush CD comps and have them give stump speeches about how if we don’t kill even more Palestinians, we might end up with a tacky president who eats his steak with catsup.” Fair enough, I guess. Probably our fault for mumbling. And, in this work-a-day world, who’s to say that bringing out a former president credibly accused of sexual assault to scold Michigan voters that, if they didn’t vote for the party that’d spent the last year slaughtering their families, they deserved the other rapist president (the one who’d also kill their families but wouldn’t do it so empathetically), wasn’t the winning strategy? Sure, everything is clear in hindsight. And that’s why we’re now being assured that punk is good again because we just didn’t click our heels together hard enough. And also because of pronouns.
Anyway, they/them's the breaks. The important thing now is to keep calm, dust off the “in these dark times” one-sheets, and carry on. If your 2024 bio still leans heavy on “issues of self-exploration” and “reclaiming the term ‘witch,’” don’t panic. Everything is still technically normal until January, and nobody expects your shoegaze to be anti-fascist until then.
With that bit of impotent bile out of my system for the next 15 minutes, let’s talk about some new albums. No punk though, as it wouldn’t be fair to judge any current punk against the punk golden (again) age that’s barreling down the highway in our direction. Plus, there’s no analysis I could possibly offer up that would be as trenchant as IDLES being nominated for a Grammy. Except that I guess that the nomination makes them—and Knocked Loose (feat. Poppy)—canonically proto-punk-being-good-again.
E L U C I D - REVELATOR (Fat Possum)
I saw a couple online postings claiming that, on “CCTV feat. Creature,” ELUCID and co-producer August Fanon sample “Gristle” by the grindcore band GAZA. That might be true or the high-toned noise guitar might be Unsane or it might be Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain,” or any other black metal song. We can choose to believe it, based on Gaza’s band name, but we can also go all in on the album’s themes and suppose that the track’s producer took his last name from the author of The Wretched of the Earth. Elucid is a believer in revolutionary projects, which is part of why he’s always made for the perfect foil to billy woods, a rapper who's never met a revolution he can’t see the underbelly of. Not to say that Elucid is some sort of doe-eyed idealist, or that woods is a knee jerk cynic, just that both men operate from a baseline that cynicism should be hardfought, and if they do flirt with it, they come at it from different angles. In “IKEBANA,” Elucid raps “HEAVY LIMINAL / DISINTEGRATION TAPE / DON'T BE CYNICAL / COMPLICATED CHEMICAL / MADE IT OUT THE WINTER / LETS GET PHYSICAL / SEND EM THROUGH / WHO REALLY GON REMEMBER YOU / MY FAVORITE MONTH SEPTEMBER / I MAKE GORGEOUS BABIES / BUT IM DONE MAKING N WORDS / BEING ALIVE I MUST LOOK UP / FREAK HEART SMOLDER / FIX UP SHARP / HOLD THOSE SHOULDERS / ALMOST / ALMOST OVER / SO CLOSE / ALMOST OVER / BEING ALIVE I MUST LOOK UP.” It’s the “I make gorgeous babies…” line which all the reviews quote. I dunno how Eludic feels about that, but quotability doesn’t make it any less a great line, and I imagine he saw the focus coming and said what he said regardless (same with his bar about having a zionist landlord). But it’s worth noting that (besides Elucid straight up saying “don’t be cynical”) I’d argue that the line’s soul is actually “we made it out the winter, let’s get physical,” and that it ends with “being alive, I must look up.” Which are both some Walt Whitman type shit if there ever was some.
Which I guess is what I mean by revolutionary. Neither didactic nor as side-eye inclined as his partner in Armand Hammer, Elucid treats Brooklyn as a good place to make a stand. In this, REVELATOR is welcoming in how it features like-minded producers (with DJ Stitches and Black Myths bassist/composer Luke Stewart as engirthing army) and a bit heroic in how Elucid largely (and a bit atypical for him) eschews guest appearances otherwise. billy woods supports his bestie in typically excellent fashion, “CCTV” gives Creature a nice platform to illustrate how nimbly cozy the rapper/RebelMatic vocalist is on any end of the noise-to-rap spectrum, Skech185 does his (always goddamn perfect) howlin’ wolf/laughin’ hyena preacher-type thing, and Luke Stewart gives “The World Is a Dog” a bassline as Boris Gardiner deep as it is “City Poison” post-punk. But for the majority of the album’s fifteen careening tracks, Elucid raps his body electric alone. And he does so, like I said, heroically. Complicated, inspiring, outside of time: our own Captain America.
Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp - Ventre unique (Les Disques Bongo Joe)
I don’t know if there’s a precedent for 12-piece collectivist agit-brass bands making—after five previous albums and nearly two decades—their best work. For all I know, the squats in Geneva are spilling over with anti-futurist, multi-ethnic fans of both Dog Faced Hermans and Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou, collectively slathered in knitted earth-tones singing in French about (I assume) how much they love their bicycles, crusty bread, and abortion on demand, and every single one of those bands has made a new album of absolutely brilliant—martial and twee and disconcertingly affecting—gang (of) funk. Barring that being the case, I’m exactly duly impressed by how Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp has taken what was always a pretty neat-o (if a tad novel) outfit, and unified its inherently/purposefully anarchic vision into something truly fine. If these revolutionary sweethearts were either Canadian and/or signed to Secretly Canadian, they’d be the darlings of the indie-sphere. Seeing as how indie collectives will be illegal in this country within a year, I’d recommend getting into Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp while you still can. Of course, when Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp is outlawed, only outlaws will love Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp. These songs—equally liberationist in the disco, soukous, and Mekons/Ex theological sense—make a pretty compelling argument for how fun that might be as well.
OK FINE: A LITTLE PUNK
I said I wasn’t going to write about any punk records, and I meant it. But these are a few recent discoveries that I love. It’s not their fault that their chosen genre is about to re-take, for the next four years, its prize pig place within the most inane discourse in the history of human thought. So I’ll just link ‘em and say you should at least buy them. Just hide ‘em under your mattress and we’ll talk about how great they are in 2029, when Chelsea Clinton takes office and we can all relax.
The Sleeveens - UFOs (I-94 Records)
G.O.O.N. - God’s Only Option Now (Convulse)
SMOKERS - The Rat That Gnawed the Rope (Mouth Magazine Records)
Lost Legion - Midwest Mouthbreathers
Guerra Final - Purgatorio (Desolate Records)
The Submissives - Live At Value Sound Studios (Celluloid Lunch) (not egregiously punk.And it’s great, But I review it in the December issue of CREEM.)
Thanks for reading! Please share and subscribe. Please subscribe to CREEM. Please buy my and Zohra’s stuff. Please donate to the Nooristan Foundation. Thanks. Talk soon.
PS. I realize that some dum-dums might think that I think "punk will be good again" is something that is true, or would be somehow a silver lining if it was. Just to be clear, to those dummies, I don't. I do not care what punk does. I want an end to the wholesale murder being perpetuated by Israel upon Palestine and Lebanon. Also, all you leftists who thought Biden didn't suck shit in regards to Afghanistan can go kick rocks as well. Yes, Trump will be far worse. Would have been nice if Harris/Biden/Clinton/Obama had run a campaign commensurate to that dreadful reality. OK thanks. Talk soon. I love you. Even the idiots.