Rivethead - Cheap Wine Of Youth

Hey, do you guys (not gender specific) remember when "industrial metal" sounded like a cool idea? I actually don't, which is funny, because I was into some really shitty music that occupied the same microcosm in my proto-high school years. Fortunately nu-metal only sounded good as a 14 year old who had exposure to approximately nothing but shitty 70's rock and radio bullshit, so I don't feel much shame in admitting that - especially since I was over dung like Korn and Slipknot by the following year. Why am I writing this as an intro to Rivethead? Well, no good reason, just the fact that there's apparently an industrial metal band with the same moniker sharing a page on last.fm. For a few golden minutes, I thought the not-terrible Rivethead was touring again, but it turns out tattooed dorks with goatees and Ministry-fixations are still writing and performing tuneage for 13 year old angst buckets.

Rivethead’s a band I only got into through exposure to the member’s current/recent projects, and if you look at the list (Banner Pilot, Off With Their Heads, Dear Landlord, The Gateway District, etc), you'll instantly understand why giving this a spin was unavoidable. Cheap Wine Of Youth is their 2003 final statement, unfortunately, and the too-short follow-up to the similarly great 2001 EP, City Sound Number 5. Rumor has it the band actually concluded with a split with a band called Caulfield I've never heard, but it never saw the light of day.
Rivethead were a great, somewhat short-lived unit from Minneapolis, MN that played one of my favorite stylistic variations on pop-punk - Drunkscreechingweaselwithbeardscore. You know the kind; high-paced, sorta simple, super catchy songs with raspy, gruff vocals and tons of interplay/harmonies, and heavy, crunchy guitars that still retain that sweetness we all love as bubblegum chewing, Chuck Taylor brandishing youths. As I noted, this band's sound is definitely indebted to Ben "Complete Piece Of Shit" Weasel's classic-era Screeching Weasel, especially in regards to the clever use of multiple vocalists, but fortunately there's no "wuh-oh"s or early 90's girl-crazy, quasi-misogynistic lyrical cheese to be had.
Cheap Wine Of Youth is 9 classic tracks of 20-something angst, idealism, anger, and just enough sentimental imagery in the lyrics to make me wanna just get drunk and break into abandoned buildings. I guess this is more of a 12“ EP than a full length LP, but hey, if we can consider Gridlink’s Amber Gray a full length, then pretty much anything passes - the point is, despite the short running time (just over 20 minutes), this is a totally fulfilling listen, with awesome, fist-pumping songs like “48 Double Stack”, “Past Days”, “Traffic Street”, and “In My Heart A Warehouse Burns For You”, the very former-most of which is among my favorite songs in the pop-punk galaxy. Most importantly, the very latter contains the line "I love you just as much as I hate the man". Punk rawk.

http://www.mediafire.com/?1qmzfdz4tzm

If you dig these guys sound as much as I do, the next best thing you can do is pick up some Dear Landlord. I wouldn't say I like it quite as much as Rivethead, but it's stylistically the closest of the preceding projects, and just generally kicks the veritable ass. And hey, if you already dismissed the band's full length, Dream Homes, following the insurmountable fortress of hype built around it prior to it's release, give it another shot with expectations only for a solid, straightforward and catchy-as-shit pop punk album and you should enjoy it.

P.S. Eliot - Introverted Romance In Our Troubled Minds

Hey guys, I'm back.

I may or may not have mentioned this, but I've been traveling/reinventing/mixing things up, so to speak. Did I have time for maintaining this blog? Yeah, probably, but well, I've never been one to not suck at almost everything... extra emphasis on adhering to a self-imposed schedule for creative expression. I mean, c'mon... who needs to actually express themselves through a selected medium? Isn't it always better to just ignore all impulses to create out of apathy/fear of failure until they've built up into black tumors of stress twisted throughout my psyche?

Of course it is.

This is normally the part where I'd give a brief bio of the band... as far as I remember, at least. It's been a while since I wrote anything here, so my old M.O.'s not so fresh in my mind anymore. Unfortunately, there's either close to no biographical information available online, or I'm just incapable of locating any. Basically, though, lead vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Katie Crutchfield teamed up with her sister Alison and one or two more instrument yielding human specimens and formed P.S. Eliot in '07 or '08. Or maybe it was just the sisters on the demo? I guess it doesn't really matter since we're (RAMBLE RAMBLE RAMBLE) not talking about the demo. Speaking of which, P.S. Eliot has released one fuzz-guitar demo called The Bike Wreck!!!, this here LP, an EP called Living In Squalor, and as of April this year, a 2nd LP called Sadie. Also, apparently Katie and Alison were in a band called The Ackleys I just found out about (and now desperately need material from), and currently operate in the adorable fuzzed-out pop punk band, Bad Banana, as well as Katie's acoustic project, Waxahatchee.

Likely uninteresting information aside, the band plays, in my mind, a perfectly balanced blend of lo-fi 90's indie rock and pop punk brimming with incisive, wordy, and somewhat nostalgic lyrics and that special brand of down-to-earth beauty that permeates throughout every aspect of their sound. In other words, this is one of those albums - the kind that I end up flogging for months on end and bullying it onto any friend of mine who'll listen. For your information, this list also includes The Sidekicks' Weight Of Air, Defiance Ohio's Share What Ya Got, and Common Rider's Last Wave Rockers - all near perfect and completely infectious albums you totally need.
The opening track of their hometown's namesake, "Tennessee", is a gorgeous low-key number that sounds like it was written specifically to be played on a foggy, heavy-hearted drive home at night through a shitty sound system. It's one of those songs that sound like they should go on forever. The rest of the album is more upbeat, but it's somewhat murky quality and the non-laughable English Major angsty-ness keeps it from floating too far into the cheery pop-punk realm. It never becomes a downer, though, and while tracks like "Sore Subject" and the amazing harmonica punctuated "Incoherent Love Songs" feature themes of realistic, dull, pain, they still end up on the "uplifting" end of the spectrum.

buy it here: http://www.salinasrecords.com/
try it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?yyxwn44znrt

Sadly, the band just announced they're throwing in the towel after 4 years of activity and a relocation to Brooklyn. I still haven't had the opportunity to see them yet, so there's no way in hell I'm missing their final show in the city this December. If you end up liking this, definitely check out all the aforementioned projects and releases - every one of them is worth a listen, and for the record, Bad Banana killed it at Plan-It-X Fest this year.

Also: Good to be back. Expect regular updates again from now on.
Tentatively.