Assorted curiosities... here's to summer

Lost in the Shuffle -or- (still) Listening

I'm actually writing this for myself. I've never gotten terribly personal on this...blog...because often I'm writing about someone else, something else, some place else...or even further into the intangible, writing about music.

Which, as Mr. Costello's echoing words in my head have never stopped reminding me, is about as feasibly translatable/comprehendable as "dancing about architecture."

I'd really love to indulge surreal satire here - and fabricate fantastically funny and frightening epilogue-esque explanations, -but motorcycle crashes aren't funny, alien abduction is a tired cliche and I've not yet made any LP's for you to experiment with playing backwards to decode secret messages I've left behind.

I'm not going anywhere. Yet. That I know of.

It's more of a "back-in-5-minutes" sign, left on the ye olde blogshoppes's front door.

I'm not taking off my writer's apron, but I am wandering out, away from the kitchen and out -down the street, for a little while. I'll leave some stew simmeirng on the burner for you...just make sure to stir it here and there and when you're done, seal up the leftovers and store em in the fridge.


I need some kind of vision quest. I need to just put headphones on again and listen to music for the sake of listneing to music. I don't ever want to become numbed or unfeeling; I don't ever, nor have I ever, just put a record on to churn out a review. But still, reviews can feel dirty, hollow - and writing too many of them can be anesthetizing to the tingly receptors in one's heart, the ones that palpitate when you hear that perfect sound...

The thing is: I've been posting every day (sometimes twice) for.....I've lost count. (Or was too busy writing the next thing to count). I just want to try, once, or twice, to listen to a record and not write about it. Oh, I'll be listening. But I'll be writing something else...

My self-examination was spurred by my being moved by passages from Steve Martin's memoir, Born Standing Up, where he talks about the depression he fell into, in 1981, tied to a soul-crushing tour schedule. His words, like "exhaustion," "isolation," and "creative ennui" just happened to scare the shit out of me.

"I couldn't imagine abandoning something I had worked so hard to craft," he wrote, about his stand-up act. He admits that he "saw that the only way I could go, at best, was sideways. I wasn't singing songs that you hum forever, I was doing comedy, which is as ephemeral as the daily newspaper."

I'm not writing songs. And,... the word: "Ephemeral" also scares me. Or, it at least makes me want to go out into the desert and start sculpting something, ...or at least makes me want to seclude myself in a Paris loft with a typewriter and a bottle of absinthe and not permit myself outside until I'd churned 50 pages of mind-melting profundity and heart-swooning majesty, or at least makes me want to go to Vegas and have some kind of soul-searching lost weekend.

What I believe:
-in love
-in myself
-in Detroit music.
-and, of course, in my friends, (see, above).

I believe my dad is hilarious. And I believe my mom is inspiringly compassionate. And I believe in broken cliches like: music soothes the savage beast --and that music is the universal language.

But I don't ever want to even have a hinted inkling that what I'm doing, even here-now--as I type these words, is "ephemeral."

"Music is essentially what memories feel like," my sister once said.

It can, thus, give feeling to the ephemeral.

But...... the risk: "Oh yeah, I remember when I first heard that song... I was sitting at the coffee shop, in the middle of writing-about-that-song, when I first...heard it..." ....oh.

I'm going to go get lost in some delicious, psychedelic, transcendent, head-hurting, heart-wringing, feet-moving, eye-opening memories...

By just listening.

"In my 27th year I set out to confront my fears and found the role of a lifetime..." -Cass McCombs - "Hermit's Cave"

~

Afterward:
I'll still post here when the spirit moves me and that might end up being consistent, but it might also end up being more sporadic. I'm going up for air, that's all. But before I dry off, I'm cannon-balling back into the water.

I know I'll be writing about Urgh...
and more to come, still...

Urgh's the Word

Jen just told me she wanted to read this piece... before I'd even started writing it.

"Because, at some point last night, everything started moving too fast."

I tell her I wish I'd gotten to the compound in time for her band's set...but I was begrudgingly waylaid by the jackassery of gridlocked 19-year-olds with self-stenciled t-shirts ga-ga-ing their way towards Ford Field for the Taylor Swift concert.

She assures me it was fun. "Crazy-loud guitar," she says, "(a) crunchy tone."

And then she speaks for almost everyone involved last night in the Urgh! Detroit Music War extravaganza: "Felt really good to play all sweaty too..."

It was probably not even above 71 degrees on this summer's eve, but the more than 200 bodies giddily sardined inside rose the Lager House's collective temperature to about 94 - making it thus that every performer (upwards to 70 if you split up between the 18 bands on the bill) came up on the stage still looking their hipstobohemiothrift best, dry, kempt and cool, and wound up coming off the stage as though they'd taken multiple face-first belly dives across a slip-n-slide; hair ruffled, voice crackly, shoulders arched and heaving.

The camera crew - the vital videographers of the Urgh crew - needless to say, were pretty well sluiced with sweat before the 3rd band had even finished.

It was a beguiling scene - if you stood in one spot, perhaps out on the patio, for a moment, you could attain relative inner tranquility and observe around you the not too uncommon sequences of a serenely spilt-out house party. But if you turned to the rest of your periphery or just took six steps toward another corner, you saw the surged scuttling of camera holders, eyes bulged with fitful squirrel-like glints, ducking between circles of talkers and imbibers, under arms or between legs, to get into position as the next band hauled gear on crossing the last band hauling gear off...

Having met their Kickstarter goal just a day or so before the actual big night, the Urgh! crew set to deliver on what they'd originally dreamt up - merely capturing energy; the energies of a decent spoonful of Detroit's current crop of musicians--their styles, sounds and performance manner - and thus mirror/honor the cult documentary of similar titling, from 1982, which documented the rise of New Wave (and it's intermingling with punk, psychobilly, reggae and satirical novelty).

"I don't know...it's just great though..."

"I don't know...but this is amazing..."

"I dunno, but, man, the whole night's been really amazing..."

"I, uh...man, it's crazy...I don't know... It's exhilarating."

300-ish people. 18 bands. 30-some-odd guitars, 6 or 7 film cameras... ricocheting like flourished corn kernels in a steamy kettle cooker... And those^ were the answers one would get - as one lily-padded from one buzzed circle of revelers to the next and asking for thoughts or reflections.

That they, we, didn't know quite what to make of all this, didn't know quite what it all meant, didn't know quite what to say... Still don't know. And that's crucial to preserving a delicate purity.

Needless to say, we all got drunk off each other. We got drunk off of the energy of the night. It was, let's admit it, a legitimate house party. Everyone's inner-22-year-old came out and conjured their own weird mutant endurance levels (for dizzy and distracted sprints deep into the two o'clock hour as well as for a disconcerting amount of downed beers-per-person), -and yes we were giddy idiots....who wouldn't be with a camera in your face? These aren't rock stars with images who are already tired of paparazzi...no...everyone in the room has an inner geeky-fan-boy-or-girl inside...and it was turned out in many of the jovial faces shunted together last night.

Yes it was gruff and un-graceful, but it was surprisingly...well... efficient. It was as smooth as chaos could be, I suppose. Set times were kept and stage breakdown was fluent and no amps exploded and no one suffered dismemberment...maybe just a sprain or two and an epidemic of hangover-headaches. And some broken eye glasses.

A caveman played atop an 11-ft wall; Darth Vader stumble-danced in front of Carjack; the Satin Peaches performed a ravenous set for what could well be their last Detroit appearance (ever?); there was body surfing and swigged-beers-between-snare-hits and numerous other heroic, hellish or sloppily swaggering antics one expects at an undeniably jumpin' rock n' roll concert. (Lots of people jumped, from stages, from walls, from chairs and from car roofs).

But we shouldn't have to know what it means...we're already self-conscious enough about what we have...we shouldn't give it a name yet to thereby scrape its sanctity...

Because it will be over, at some point...and who knows when?

It felt climactic, in a way; like white blocky credits would start rolling across our eyes, in real time, when last call let out and the sun started to rise.

But talking in absolutes is just for people who are too easily overwhelmed or perhaps too intolerant of the unassailable hope of courageously naive inspirado - Too many fests? Too many bands? Crowded scene?

Maybe.

You live (or near) in a city where it seems like there's a music fest every three weeks to accommodate the spillover of bands... Anyone feeling exasperated about that might be wise to be-careful-what-they-wish-for... We could just be a town with a multiplex and a bowling alley and a shooting range.

Instead, friends get together and play music for each other. To what end? Hopefully Urgh! helps us find out.

But back to it feeling climactic - I think the word should, or at least could (be considered): paradigm shift. Forget 'fests' - because this is just how Detroit's rock music scene operates now - Forget 'scene' while you're at it - because a funny thing happened in the last two years leading up to Urgh! -the bands seemed to stop caring about edging each other. Last night felt like a ferocious family picnic - even if it has aspects of self-glorification, why not? That's what every family does at their great gatherings or reunions or shared outings - they celebrate what they have...

We may not know what it is we have, but it's weird how familial it's feeling.

Total family picnic, though, the same way you'd wig out and start making fish-faces and distend your popsicle-stained tongues, roaring wildly when your crazy uncle brought his Super 8 camera over to your side of the swing-set... These bands poured their hearts out, obviously trying to match the zaniness of their heroes, the Cramps, or Gary Numan, or Pere Ubu or whoever else from the original, but then, also giving nods to the other bands in the crowd.

Friends and family.

Urgh.

(Et Tu,) Brute Heart

Wherein, I ramble about Brute Heart, Computer Perfection, and Bad Indians

Classical instruments... be it the violin or be it the human voice... can have an imposing darkness to them; beautiful, haunting, and, in a way that seems to conjure ancient demons or past lives or merely flicker with the gossamer glow of candles, can be primal.

(see: City of Music)

Brute Heart's brand of spooky baroque-punk, richly evocative despite its minimalist ingredients (violin/viola/drum/bass/voice), makes me consider it psychedelic - only in that these trips, buoantly rhythmic, droney, chant-like, with "serptentine melodies" wrapt with moderately macabre imagery of eclipses and dubious charms of evil eyes -make one feel like their on some kind of spirit jounrey. Dash in a little proggy art-rock takes on torch songs and you've got this trio from across Lake Michigan (Minneapolis), putting out this, Lonely Hunter, (their 2nd LP) out on Soft Abuse.

Listen: Brute Heart - "Blindfolded"

~

But also...

"Recording happens in fits and starts. There's no such thing as a quiet house. I like to think about the days when I'll be old or gone - that (our daughter) Penny will have our music. Maybe it will be a puzzle for her to try to figure out what was going on in our lives, or in our minds, when we were relatively young. Or maybe it's just for me, when I get old, to remind myself that I had strange things in my head..."

Singer/guitarist Gene Corduroy - speaking of his band, Computer Perfection, in an interview with The Patch, detailing their current work upon a "sophomore" LP, to be released later this year.



I Need a Serious Love by thestrangeecho

Computer Perfection - June 11th @ Isaac Agee Downtown Synagogue - with High Speed Dubbing and Car Parts.

~

But, ...but, also---

Bad Indians (who you can see, June 18th at the New Center Park Stage), just released a new demo-EP -- The Rebel Kind - Take a listen here.

Part of Being Human

"Music is part of being human, and there is no human culture in which it is not highly developed and esteemed."

Neurologist, Author and Professor of Psychiatry, Oliver Sacks, wrote about the curious powers of music upon the brain in his 2007 study, Musicophelia...

"It's very ubiquity may cause it to be trivialized: we switch on a radio, switch it off, hum a tune, tap our feet, find the words to an old song going through our minds, and think nothing of it."

And now that I've read it, these lines impacted me. Or, maybe just thinking, intensely, soberly, appreciatively, about the impact, over all, that music can have... ...it's disturbing how easily it could go unappreciated.
Since...

"...to those who are lost in dementia, the situation is different. Music is no luxury to them, but a necessity, and can have a power beyond anything else to restore them to themselves, and to others, at least for a while."

GLOSSIES - Phantom Films - ~ - June 12 @ The Loving Touch

Anyone familiar with the work of OFFICE knew that singer/songwriter Scott Masson was capable of crafting, competently, keenly, almost inherently, minor masterpieces of pop-rock pizazz.

A bemusing and subtly calculating mind that meticulously, discernibly considered the minute merits of numerous sonic nuances and knew how to still give some edge to the grinning disposition of major keys.

Anyone familiar with the work of OFFICE, also knew that certain words replicated themselves upon the write-up sheets churned out by the weeklies in their hometown Chicago or on blogs across the burgeoning Internet-scenes of the mid-00's... that the sound was "glossy."
Dig the latest single (and, also, my personal favorite "glossie" track: "The Opportunist")GLOSSIES - The Opportunist by DC/Milo

You can read the full interview with Scott in a forthcoming post on The Patch - wherein, the Milford, MI-raised songwriter talks about the combustion of his old band in the face of major-label-wrought compromises and scene politics, as well as his descent into a nervous breakdown that left him bedridden for majority time of a calendar year.

In this detachment from the scene and all other similar distractions, he worked himself back to health, physically/mentally -even writing while under the fleeting bleakness of those bed covers- and started crafting a heavily surreal "pastiche" of songs, with no set guidelines for composition and with an elevated inflection upon some more diary-esque (more pesonal, if you will) lyrics, but dashing in dips into the deep-end of out-of-body/self-effacing "character studies" -some kind of musical montage.

Thus - GLOSSIES' - Phantom Films - which will see a proper release asap - and has its completion tacitly celebrated June 12th @ the Loving Touch (with The Pop Project and Jeremy Messersmith.)

Masson is ready to return, now, with a full band backing these glossie tunes. "It's funny, because the record is a study in narcissism. So, you would think that spending time alone in my basement would lend itself to even more narcissism but that's the ironic part about this whole thing - in literally cutting myself off from life - and youth culture, and all that, I was able to really grow up, finally."

"(A nervous breakdown) forces you to just stop what you're doing. You have to back out. So you can then take a step forward into the future. It all ended up being a very positive thing."

A surreal slide into the kaleidoscoping persona's, peaks, valleys and boundaries of the subconscious... Masson has done it again.

A different kind of glossie........

Spring is Ever-Becoming: These Trails

This is just what I needed to get into the summer mood...

-The cherubic jig of recorders -The hazy grin of dulcimers -The warped wring of slide guitars -Bubbly vocals crooning and cooing out coaxing folk ballads

Where has this record been all (our) lives? Most of us weren't even alive when it was recorded... These Trails are yet-another-long-lost/bottom-of-the-treasure-chest gem, yanked upwards by Drag City (the same way they did with Detroit's garage-fathers, Death).

This record begs to be listened to outside...or at least on some idyllic shoreside cottage's porch with the windows open; the gentle acoustic guitars elucidate the flicker of sunlight through verdant green leaves flapping in the warm breeze; the vocals are a delicate balance of sublime and spiritual, soothing and ghostly...and the eclectic blend of instrumentation (including an arp synthesizer simmering under an often dazzling, but not dizzying, cascade of acoustic dances) gives it an air of something alien... or, you know, -just a substantially spaced-out, blissed-out acid-folk trip.

Not that I want to drudge up eye-rolling "genre" pre-occupations... But...but... This record might be the missing link to the, er, "freak-folk" troubadors from the mid-00's... see: Joanna Newsom / Devendra Banhart. The intriguing kick here - it's bemusing delivery of Os Mutantes-flavored obscuro-pop (if it were high on hammock-swayed tranquilizers) with a uniquely Hawaiian-tinged vibe. These are the day-dreamy pennings of singer/songwriters Margaret Morgan and Patrick Cockett, as they wander the hills and mountains of Honolulu and Kaua'l, a way-out-west perspective churned in the dying days of hippie-dom.

You need some sweet sounds to quench your thirst for groovy-yet-cerebral chill-out music?

Here.

And listen to "Psyche I & Share Your Water" -from The Rising Storm

Ty Segall knows where my head goes - or, the Devil swings the wrench one more time...

Finally settled after a jostled morning. I was setting out today to write about something unrelated, or independent of-- music, but soon felt the wind knocked out of me...

I've found I need, or at least rely-upon, terrible and beautiful guitars, melodious moans and the unrelenting, jarring stomp and punch of drums steadily reverberating into my ears, as a vital ignition... to start up the whatever-it-is, inside of me, -maybe, some kind of demon that demands appeasement or merely an engine of primitive design, forever mangled by numerous dents wrought by the Devil pounding upon it with the wrench of rock n roll.

I hit the already humid morning air under an up-and-at-em sun, pedaling down the service drive in the opposite direction of the rat race river of autos, angling past the same soaked plastic bag, a mud-splattered expired jellyfish, under the interstate bridge and then onwards, huffing diesel exhaust, pumping my way up a nearly 45-degree angled paved sidewalk...

...only to get to the coffee shop and find out that the "wi-fi" is "down" and thus feel shame in the Luddite/pen-and-paper-purist quadrants of my being for being caught red-handed for Internet dependency.

What to write about today?

***That Apple unveiled The Cloud? Thus that you can listen to songs from your iTunes-Library ANYWHERE...assuming you have your iPod/iPhone/iPad on-hand as well (and here's betting with dystopian surety that you will!)

***But, on days like these, D-Day of all days, it feels inhuman, in a way, to be going through the motions of writing about music... (World War II Veterans recall D-Day 67 Years Later)

***...I could write about music - and let you know that mangled-folk/indie-punk upstart Ty Segall seems to be on a considerable upswing, with a lot of Internet-eyes already peering forth through the staticy seas to the proper release of the 5th album (in three years) from the San-Fran-based troubadour of all things reverb, haze, aloof melody and dadaist-flirting lyrics...with the venerable/eclectic Drag City getting behind his ramshackle blends...

***Or, maybe I could follow through on actually ruminating on the anniversary of D-Day; not only, first and foremost, out of respect for the lives lost and the admirable dedication of the soldiers who fought, died or were injured, on that day, back 67 years ago on Normandy and Ohama Beach respectively... but also as, (if you'll indulge my unusually flaring cynical side), another opportunity to reflect, with genuine concern more so than high-horse repudiation, of the apathy, or disconnected complacency, of majority of Americans...

...which was also highlighted last weekend as we recognized the 30 years since the first AIDS diagnosis... (AIDS Brings Out Best, Worst in US ; 30-years-on, Experts Demand More Action)

Or, how about this for tra-la-la -ringing memorials: Marking D-Day with Massive U.S. Paintball Battle)

~
I don't usually write about non-musical issues because once I do wade my way out into the deep-end, beyond the buoy markers, I end up getting pulled down, to where my craning neck just barely juts my chin above the surface, sucking for air as the anchor of negativity coaxes me deeper...

It's amazing what "hope" and "change" looks like, at one instance, and what it winds up looking like, two years later:

Obama uses AutoPen to sign Patriot Act extension...

I always come back to music because I don't have the energy, or rather the masochistic/misanthropic fetishist leanings necessary in order to genuinely inspire in me an urge to consistently return to what is, most often, a circus of madness, misappropriation, malcontent, misdeeds, and fanatical posturing of bellicosity and impressive(ly empty) rhetoric...

I always come back to music because it is often the ideal escape. (Justifiably, an intellectual escape...but also, a universal means of communication as old as language itself).

~
I'll be frank with you...

I started writing this piece, this piece, with two intentions:

To tell you about Ty Segall's newest album, "Goodbye Bread" (mostly a stylistic step forward for the auteur of acerbic-pop into slightly cleaner palettes of dreamy/druggy/drifting acoustic-jangled chorales)...

...and then to maybe start thinking out loud what it would be like if I stopped writing about music...stopped writing here... at least for a little while... It's something that's been nibbling on my mind. Milo without the music.

But, I'm not ready to follow that to it's inevitable -staring-out-into-the-ether-at-the-edge-of-a-cliff--conclusion...

So, instead...

I'll expound upon Segall's latest - a keen sculpting of sun-fried psychedelia - some kind of bewitching blend of late 60's reverb-soaked Brit-rock--think Pretty Things on S.F. Sorrow! ...like a revival of that curious era when the paisley prance of mainstream-co-opted Mod sensibilities had been warped into a beautiful nightmare swathed in an edgier smokescreen of surrealism...

But then, dash in an almost bluesy cut of cathartic guitar shreds ("The Floor"), or even an early-70's era Lennon's take on snarling ballads ("You Make the Sun Fry"), add in a grunge-feeling growl to the low end guitars ("Where Your Head Goes") and turn it all on its head with early prog/glam dashes on the acoustic strut and slide of "I Am With You" as it rings of quintessential Bolan or Rebel-Rebel-Bowie. And then, of course, Seagall's typical sardonic, scuffed, tumbling ballads shine through on brow-cocking shrug-and-shred outings like "Comfortable Home (A True Story)."

Take a listen: Ty Segall - "You Make the Sun Fry" (via pitchfork.com)

Goodbye Bread is out June 21st - but you can check out a 7" "I Can't Feel It" (now, by clicking here).

~

P.S.

June 11th at the Lager House - 18 bands enter, 18 bands leave... But 18 bands also get documented for a forthcoming film that aims to capture "the Detroit scene..." "...at a moment" (this moment) "in time."

What the (mostly-rock, but also electro, and punk,) parties have to offer, will be on display...for your dissection and montage-esque appraisal...

Merge - "Our Noise" (Out Now) + Tribute Night @ Woodruff's June 8

"People ask the question a lot: Why did you decide to put out your own records? But, it's not like there was anyone else asking to put them out."

--Mac McCaughan - co-founder of Merge Records (founder of Superchunk)

The Story of Merge Records is more than just the story of Mac and Superchunk bassist Laura Ballance fatefully aligning in Chapel Hill, NC more than 20-years-ago and galvanizing their shared ideals of preserving the aesthetic of the crate-diving, record-collecting, music maven. It goes beyond their helping to establishing some kind of foundation, however amorphous or frail at first, upon which their friends... (i.e., their own favorite bands) could climb upon and stand together under the banner of a "record label."

It's also the story, as reporter/author John Cook pieces together in his new book, of "what went wrong at the major labels..."

"At this point," said Ballance, "we have artists coming to us that formerly would have been interested in being on a major label, which really tells me that people are fleeing that model like rats from a sinking ship and that (Merge) somehow represent ohw a record label should work."

Merge's story is a subtle indictment of the major labels and casts revealing scrutiny upon its evil agenda...rather, it's view of music with dollar-sign-eyeballs. Cook shows in his expansive book (- a blending of photo-album / oral history that sorta reads like a tome-sized magazine feature/interview)
that:

--music, rock n' roll specifically, has always been forged by the passionate DIY-ers first - and that goes for its early proponents, especially. Cook draws comparisons of Merge to Vivian Carter and James Bracken, the first to release the Beatles in the U.S. with their Vee-Jay Records label (as, at that time in the early 60's, Capitol had refused). Don't forget Sam Phillips at Sun Records, by the way.

In any case - I'll make two recommendations to you as we acknowledge the 20th Anniversary of Merge Records:

A.) Seek out this book (we have it at the Ferndale Public Library).

B.) Treat yourself to a tribute night at Woodruff's - June 8th!

Not to glorify them, but... they proved it... A simple, all-heart (long-slogging) formula to prop independent music - and coming out the other end with not just your integrity in tact, but surplus of integrity.

Credibility sounds like too fleeting of a word. But it's pretty nice when you can count some of the most respected, yet most popular indie rock bands, i.e. Spoon and Arcade Fire, as family members. They survived their first rough five years and then caught the "wave" of seminal post-grunge indie rock (along with their comrades like Dinosaur Jr.) and wound up signing acts like Magnetic Fields... One tries not to indulge the "and they never looked back" cliche). Ah well, ...most indie rockers know the lore of Merge and 'Chunk and all that... Just enjoy the weekend and check out the book--and Woodruff's.

Destroy This Place - Interview - new album out June 3 - (Lager House)

Destroy This Place,

Get the proper feature article from the scrupulous and sincere LOCAL documentarians at the Ferndale Patch (thanks Terry). Read on...

or real below...
~

"Destroy This Place"...as a singular phrase, wouldn't normally conjure a sense of surety, savvy or a kind of stability.

And yet, it's the name, ...and on one level also the philosophy, of a band that is "new" only in the same vague sense that their "first show" occured just as recently as last year's Ferndale DIY Street Fair.

Destroy This Place is the allignment of "seasoned vets," who aren't trying to fit into any new fad, not trying to rub elbows in any scene, not trying to get out and tour and not trying to reinvent the wheel.

Two bands, both of considerable local renown (and substantial, intertwining resumes) started winding down at the same time in mid-2010. Singer/guitarist John Nelson and bassist Monday Busque saw the inevitable end coming for their venerable noise-pop band New Grenada just as the dashing power-pop trio Friendly Foes (with singer/guitarist Ryan Allen and drummer Sean Sommer) was essentially splintering (with its bassist Liz Wittman moving onto work with Lettercamp).

Read it aloud: Destroy This Place

...and it sounds like a senseless battle-cry from some upstart basement anarchist - But with these four, combining two bands and thus recording an entire album together (with a forthcoming release June 3rd at the Lager House in Detroit), they're the utter antithesis of senseless.

Forging the two bands -just made sense. Finally getting together to set down to work extensively and shrewdly, together on an album together -just made sense.

And bringing a healthy bit of bellicosity, an edge, and a heaviness to their sound and their stage show -just made sense. This is what happens when musicians are done fucking around.

"What we're doing is just natural," Nelson said. "There's some bands that just try to fit whatever's current at the time and I don't think we do that at all. We might sound sorta 90's or even 80's and we sound more throwback then we do current. We're playing rock songs, but we're also doing what's true to us, we're not forcing anything."

Now then, to harp on all their steadier and sober qualities ("dudes in their 30's, with familes or future families and full times jobs") would be a disservice to how imposing, how declarative, how loud and how dynamic their sound is -

It brings a marrowy, blunt bolstering and gravelly haymaker's sledge swing to a somewhat pop sensibility. The guitars are crunchy and grimy, the drums are pounding, the bass throws body checks and the vocals are belted with ardor; it's aggressive and, yes, heavy, but compacted into 2 1/2 minute kickers that exhort the primal, almost sinister sneered fun of rock n roll.

Destroy This Place takes you back to the glory days of early 90's indie-rock, with ears that flex a penchant for happy/hazy 70's A.M. pop and early 80's metal. But again, it isn't a pack of privileged 23-year-olds naively angling their own bright-eyed tribute, it's a group of adults, Allen said, who aren't wasting any time. There's confidence and committment, Allen said, for a group that gets "together" to write and rehearse" after work and after the kids are in bed" who "don't need to go out to the bar and rub elbows or to be seen."

"With 'heaviness,'" Sommer said, "obviously we run into this with the choice of the name. It's because we're a little bit older and we thought maybe people would be looking at us that way, so we kinda wanted to come out with a middle finger and have the sound back it up."

"Heaviness," Allen said, "or hard-rocking, is up to interpretation. But the 'heaviness' comes in the form of, just, energy and maybe that spark to really want to kick the doors down a little harder than we have in other bands."

"I'm not hiding who I am," said Busque said. At 35 and a father of two, he knows there's a whisper of anxiety--that the kids might see you as the aging hipster up on a stage.

"But, I'm still playing relevant music," Busque said, "stuff that's important and catchy, but smart. It's not stuff that's rehashing or where I'm trying to be a 30-year-old wearing clothes from Hot Topic. I can still kick your ass and I can still fucking play."

"Part of that," Sommer adds, "is that we are all very secure in the reasons that we're in this band. We don't have any delusions."

The band set up at Russian Recording (in Bloomington, IN, where Nelson recorded with his other current/active band Copper Theives), and, Allen said, were considerably benefitted by its owner and engineer Mike Bridavsky's keen reading of DTP, as people and as players.

"He got our band," Allen plainly exclaimed. "We didn't dick around, we didn't pile things on, we didn't put extra anything. Songs are short and their punchy; you don't need a mellotron or a vibraphone or a saxophone" (or a six-stringed raccoon bone) "in there if it doesn't need it. There's no clutter, it's like a live show."

"He made it sound like us," Nelson said.

As the four of them chime in, charting out Destroy This Place's progression, the conversation is dotted with a handful of reflections varying on similar phrases:

"...maybe we did that before..." or "maybe we felt that way before..." with the tacit implication of learning from one's youthful foolhardiness...

"...but not now... not with this band."

Nelson said he was inspired by seeing bands like Dinosaur Jr. on their reunion tours - and noting that sound better, tighter, and yes, louder. "That's because they're just better players, now," Nelson said - mirroring the decade's worth of playing, performing, writing and recording these four have amassed around the greater Detroit area.

"Obviously, yes, we started this band to have fun, but at the same time, all of us have a little bit of something to prove," Allen said, "at least to ourselves."

"We're not gonna say anything on stage," Sommer said, nodding to the band name, "or even anything to each other, but, we're kinda throwing down the gauntles with other bands."

Out of three bands in a night, Busque said, which one will you walk away remembering? "You're gonna remember us..."

Resurrect the Mammoth is available on Bellyache Records.

As Destroy This Place nears its one-year-anniversary, it celebrates the release of Resurrect the Mammoth - June 3rd at PJ's Lager House - with Pewter Cub and End Trails. - Free CD+LP voucher with $8 cover charge.

Listen.

Child Bite - DC's Deep Thanks show - June 18 @ New Center Park Stage

I'm currently working out: 'what-this-is-all-gonna-mean-in-the-end...'

Suffice it to say: thanks for reading...

It'll be (almost-)-the Summer solstice - so come enjoy a free show!

Video below by Katie Barkel

Star Wars parade consortium photos compliments of Amy Palomar.

CHILD BITE "ODD INN" from KATIE BARKEL on Vimeo.

More info from Child Bite
Plus an interview, a few months back, discussing their forthcoming EP -at Tiny Mix Tapes