Howdy everyone, welcome to Crow’s Nest issue #53. It’s already June huh? Where did May go? Anyway, thank you for reading this, I’ll get right to it as I don’t feel I have an essay in me.
A housekeeping note: this is almost certainly the only Crow’s Nest from now until probably mid-July. In just under 2 weeks I’ll be on a 2-week vacation in Japan. Getting ready for that and keeping my other plates spinning has left me with a tad of whiplash and all, and the desire to spend a significant chunk of a day on one of these, especially when I will likely not be listening to as much novel music as I do, will have little appeal during that stretch. Surely you understand. If you have any recommendations on things to do/see/eat and that while over there, I’m still figuring out plans, let me know:
Greg Obis is a busy guy. When not co-running Born Yesterday Records, which has become one of Chicago/America’s most vital outposts for off-center indie rock, recording/mixing/mastering other underground records, or doing sound at shows across the city, he fronts post-punk/egg punk band Stuck. I don’t think my crossfaded ramblings with him about how one of my company’s work vendors are all [REDACTED] at a party last year made it onto Stuck’s new record, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it did given the dominant themes of alienation, anxiety, discord and otherwise attempting to hash out a living in the decline of American dominance on this album. The frantic guitar work is intricate, the drumming understated but relentless, exactly what you might imagine from an Entertainment!/Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! hybrid filtered through the noise rock underground—and they did in fact cover ‘Sloppy (I Saw My Baby Gettin’)’ at Sleeping Village last night. There’s a touch of David Byrne in the mix as well that prevents this from becoming a black hole of über-serious dogmatism, which is especially present in the live show. Freak Frequency cements Obis and Stuck firmly in the center of Chicago’s indie rock scene. Go see them live, and buy some merch too!
I’ve followed Protomartyr for nearly a decade, first wondering what this band opening for a Parquet Courts festival aftershow was about, consisting of an intoxicated middle-aged-looking guy in a suit cracking jokes about feral cats not paying taxes, backed by a 20-something rock trio whose average age was surely at least 10 years younger than him. They were the last band I saw before the pandemic shutdowns, and their stubborn persistence in being a band despite the economic headwinds and whatever calamity is currently inflicting themselves and/or their hometown in Detroit always makes them a worthwhile consideration. They certainly live this reality, and their latest album is a reflection of that in every sense, taking its title semi-metaphorically from Joe Casey’s experiences losing his mother, among other things. The intensity is still present and Greg, Scott and Alex’s backing instrumentation continues to improve. The stubborn persistence of this band continues to pay off as they push forward through their second decade.
I’m not quite sure where to place this record. I’d say ‘leftfield club jazz’ might be a decent descriptor of this British duo, marrying the eclecticness of a dance producer getting weird on a track with the restraint and chops of a regularly gigging group, but you can’t really file it away under any banner. The highlight of this EP are the last 2 tracks, which sees chiptune-rave synths go up against jazz drumming—the kind of stuff you might imagine Japanese video game composers making in their 80s and 90s heyday had their consoles’ computing power been able to deliver disco soundsystem-quality output. One of the most unique and original records I’ve heard in a while.
One of my major problems with ambient music is its cooptation by the industrial wellness complex, and its subsequent associations with relaxation and mature New Age-yness meant to help you optimize your return to the grind, so to speak. Often while listening to ambient without a visual accompaniment, my brain will react oppositionally to the intent, the mind-clearing effect resulting in intrusive thoughts and my hangups generating an anxiety spiral that leaves me worse off. This means that, really, I find stuff like The Dead C and Yellow Swans more relaxing than the stereotypically-associated-with-relaxing material. (I need to bone up on techniques and industrial alienation theory before I write the Noise Meditation pamphlet that’s mentally on the backburner.) To my unsettled mind, then, this LP from Piper Spray and Lena Tsibizova is the real deal, the actual ambient stuff that reflects the reality of our messy world. Rather than retreat from the world, this material confronts it not in an attempt to necessarily make sense of it, but to demonstrate a kinship and signal to fellow travelers some comfort, helping to sort through things. Subversive in deploying ambient cliches atypically, the disorientation helps in that ‘Ah, where was I?’ manner following a digression, or looking at the clock and discovering a decent chunk of time has passed and you still need to make dinner or get that work assignment out the door. Or something like that, give it a spin and see what you (un)make of it.
I've always felt Hudson Mohawke works best as a collaborator; the restraint and balance a partner brings helps curtail some of his excesses that my ears don’t appreciate. This surprise release with the rapidly ascending producer Nikki Nair is a case in point: these are very odd tracks indebted to UK garage, stuffed with twitchy flourishes that touch on EDM builds, but they never go too overboard. Imagine a high-energy, texturally engaging upscale-contemporary restaurant meal in the trendy arts district more than shotgunning a Mountain Dew and going crazy in a basement. Which is to say, a very fun balance of hedonism and sophistication that will hopefully get some well-deserved plays on a summer dancefloor near you soon.
Officially the second release from this Connecticut group—the label says they've got 19 other tapes/CD-Rs out in the past 8 years, so one of those groups—Shirese play an old-school, ramshackle form of rock, where playing around and having a good time yields greater rewards than technical proficiency and adding external polish. I hear a lot of Les Rallizes Dénudés in their sound, and certainly other outsider influences I can't pinpoint. The 14-minute closing experimental psych number cements them as a group to keep on your radar.
I don’t believe in music rankings too much, but the Me Me Me label run by the producer Man Power would likely wind up near the top of any ‘Most Underrated Dance Music Labels’ list if I had any say into the matter. Case in point: this strong EP from a producer going by Dharma. Across the four tracks you have a pair of understated numbers, one ending on a piano recital, and another pair of Four Tet-y shuffles with acid lines rising up out of the auditory range or into dubby builds. A perfectly heady small package for those in the know.
By no means news, but the right song at the right time can be utterly perfect and sublime and remind you of the greatness of the art form. Locate S,1 is a uniquely named art-pop vehicle that has been on my radar for a bit but nothing I’ve spent too much time with, until this song started on Crack Magazine’s ⌘R playlist as I was getting back from a pleasant night of drinks and conversation with a friend last week, which I kept on loop until I was back in my apartment. Definitely the driving momentum present and the otherwise off-kilter vibe of the song are what keep me going back to it. Utterly gorgeous material here with a perhaps gauzy sheen I’ve not encountered much of. My brain tells me this is a bit U.S. Girls-like or that Angel Olson/Mark Ronson collab from a few years ago. The full album isn’t out until the end of next month, and if this song is any indication I will have more to say on that later. Time to wonder why this tour starts the first day of Pitchfork in St. Louis and wait and see if there’s a TBA opening date across the state.
Some more of the good post-punk for you, this time from Dublin’s Sprints. More aggressive on the low end and feminist than Stuck, this is more for shouting along at the pub than bouncing along as well. Of course, that’s partially a function of external circumstances limiting you despite your restless ambition, as the ‘Modern Job’/‘Delia Smith’ combo makes explicitly clear. Still, a ripping good time for those who need to rock against the system.
I say I don’t like ambient, then I go ahead and put 2 ambient releases I like into one issue … maybe I should just start treating it like post-punk/indie rock where the stuff I like is good and the stuff I don’t like is not good. Anyway, Mike Paradinas, certifiable UK electronic royalty, released this (mostly) ambient collection on Balmat and I’ve enjoyed it. It feels a bit more Balaeric than British when I listen, though some of it sounds like it could have come from clerical ruins somewhere in the British Isles; others sound more like he’s capturing the sound of the electricity itself languidly coursing through his machines on a humid day. Pretty good stuff.
I’m not quite sure what to make of Pozi. I thought they were French and that ‘explained a lot’ but no, they’re British. Bass/drums/violin trio with airy vocal harmonies recalling 2000s indie/freak folk, at times sounding like a stripped down Stereolab, other times a cryptic krautrock-heavy post-punk group. They’re on the label that used to put out Oliver Coates’s material and you can hear that and Anna Meredith as clear influences, so you might be pressed to put them on a playlist with other strings-highlighting post-punk groups like the Raincoats and NON Band. They tag all of their releases with ‘Sleaford Mods’ as well which ??? Guess I need to spend more time with this to better understand what all is going on.
Berlin’s GLAAS are back with a revamped lineup on this short EP following up last year’s Qualm. The new guitarist and same synth player are more restrained on this record, though the effect may be intentional as the band describe this record as “the feeling that comes in the days after that weekend when you decided to stay up for 48 hours”. I can’t say I’ve done that before but one of the times I felt most wiped in my life came after a weekend in Berlin, so I can sympathize with the sentiment.
As someone who does not collect vinyl, limited-run physical releases without digital available aggravate me; I can understand the purpose and intention behind them, but still, let me listen! So I was excited to see that hard-drumming British producer Ploy relented and put the digital for an edit pack he pressed last year up on the ‘camp. They may not be as fashionable or exclusive as they once were, but now you can reliably give them a listen without coughing up super-serious $ on a secondhand piece of wax.
And that’s all … persons. Thank you for reading issue #53 of Crow’s Nest. The past few weeks have been a blur and the next few will also be so for me but in a different way. Enjoy summer and see you in a bit!