There are two kinds of musical artist: The ones you know, and the ones you need to know. Next week’s releases are heavy on the latter. Which is exactly how I like it. Here are your plays of the week:
Cheater Slicks
Ill-Fated Cusses
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Cheater Slicks, the take-no-prisoners Columbus trio, return with the thrilling, musically diverse Ill-Fated Cusses, their first album in eight years. The 10-track collection follows Piano Tunnels, a freewheeling, improvisation-based benefit collaboration with vocalist Bill Gage. After 35 years in business, it makes about as much sense to pigeonhole Cheater Slicks as simply a garage-rock band as it would to call The Rolling Stones a blues band. Ill-Fated Cusses, more than any other album in the group’s discography, explores a broad musical palette on its nine original songs and one cover, Memphis rockabilly icon Charlie Feathers’ stark barroom murder ballad Cold Dark Night. In all, the latest chapter in the Cheater Slicks saga moves into bracing new territory without sacrificing the uncompromising blood ’n’ guts tactics that have long made them a formidable force in American rock ’n’ roll. “Songwriting-wise, I think Ill-Fated Cusses is one of the strongest records we’ve done,” says singer-guitarist Tom Shannon. “I don’t know how people will take it. It might be considered more refined by people who like the more primitive, brutal aspects of our music, but I think there’s a lot of that on there, too. I like to have the noise, but I like to have the song structures, too. I like the record a lot.”
dEUS
How To Replace It
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “dEUS have never really had a philosophy. Never wanted one. Yet they’ve remained true to certain guiding principles. “You don’t want to repeat yourself, but you have your style,” says Tom Barman, frontman and genial leader of the cult Belgian art-rockers. “You want to try new stuff and just react to whatever feels fresh at the time.” So it is with How To Replace It, their eighth studio album and first in 10 years; distinctive and inventive, melodic yet defiantly off-kilter. Unique. And above all, unmistakably dEUS. Even that title — mysterious, oblique — scans as being fantastically unknowable, hinting at a deep sense of wisdom. Follow the lyrical clues, and you might conclude “it” concerns romance and ageing; squint a little, and you might alight on modernity being the malaise described. Either way, fueling intrigue is by design. It’s a question, it’s an answer … it’s up to the listener to decide. It’s also dEUS at their enigmatic best. Nearly 30 years after their debut record, dEUS remain indie stalwarts, pushing ever forward, endlessly curious and creatively restless.”
Ivan Julian
Swing Your Lanterns
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Swing Your Lanterns is the latest solo offering from Ivan Julian, who’s had a long and distinguished career as a provocative songwriter and one of New York City’s most distinctive guitar stylists. As a founder member of Richard Hell & The Voidoids, Julian was an essential part of the original Punk scene while sowing the seeds for post-punk with the pointedly lopsided rhythms structures and scorched, askew guitar lines that comprised the Voidoids’ oeuvre. The songs on Swing Your Lanterns reflect Ivan’s experiences over the last five years and beyond set against the contemporary sociopolitical stage, asking the question: Where do you stand during troubled times, and will you remain vigilant? The album plays like a series of novelettes depicting the underlying human condition, our aspirations, loves, and losses. Swing Your Lanterns is the backdrop, the sociopolitical stage on which these story-songs are set. The title song tells you to “swing your lanterns low” until you realize “which way to go”. Meaning, where do you stand during troubled times and will you remain vigilant. As in any pivotal moment in history, the underlying human condition is always present. The aspirations, loves, losses and observations course on as the ‘backdrop’ looms large. These are the types of stories in this record.”
Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs
Land of Sleeper
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “I’ve always liked the quote: ‘Sleep, those little slices of death — how I loathe them.’ So reckons vocalist and lyricist Matt Baty of Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, a band as comfortable wading through the darker quarters of their subconscious as they are punishing ampstacks. Whether dwelling in the realm of dreams or nightmares, the primordial drive of the Newcastle-based band is more powerful than ever. Land Of Sleeper, their fourth record in a decade of riot and rancour, is testimony to this: the sound of a band not so much reinvigorated as channelling a furious energy, which only appears to gather momentum as the band’s surroundings spin on their axis. “Shouting about themes of existential dread comes very naturally to me, and I think because I’m aware of that in the past I’ve tried to rein that in a little,” reckons Matt. “There’s definitely moments on this album where I took my gloves off and surrendered to that urge.” Whether this means Pigs, a band once associated with reckless excess, have taken a darker turn to match the dystopian realm of the 2022 everyday, is open to debate. The band themselves aren’t necessarily convinced. For all that the last few years have seen Pigs’ stature rise in the wake of triumphant festival slots and sold-out venues alike, this remains a band who are fundamentally incapable of tailoring their sound to a prospective audience, instead standing alone and impervious as a monument of catharsis. Land Of Sleeper is no less than an act of transcendence for Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs — new anthems to elucidate a world sleepwalking to oblivion.”
Posh Swat
Post Swat
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Posh Swat is an all-percussion improvisation album with John Dwyer, Ryan Sawyer & Andres Renteria. Trap kit, hand percussion, homemade percussion instruments and electronic percussion overflow with extra weirdness. Sick pop rhythms grinding through the wasteland. Writes Dwyer:
Sand in your hair and bugs in your teeth.
Hand on your knife, knife in your sheath
Grimy bass burps through a fried stack
And the crack of the snare is a mighty pink smack
Bells, whistles, conga, and vibes
This is a drug record
One thousand times”
Screaming Females
Desire Pathway
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Once you start looking for them, you’ll see desire paths everywhere. In parks and driveways, parking lots and apartment complexes, in front of corner stores, libraries, schools and offices. “Maybe there was one in your neighborhood growing up, a corner where everyone decided it took too long to go around, so they made their own pathway to cut through,” says Marissa Paternoster, singer and guitarist of Screaming Females. “There’s this cool unsaid group consciousness that comes together where everyone decides, this is the right way to go.” Now a band for half the lifetime of its members, Screaming Females have long been pounding out their own desire path. Formed in 2005 in New Brunswick, NJ, the trio has consistently created a hearty, surprising mix of indie-, alt-, punk- and stoner-rock, all with their original lineup of Paternoster, “King Mike” Abbate (bass) and Jarrett Dougherty (drums). Desire Pathway was recorded at Minnesota’s Pachyderm Studios (where Nirvana recorded In Utero) and produced by Matt Bayles (Pearl Jam, Mastodon). Bright and full, the album captures the band at a time when nothing was certain other than their abiding desire to make music together. Now 18 years and eight albums in, Screaming Females are still making their own path in the world, still touring DIY and releasing music without compromise. The route might cut a little off the main road, but you’ll quickly see there’s a reason they’re on it. You just might like where it leads you.”
Ron Sexsmith
The Vivian Line
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The Vivian Line is the 17th album entry in Ron Sexsmith’s compelling discography, one matched by very few contemporary singer-songwriters. His catalogue has earned him immense peer respect and a loyal international following, and this new release captures Ron at the top of his creative game. With one exception, these new songs all flowed from Sexsmith’s fertile musical and lyrical imagination in a short period of 2021 during covid. “The songs came out of nowhere,” Ron explains. “I wasn’t really writing after the (2020) release of my previous album, Hermitage. The older I get, the more I think ‘maybe this is it,’ but then I found myself with new ideas again and got excited.” Reflecting upon the songs on the new album now, Sexsmith notes that “initially I thought they were an extension of Hermitage, which was very much about domestic bliss and my new life here in Stratford, Ontario. After the fact, I see them as a little weightier than Hermitage, which was very playful. There is more of a wistful feel to these songs.” The Vivian Line is named after a rural route near Ron’s house, and he views it as “representing a sort of portal between my old life in Toronto and my new life here.”
Shonen Knife
Our Best Place
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Japan’s world-famous all-girl alternative pop trio Shonen Knife will release Out Best Place, their first new album in nearly three years and their 10th full-length release. Our Best Place is an exhilarating masterpiece, brimming with punk-pop flavors that harken the emotions and energy of the band’s early classic albums. While their albums have always been authentic rock albums with unconventional twists, they’ve returned to the the quirky punk-pop flavor that fueled first four albums and made fans out of Nirvana, Redd Kross, The Ramones and Sonic Youth (among many others). Our Best Place is an eagerly anticipated return to their roots, especially for longtime fans. New songs are reminiscent of The Jam and Buzzcocks, while also mixing the playfulness of their early sound with the hard rock influence that they’ve adopted as of late (which can never be completely removed).”
