The Breeders - Pod

YOURZ

There was a time when Pod was never filed away because it was always the next choice to be played.  It was one of THE must have CDs if you wanted your collection to have any sort of indie credibility.  Mind you, this was 20 years ago when things like 'indie credibility' meant a lot more to me than it probably should have.  But then, acceptance from my peers was also very high on my list of 'must haves'.  The older we get, the less we give a shit about small stuff like this.

I'm really glad Pod has stayed in my collection for all those years, though.  Listening back to it reminds me of some fantastic days, particularly of making music and hanging out with a great bunch of creative, talented and generally awesome people.  The Steve Albini-produced track list includes quite possibly the best Beatles cover ever in 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun'.  And while the production could only be described as minimal, at best, it also served as a no-nonsense template for the great swathe of bands who took this ideal and ran with it.  Of the 12 tracks, 9 come in under the 3 minute mark and a third of these under the 2 minutes.

It was head Breeder Kim Deal's links to her day job as The Pixies bass player that got this side-project noticed.  This could have been a bit of a disaster if Deal's song writing hadn't stood up.  But thankfully it did and still does.  And while history will record their more commercial followup, the mega-selling Last Splash, as the best this band has to offer.  But for me, it will always be Pod.

VERDICT: TURN IT UP

MINE

I wonder how Steve Albini feels about having this on his CV now?  When I read those words - "Engineered by Steve Albini" - before listening to Pod I thought, well, it'll have to sound good at least.  How wrong I was.

Let me paint you a picture.  YourZ and I live in a small apartment building (four apartments, two up, two down) on a dual-carriageway road in a beachside suburb of Sydney.  We live on a hill, and therefore the garages are underneath the apartments - a good way underneath, in fact, dug into the hill.  The buildings on either side of us are the same, and that means a proliferation of garage bands.  YourZ has rocked the suburbs on many an occasion, there's a sort of heavy-metalish band next door and I think in the mansion a few doors down there's a bit of a vanity band (I've heard them do Roxanne by the Police and Madonna's Like A Virgin and both really not that well so you get my drift).

The sound produced by the Breeders on Pod reminds me of listening to a garage band through the doors.  The vocals are unintelligible, there's always someone off-key because there's no fold-back, and what you can mostly hear is the drums, which sound strangely flat.  I've read they recorded it in a week, and had money left over to do other stuff.  And it sounds like it, with the exception of their version of Happiness Is A Warm Gun which I don't think would have upset John Lennon too much.

VERDICT: THROW IT OUT

For more information: http://www.myspace.com/thebreeders

Spinnerette - Spinnerette

YOURZ

Okay, Ms Brody Dalle has rock credentials oozing out her skin like her many and varied tattoos, starting with Sourpuss in Australia when she was 14.  By the time she was 18, she had married Tim Armstrong from Rancid, moved to LA and formed The Distillers.  Four albums later, both band and Armstrong were no longer.  Enter Josh Homme, more marriage, a sprog and domestic bliss, of a sort.

While not owing anything to the QOTSA sound, access to the growing collective of musicians associated with the Queens meant all she had to do was write the songs and let them be recorded.  Unfortunately, what we end up with here, for a major part of this album, is fairly derivative sounding, with a number of tracks that would most certainly not have made the cut for her husband's various projects.

But this self-titled effort is not without its moments.  Openers Ghetto Love, All Babes Are Wolves and Cupid set the bench mark high before the cracks start showing.  It isn't until 6 tracks later she partly redeems herself with the quite splendid Driving Song followed closely by Impaler and the closer A Prescription For Mankind.


This should have been an EP is all I'm saying.

VERDICT: TURN IT DOWN


MINE

OK, the gremlins got in and deleted my comment.  How did that happen?  Grrrrrr, I can't even remember clearly what I said!  Apart from, it's not really my thing.  Well-done and all that but generally just - ordinary.  Notwithstanding the babeliciousness of Ms Dalle....

VERDICT: TURN IT DOWN

For more information:  http://www.spinnerettemusic.com/

The Fauves - Future Spa

MINE

This puts me back at that time - the mid 90's when I gave up my flourishing(!) accounting career for radio. And there were a whole bunch of Aussie bands I came to know and love then.

You see I went to radio school the year this album came out.  And while I've not really listened to the album as a whole before, the singles Dogs Are the Best People and  Self Abuser certainly featured on the playlists we put together while programming our own shows (a big shout-out to AFTRS radio class of '96).

I will admit to being more fond of Custard and Spiderbait at the time, but these guys rock too.  I did originally say to YourZ that I generally preferred indie-rock bands like this who had girl singers (like the Breeders) but on reflection, there were a bunch of floppy-haired boys fronting the bands I bounced up and down to at many Big Days Out in the 90s.

VERDICT: TURN IT UP (relive that misspent youth)

YOURZ

The fuckin' Fauves are on man, the fuckin' Fauves, man, the fuckin' Fauves...  This was the greeting I received outside a little venue in a small town capital many years ago.  My friend, who shall remain nameless to protect his burgeoning career as an upright citizen, was stoned to the eyeballs and half drunk as well.  Mind you, he was also playing drums in the support.  The night turned out to be a spectacular one of rock and roll high jinx and over-indulgence.

It was around the time of Future Spa too.  I remember listening to this album many times, astounded as to why The Fauves didn't become the next best thing around the world.  This is the major problem with being a musician in Australian (and New Zealand for that matter) - the isolation.  Although these days the interwebs has made things a helluva lot easier, thanks to sites like MySpace (now there is a sentence I thought I'd never write).

Still clever, articulate and rocking after all these years, Future Spa, which includes two of my favourite song titles - Understanding Kyuss and Don't Get Death Threats Anymore - is definitely going to be my first Forgotten Gem for March,

VERDICT: TURN IT UP

For more information, samples of songs and to buy their music: http://www.thefauves.com/

In our collection we also have Lazy Highways