Monday, January 21, 2019

LAYLA TOP TEN 2018 IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER

LOOKING BACK AT THE END OF THE WORLD


COMET GAIN – “If Not Tomorrow/I Was More of a Mess Then”
Perfect mod punk basement pop dream—for fans of DAN TREACY and Shena MacKay. The B-Side is my song of th year, Rachel’s snotty yet dreamy deadpan vocals carrying the world weary nostalgia of our collapsing youth/Too old to die young etc etc

PRIMO! – “Amici!” LP
Album of the year for me! Like SANDRA BELL playing WIRE songs, in short my dream band, AMICI has the dream like disquiet of YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS instilled in its essence. My words are puny and futile, just buy the record punker.

TABLE SUGAR – “Collected Acknowledgements” LP
Seeing TABLE SUGAR live in 2017 was a career highlight for this brain dead music consumer. TABLE SUGAR are the coolest, the tapes were like an endless birthday party to my brains, and to finally have a 12” in my grips feels utopian. The music is transcendent girl art punk linking up the FOAMS to DRESS UP AS NATIVES in my mind, but this group is not some referential reenactment troupe, they make a sound that is theirs and only theirs. It is as adventurous and dreamlike as the first time you heard the first LILLIPUT LP, in fact my use of the words transcendent and utopian are not a stretch! This is truly a dream, truly an adventure! I want to live in the world that this record has made.

CHILD’S POSE – “Feral” EP
Lost my mind when I first heard this, and instantly ordered the 7” direct from the UK. A band that makes me think “this is what ELASTICA should have done!” Stripped down and direct with the coolest vocal style, art punk scritch guitars a SWELL MAPS-ian rhythm but yeah let’s just go back to those vocals!!! Perfect pop! Perfect punk! This EP is why I am a punk in 2018. 

SCHOOL DAMAGE – “A to X” LP
Their last LP made my last list and there is nothing different about this year, surrounded by the same brutal turmoil, same evidence that Australian art punks are forming some of the coolest concepts in sound… Sounds like some Midwestern art punk band from 1982 in the best possible manner, can’t decide if I like this one more than the last one?! Maybe so? What a group! What a sound! Fans of c86, those Messthetics comps and bands that formed in the wake of the B52s and DEVO in towns across America circa 1981 should immediately investigate. True Layla-core.

TERRY – “I’m Terry”
I have been obsessed with all of the TERRY 45s, but a little less so with their LPs until this one… These songs have an unnerving/unsettling pop feel that makes me think of Chairs Missing. Really. It feels throwaway and casual like the best music, but also insidious and well thought out, earworms with teeth. The lyrics can seem almost like a word game as well as a secret code message to a radical liberation cell. I can’t stop listening to this, and I would advise you to do the same thing with your time and life! Unbelievably good record!

LITHICS – “Mating Surfaces” LP
In which I quote myself from the press release: “A stern danceable sound that summons cut up snapshots of Su Tissue and Mark E Smith, an imagined landscape where Captain Beefheart hits that 99 Records “Too Many Creeps” beat.”

CONSTANT MONGREL – “Living in Excellence” LP
Was so excited to listen to this, I think every other record by this band has made my MRR year end top ten and here we are again…. What a group! Lyrics tear down the cynical bleat of our current political age of extreme delirium and hatred while the sound behind somehow reminds me that swaggering VENOM P STINGER style but maybe also KIRK BRANDON AND THE PACK, just relentless fucking power! The songs are so catchy and sick, desolate and total.

PATOIS COUNCILLORS – “Proper Release” LP (ever/never)
Some sort of sick collision between COUNTRY TEASERS and VERTICAL SLIT. What more could a girl want?

DRINKS – “Hippo Lite” LP
CATE LE BON and TIM PRESLEY making strange glassy Messthetics adventure sound. Playful and cool, a strange pleasure.

RECORDS THAT CAME OUT IN DECEMBER OF 2017 THAT EXIST IN THE WEIRD LIMBO BETWEEN YEAR END TOP TENS
BB EYE – “Headcheese Heartthrob” LP
TOTAL CONTROL – “Laughing at the System” 12”

ENDLESS CONTENDERS: RAYS LP, LUDELLA BLACK LP, COLD MEAT EP, TOUGH CUSTOMER EP, SHIFTERS LP, LIME CRUSH LP, LAVENDER HEX LP, BB AND THE BLIPS LP, LITHICS 45, LAVENDER FLU LP, ALISON STATTON AND SPIKE LP, PHEW/ANA DA SILVA 2xLP, CREMELLERAS 12”, GIRL RAY 45, STIFF LOVE EP, NANDAS EP

REISSUES
VECTOR COMMAND – “System 3” LP
HAND GRENADES “Demo to London” 12” (Last minute entry for reissue of the year!)
JIM SHEPARD – “The Letter Tapes”
INDEX –Originals Vol 1” LP
FRESH MAGGOTS – CD

TAPES (tiny list! I guess I mostly bandcamped demos??)
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