Vinyl Collective/Suburban Home UTI Series Volume 8: Austin Lucas/Frank Turner

(Click picture for complete series album listing, and sample tracks)

Ah, the home stretch. With only two more records in the series, looking back, there's been a pretty good selection. We've had punk, rock, folk, alt, and ska. Now it's time to toss some country in there. The eighth entry into the series features Austin Lucas covering Dolly Parton's "To Daddy" and Frank Turner covering the Springsteen classic "Thunder Road." I'll toss out the mystery right away and say that this is a very good record by two surprisingly good artists.

Austin Lucas begins with "To Daddy." I never really liked Dolly Parton, be it her music or legacy. I dislike her glitzy, sugary take on country music, and dislike how it transformed the top Nashville acts to follow suit with mostly soulless, mindless drivel. Still, her earlier, simpler-sounding tracks are at least tolerable to my ears, and "To Daddy" is among the handful of songs of hers that I can get some sort of enjoyment out of. Up until now, though, I've preferred the Emmylou Harris version. It's a little less poppy and glitzy, embracing the simplicity of country music that I enjoy. I guess it only makes sense that a metal singer from Czech now does my favorite rendition of the song.

Austin Lucas does an amazing job with this song. Over the past several years, I've grown very weary of the coffeehouse acoustic acts. If you've seen one hipster torturing Bob Dylan on his Takamine, barely holding onto the key with each passing wail, you've seen most of the scene. With such a simple act, featuring one person playing two parts, it's important to play each to the best of one's ability. Each note, each strum, and every beat needs to be considered if a solo acoustic act wishes to stand out. This not only applies to straight musical theory, but also in presentation. A vocalist/musician needs to invest themselves emotionally into every second of a song. Hearing someone sing each note right versus hearing that person sing the right notes with the best of their emotional conviction is the difference between night and day, or the difference between Neutral Milk Hotel and Andrew Jackson Jihad (sorry, but it's true and a comparison that anyone who's read my blog up until now can get). Unfortunately, most acts I've heard, whether local or radio-played, don't really do it for me. It makes you forget how powerful a talented singer with an acoustic guitar can be.

Lucas has a beautiful voice, doing everything right and beyond to make his version of "To Daddy" to be, in my eyes, the definitive recording of the track. There's no glitz, yet no crust in this cover, just Austin and his guitar. He intertwines the vocals and instrumentals wonderfully, and if you listen just enough, you get the impression that he considers the balance between his voice and his guitar down to the very second, because each swell and each drawing back of either of the dual tracks seems perfectly timed and performed, creating a great synergy between the two that really makes Lucas' version of "To Daddy" to be not just one of my favorite versions of the song, but one of my favorite country songs, period. It's a wonderful, relaxed track that makes me wish that I could just go campfire jam with the man on my banjo.

Lucas' first track set the bar pretty damned high, but Frank Turner seems to jump over it with an impressive ease and grace. Another example of me disliking the original source material pretty much from the get-go, I've never been a large fan of Bruce Springsteen, or his song "Thunder Road" though I certainly like it more. Bruce and E-Street are talented, but I could never get over the corniness of their music, cringing at each obnoxious recording trick like the bells during volume swells or Bruce's self-pleasing, close-eyed, housewife-fainting, air-humped vocal blast, which is a shame because everything else about the band is pretty great. Frank Turner tosses out any complaint I've ever had about Bruce's work and just plays the goddamned song, and Jesus does he play it well.

Featuring nothing but acoustic guitar strums and Frank's impressive, English-inflected vocals, the cover of "Thunder Road" retains Springsteen's soulfulness and rock roots and drops the corny arena rock, and the results are awesome. I kind of get a chill every time Frank Turner busts his voice out and slams on his guitar at the start of each chorus and verse. It's fun to hear a genuinely talented vocalist these days that doesn't try to emulate Whitney Houston or Marvin Gaye (See about 90% of contestants on American Idol), and just sing in their own unique way, unaided by any voice synthesizers or pitch correctors. It helps create an imagery that somebody is creating an art through sound, and makes a much more pleasing experience than hearing another lame modern soul singer try to do the Aretha Franklin pitch bend every few seconds just as a way to impress the average non-musical fan.

This is a great album with two great songs that can appeal to most anyone, including fans of Dolly and Springsteen fans. It's also the most parent-friendly album, helping prove to your folks once and for all that there are artists today that can top out the most cherished acts of their day, while still giving enjoyment to any listener. I really do recommend it to anyone growing weary of acoustic acts these days, because if it doesn't alleviate your boredom of the medium, then there's a problem with you. It also makes me wonder why, between Whiskey & Co., Drag the River, and Austin Lucas, a traditionally punk label can put out better country artists than anything Nashville's smeared all over Wal-Mart discount stands for the past 20 years.

Vinyl Collective/Suburban Home UTI Series Volume 7: Lemuria/Off With Their Heads

(Click picture for complete series album listing, and sample tracks)

Alright, I'm getting a little tired of this series (don't get me wrong, I love listening to it, it's just getting boring to write about it when so much good stuff is coming out), so I'm going to just fire out reviews of the next three records today and tomorrow so I can get on to some more juicy stuff.

With that out of the way, I'd like to go into what's probably my favorite of any album in the series. The album starts out with Lemuria covering "Alec Eiffel", originally by alternative pioneers The Pixies. There's always been a connection between the two in my eyes, with The Pixies having developed a punk-influenced indie sound, and Lemuria having an indie-influenced punk sound. They both have a unique, interesting sound that are both great to listen to in many different situations.

That bit of badly-explained musical opinion aside, Lemuria's cover of "Alec Eiffel" is a great track to listen to. It's hard to find weird, quirky punk nowadays that can take itself seriously enough to not hate the stuff completely, but Lemuria has always been there to provide a fix to keep my shakes from getting too bad. If their previous work is a dose of drug for my addiction, then this song is a year's worth of methadone injected right into my brain, because their cover is a freaking awesome indie/punk cover of a somewhat poppy old song. Every part is played well, from the instruments to the synthed vocals. It's energetic, odd, and catchy as hell, and is definitely a great add to any fun playlist.

The cute pop-punk of Lemuria eventually leads to the dark bubblegum of Off With Their Heads and their cover of The Nobody's "Scarred by Love." This series is starting to make me mad, because between this track and JJ Nobody's involvement in Drag the River, Suburban Home seems dedicated to retroactively not hate The Nobodys as much as I normally do, because the song on this album is so god-damned good that I can't help but applaud anyone involved with writing, recording, or covering it. Off With Their Heads takes a somewhat formulaic suburban pop-punk song, removes the twangy treble and obnoxious nasally vocals, and replaces them with a faster tempo, crustier music, and Ryan Young's deep, raspy vocals to create the darkest bubblegum dance punk you'll ever hope to hear. The song is a great depressive listen due to its subject matter and dark sound, yet still fun to bop along to with its semi-upbeat style and catchiness. Just like Hospitals and From the Bottom, I'll never get tired of the latest offering from Off With Their Heads.

Overall, this record includes itself in a three-way tie with Drag the River and Teenage Bottlerocket/The Ergs' albums for my favorite in the series. It's a must-listen for modern punk enthusiasts, and may even get a listen out of people who aren't really into the type of music or scene of either band. Good stuff.

Come on Mom it's Only a Blog Post

I have (to my count three times) tossed out rips on The Nobodys on this blog, and I believe I owe an explanation for doing so. I can basically sum up my hatred of The Nobodys and similar artists in a single sentence:

I hate PC-baiting.

There are countless musical artists out there who work tirelessly to hone their craft, exploring metaphor and poetry in their lyrics, sound and composition to perfect their music, and learning and creating new recording techniques to perfect their creations. I commend these artists, good or bad, because they achieve their fame through tireless effort. They work. Then there are the PC-baiters in an entirely different boat. These are the kids who never decided that nurturing and developing creativity was worth their time, and just wanted instant fame. They found out that "ironically" playing on the stereotypes and stigmas that hold back oppressed people got a few gasps and knee-jerk angry responses to their great frat-wad crusade against progressing society eventually led to a controversy, ending in people forking over cash just to get in on the riff-raff.

Then there are the general white-trash deviants (never being above a twelve-year-old maturity level) who end up genuinely liking the bigoted lyrics, heralding it as a crusade against "PC fascists." Listen, I'm pretty much annoyed by a lot of modern political correctness. I say "secretary" instead of "administrative assistant", leave a "y" out of "women", and prefer the term "disabled" over "differently abled." However, is it really necessary to use racial slurs, assign stereotypes, and objectify women just for laughs? Could The Nobodys have at least tried to craft an opus for the progress of society in the same time it took them to write "Just Another Cunt"? Would it hurt to push the treadmill forward instead of dragging our knuckles in the ground?

The Nobodys and their fans will tell you that objectification of women is "just a joke" and will insist you "lighten up." But every time some idiot laughs at the constant barrage of misogynist slurs and insults, that's one more person starting on the road to holding back the progress of an oppressed group of people. They'll start laughing at terms like "bitch" and "cunt", then they'll start making their friends laugh at the terms. Then what's to stop him from ruining female self-esteem by using the terms to refer to specific women? Jokes can harm, no matter what the intention. I'm not telling people what to think or say, but just to think about such things before spouting it out. The fact that this type of music gets popular over genuinely inspired and artistic music is just something that bothers me.

Still, bonus points to Drag the River, their music is fucking sweet.

Vinyl Collective/Suburban Home UTI Series Volume 6: Andrew Jackson Jihad/Cobra Skulls

(Click picture for complete series album listing, and sample tracks)

I wasn't looking forward to writing about this particular record. It's mainly because I flat out hated one of the tracks, and I didn't want to turn this site into an overly-negative one. It's a very slippery slope from a flat-out negative review to one of those sites that just picks on everything bad, depending on bad humor (saying "fucking" every other word seems to be the flavor of the month for negative reviewers these days) to entertain. But, I promised to do the series, and I'll try to keep this as classy as is possible.

That said, I completely pretty much hate Andrew Jackson Jihad's cover of "Two-Headed Boy" by Neutral Milk Hotel (the original is definitely a solid runner for mypersonal favorite song of all time). The first few seconds are promising, with the acoustic guitar player changing the indie-folk sound of the original into an up-beat Spanish folk style. It eventually culminates into a very pretty bowed-bass/finger-strummed acoustic piece at the end that sounds quite good. The instrumentals though, are the only real compliment I can pay to the cover.

The song goes completely downhill once the vocals start in, and the annoyance is almost immediate. Sean Bonnette immediately makes me grind my teeth with his goofy-sounding vocals. It seems more like he's mocking the song than paying tribute to it, turning what was once a beautiful, somber folk ballad into something resembling one of Weird Al's famous "polkazations" of famous songs. It's gotten to the point where the second Bonnette first wails out "I am listening to hear where you are," I shut the sung off, just to get away from the grating vocal tracks and regular heavy breaths between notes. What makes it even worse is Bonnette's insistence on using that obnoxious technique to hide bad singing by throwing a tremolo on nearly every held note, to keep from having to hold an off-key/off-pitch note for very long. Jeff Mangum never used this technique, and even he had a terrible time keeping pitch on some notes in the original recording, but the mistake was slight and endearing enough to actually make the song have a very pretty sound. What's even worse is that they decided that one bad vocal track wasn't enough, so they tossed another vocal track in the background, this time instead of being a goofy, off-key wail-fest, it's a mumbling off-key snoozer. So now we have two tracks by the same singer that are so off the intended notes that they sound awful together. What a mess.

I'm not sure if Andrew Jackson Jihad's song lowered my expectations, or it stole any real bile reserved for the whole record completely for itself, because I really like Cobra Skulls' cover of Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues", another personal favorite tune of mine. I was apprehensive going in, I'll admit. How many Bob Dylan covers have been recorded versus how many of them that have actually been of good quality? Usually with Dylan covers, people feel it necessary to croon out the song to make up for Bob's lack of vocal prowess on the original recording, coming off as sort of an insult to try to out-sing the man by so much. Cobra Skulls actually did the complete opposite, opting for a sped-up rockabilly dance version of the classic. It holds up surprisingly well, sounding like they're channeling Bob Dylan vis a vis Mojo Nixon. There's no flair or extra tracks, or anything that makes the song feel like anything but a bunch of kids laying tribute to the man. It's high-energy, fun, and well-played by the vocals and instruments. The only heavy criticism I could find for it is that it could have benefited from a slight tempo decrease. Some of the vocals and instrumentals sound a little rushed and a few extra seconds could have cut out a few gasps for air from the vocalist, and allowed the guitar to hold out a few more of the cool-sounding fills and solos.

Even with The Cobra Skulls nearly redeeming Andrew Jackson Jihad's sloppy track, it's hard to recommend this record. Even though the Skulls pulled out a good show, it's far from a moving tribute, or a great companion to the original "Homesick." AJJ fans might find a listen, but Neutral Milk Hotel fans would probably be offended by the messy cover, while Dylan and Cobra fans might find some slight entertainment. Mitch Clem/Amanda fans have probably already ordered the track, as the cover art for the Skulls is pretty awesome (Again making up for Jihad's pretty dumb-looking cover art). If I could really pull out a solid musical recommendation out of this mess, it would be to give The Cobra Skulls' original work a good listen. They have some great original music to their name, and are a good fit for rockabilly fans looking for some fun.