(This show preview originally appeared in the SF Weekly.)

The Skygreen Leopards’ last album, 2006’s Disciples of California, was a sunny ode to the Golden State. The San Francisco outfit, founded by singer-guitarists Glenn Donaldson and Donovan Quinn, filtered the psychedelic country-rock of the Grateful Dead’s American Beauty and New Riders of the Purple Sage through dreamy indie pop. Gorgeous Johnny, due out July 21 on the Jagjaguwar label, sounds much like its predecessor: Both are fat sacks of stoned melodies and jangly guitars that feel utterly Californian. But where Disciples emphasized the simple and pastoral, a perfect soundtrack for Sunday trips to Mount Diablo, Gorgeous Johnny comes decked out in ornamentation. Two of the album’s best tunes, “Dixie Cups in the Dead Grass” and “Goodnight Anna,” boast layered, echo-soaked harmonies that recall the Beach Boys’ Smile (as opposed to anything from the Dead’s sprawling discography). Though Quinn and Donaldson are the chief architects of the Leopards’ sound, those decorative qualities reflect the influence of Jason Quever, who joined the band just after Disciples. A skilled composer and multi-instrumentalist, Quever is also a big fan of vintage baroque pop who oversees his own project, Papercuts. Their new album, You Can Have What You Want, is in a lot of ways Gorgeous Johnny’s spiritual companion. And yes, that means you now have two records to illegally download.

(This record review originally appeared in the Village Voice, SF Weekly and Seattle Weekly.)

The Social Registry puts out some righteous jams: Gang Gang Dance, Telepathe, and Psychic Ills are all top-shelf freaks. But the Brooklyn imprint shit the bed when it signed Growing last winter. Despite creating some killer drones in ’03 and ’04, the duo has been in decline for more than two years now, and the trend continues with All the Way, Growing’s third release for their new label. As with much of their output since relocating to New York, the album is a poorly sculpted fusion of avant noise and minimal techno à la Basic Channel and Pan Sonic. We’re talking 35 minutes of whirs, snaps, and zaps that desperately want to be Beaches & Canyons or even Creature Comforts, but wind up sounding more like an homage to the Terry Riley homage of the “Baba O’Riley” intro.

Growing’s devolution into a Black Dice knockoff makes zero sense. Back when Kevin Doria and Joe Denardo were just stoned college kids from Olympia, Washington, the duo totally ruled. Like Earth’s sensitive little bros, they filtered lava-oozing doom through Another Green World–era Eno. That, of course, sounds like a hot-versus-cold impossibility, but the duo somehow pulled it off, creating a fuzzy throb that roasted flesh while encasing brains in foggy mist. Brutal but gorgeous, chaotic yet serene—that’s what Growing were once about. So what happened? I partially blame the band’s cross-country move. Once in New York, Doria and Denardo — just a couple of hippies, really — found themselves surrounded by hip urban bands uniting the dance floor with the noise underground. And so they tried keeping up with the Joneses. But these dudes utterly lack the producer’s ability to micromanage — a big, fat prerequisite when experimenting with techno-inspired repetition. As a result, All the Way never really grooves; it just sputters like an infant with gas. Please, Growing: Return to the Pacific Northwest. Mother Earth needs you.

(This show preview originally appeared in the SF Weekly.)

The Bay Area has adored rhinestone-studded country-rocker Gram Parsons since the late ’60s. Last year Amoeba Music released the Flying Burrito Brothers’ Live at the Avalon Ballroom 1969, an archival recording from one of San Francisco’s premier hippie venues. Then there’s Sleepless Nights. The annual Parsons tribute always features a lineup heavy on local talent. For its eighth installment, expect a mixed bag of alt-country dudes and indie kids, including the Real Sippin’ Whiskeys and Mountain Bride, an old-timey act from Oakland. The night’s highlight is the reunion of Mover. Featuring singer Eric Shea, Sleepless Nights’ founder, the quartet was always one of the West Coast’s most vocal (and talented) supporters of the Fallen Angel.

(This feature appeared in the Seattle Weekly and SF Weekly.)

On first glance, Georgia’s Dark Meat fits snugly into underground rock’s current zeitgeist. Like Feathers and Espers and all them other hairy freak-folkies, they’re a large quasi-hippie ensemble wrapped in a cultish aura. All 17 or so members are known formally as Dark Meat/Vomit Lasers Family Band/Galaxy, a name consciously modeled after Parliament-Funkadelic’s love for cozmic-trickster nomenclature. Even better, they tour the country in a silver bus retrofitted with beds, a bathroom, and a kitchen nook. The 1972 relic, purchased on the side of the road just outside Atlanta, even boasts green ‘n’ yellow stripes and a painting of an eagle landing atop a mountain.

So yeah, those People’s Temple/Merry Prankster vibrations are unmistakable.

“We’re very much a real collective,” explains bassist and co-founder Ben Clack. He’s phoning from the bus, which the current driver has just now pulled off the interstate at the North Carolina–Virginia border—unexpected brake problems. A bandmate up front suddenly shouts: “EVERYBODY OFF THE BUS.”

“We might have an emergency here,” warns Clack. “But anyway, we pretty much live together by touring six months or so a year. We all live in five or six different houses around Athens that are all within a few miles of each other.”

Yet Dark Meat also resembles those weirdos in Lightning Bolt and Friends Forever in the way their live shows are art-punk spectacles torn from the pages of the most acid-fried comic books imaginable. Neon costumes and all manner of day-glo stage ephemera swirl about like a drunken kaleidoscope. In fact, very few fans of noise-rock would’ve scratched their heads had Lightning Bolt’s label, Load Records, released Universal Indians, Dark Meat’s 2006 debut.

There can be no doubt that all these avant-shenanigans have exerted a significant influence on the band. Dark Meat’s inner core, as Clack points out, is a bunch of hardcore record nerds in love with obscuro-sounds both modern and old. But the way these sounds are filtered is where the group’s uniqueness really shines through. Dark Meat, unlike the overwhelming majority of freak-folkies and noise-rockers out there, is a band of down-home Southerners. And as is the case with nearly every underground musician from the South since the ’60s, they remain forever tethered to their roots: rural rock and roll, Delta blues, New Orleans jazz, and country twang.

“We feel like a Southern band. That’s who we are. And I love it,” says Clack, now standing beside the bus along with everybody else. “I think the South is a wonderful place. It’s just a fascinating culture. We live in the fuckin’ woods. We live in the middle of nowhere. That’s where we’re from. That’s the way we like it.”

Clack then compares Dark Meat, which started out as a Neil Young cover band, to the Allman Brothers (circa ’69, of course), as well as free-jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler, who hailed from Cleveland (a town the bass player calls “very Southern”). Both, he explains, were playing, “free shit, but coming at it from traditional roots music that everyone recognizes. I feel like that’s what we’re trying to do, too.”

After repeated spins, Universal Indians (which Vice has just reissued) reveals this intent. The disc, full of hyper-charged Stooge-rock (front man and guitarist Jim McHugh even wears a pair of Ron Asheton shades), is as punishing and claustrophobic as anything from Comets on Fire or Dead Meadow. Certain tracks, including “There Is a Retard on Acid Holding a Hammer to Your Brain” and “Assholes for Eyeballs,” even recall the twisted psych-punk of vintage Butthole Surfers. Yet despite such gnarly song titles, Dark Meat are no sonic primitives. A full horn and string subsection, the Vomit Lasers, can howl like a Dixieland band on PCP or bust airtight funk as if they’re augmenting Booker T at a Memphis nightclub in 1964.

The same goes for the Sub Tweeters and Key Bumps — respectively, Dark Meat’s backup singers and percussionists/flag corps. Both subsections of the large outfit help transform Dark Meat’s wild-ass stage show into a kind of post-apocalyptic Mardi Gras. On record, however, they serve as key musical components, infusing the band’s manic rock and roll with authentic white gospel ecstasy. The Sub Tweeters in particular exude more soul than most modern R & B pinups.

Ultimately, Dark Meat is that rare band that can sum up the entire history of rock and roll in a single song, erasing divisions between subgenres with every howling riff. They can venture from wildly experimental to stone-cold classic and make it all sound so damn natural.

According to Clack, this ability to “put it all together” is another Southern trait. And while that’s certainly true, it also makes Dark Meat a truly democratic band at a time when democracy in America is a hard thing to come by.

So get on the bus… once it’s fixed, of course.

(This show preview originally appeared in the SF Weekly.)

After Zach Braff and the Shins turned lo-fi indie into Gap ad blah, you just knew real freaks like Times New Viking and Pink Reason were gonna come along and revisit the music’s roots in slacker-scuzz and wastoid alienation. This is where Montana’s Ex-Cocaine comes into the picture. Mike Casler and Bryan Ramirez sound as if they smoked a phatty while taking a blowtorch to Neil Young’s proto-grunge epic “Cortez the Killer.” Then they smoked even more weed and melted Black Flag’s My War. So yeah, this boombox-bred noise flows slow and thick, like electrified molasses.

(This feature/column appeared in Cleveland’s Scene magazine. The SF Weekly also published a version of it under the title “Devendra Banhart loves Karen Dalton — Now You Can Too.”)

Since her death in 1993, Karen Dalton’s fan base has grown faster than a Colorado mountain town. And fans can thank a retired builder from Indiana named Joe Loop for a new batch of previously unheard recordings, Cotton Eyed Joe — a collection of songs Dalton made in the early ’60s.

Back in 1961, Loop was just another Midwest bohemian who read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, dropped out of school, and headed west. He eventually settled in Boulder, Colorado, where he stumbled into owning the Attic, a tiny club serving as a key stop on America’s rapidly expanding folk-music circuit.

In an intimate setting that sat no more than 50, Loop booked many of the scene’s top folkies — including a pre-Byrds David Crosby, the Holy Modal Rounders, and John Phillips (several years before he formed the Mamas & the Papas). But it was Dalton, a young beauty with long black hair and Irish-Cherokee blood coursing through her veins, who really caught Loop’s ear and eye. He brought a portable reel-to-reel to the Attic soon after Dalton’s 1962 audition and started recording his new friend’s performances. Those songs make up Cotton Eyed Joe.

“The early folk-music crowd was a pretty straight bunch and clean-cut,” recalls Loop. “That wasn’t Karen at all. She didn’t get noticed by that in-crowd scene, although there were a lot of musicians who liked her.”

Indeed. Bob Dylan adored her, as did folk-rock architect Fred Neil, whose deep, phantom croon was informed by Dalton’s. And as rock and roll legend has it, the Band’s “Katie’s Been Gone,” a classic Basement Tapes track, was written in her honor. Yet Dalton — who split time between Boulder, Woodstock, and New York City, like many other wandering folkies back in the day — never achieved mainstream recognition in her lifetime. But like many great blues singers, Dalton exuded dark romance, spiritual mystery, and brooding emotion. “It’s cliché to say, but she had real soul,” says Loop.

There are several reasons why Dalton never became one of folk’s poster children. For one, unlike many of her contemporaries, Dalton lacked business savvy. Also, she made just two studio albums: 1969’s It’s So Hard to Tell Who’s Going to Love You the Best and 1971’s In My Own Time, a knotted chunk of rural soul that stands alongside such singer-songwriter landmarks as Nick Drake’s Pink Moon and Neil Young’s Harvest.

“Performing was a weak spot for her,” says Loop. “The Attic was different, because it was a small place and she was comfortable there. But there was something about a gig. She just had trouble facing that.”

Loop and Dalton kept in touch — even when the fragile singer suffered through commercial failures and devastating addictions to hard drugs and alcohol. Loop remained one of her biggest fans and most loyal friends. He constantly tried to turn others on to Dalton’s music. But few shared his obsession.

Through the decades, Loop brooded over those old reels he made at the Attic (which closed in 1963), frequently playing them in private, because no one else ever cared to listen. “I knew it was good stuff, but what do you do with it?” he says. “There wasn’t anything to do with those tapes for the longest time.”

Until now. Popular taste has apparently caught up with the enigmatic Dalton. Deluxe CD reissues of her two LPs have precipitated a deluge of critical gush. Indie hipsters Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom and all their freak-folk followers treat Dalton like a patron saint.

When the French imprint Megaphone was preparing its rerelease of Dalton’s debut last year, the label tracked down Loop for archival photographs. Not only did he hook Megaphone up with a wealth of never-before-seen photos; he unleashed those old Attic recordings, which few Dalton experts even knew existed.

And Cotton Eyed Joe sounds great — especially coming from an amateur recorder who was working with early ’60s gear. More important, however, the two-disc set captures a side of Dalton that her original releases never could. “On her first record, she’s making room for the other players,” says Loop. “But on Cotton Eyed Joe, she doesn’t have to wait for anybody. She’s free to bring in all the subtleties in her timing and playing. This disc shows what she can do by herself.”

Like blues maverick John Lee Hooker, Dalton’s pained cry follows such a deeply individualized sense of rhythm and melody that it blossoms during solo performances. The songs heave and lunge like ocean waves breaking upon a rock-strewn beach. The same can be said of her guitar and banjo picking — both of which are downright virtuosic. “On ‘Fannin’ Street’ her guitar sounds like an orchestra,” says Loop. “It’s hard to believe one person is doing all that.”

But because Cotton Eyed Joe is such a personal statement, it’s a far more challenging listen than It’s So Hard to Tell and In My Own Time. “It’s not a very good introductory CD,” admits Loop. “But on the other hand, people who have already heard Karen will really like it. If people take the time to listen, I don’t know how they could not like her.”

(This record review appeared in Cleveland’s Scene magazine and the SF Weekly.)

On the surface, drawing comparisons between the Motor City Five and Magik Markers seems absurd: The former are proto-punk icons from the Vietnam era; the latter are modern indie upstarts. On the other hand, the two share key strengths and weaknesses. Along with their Detroit idols, the Markers are renowned for cathartic live shows — orgiastic collisions of rock, free jazz, feedback, and sweat. Unfortunately, the duo can’t produce a great rock album, much like their heroes.

After their sloppy live debut, the MC5 retreated to the studio, where they fashioned Back in the USA, a tight, if at times sterile, collection of ’50s-inspired retro-rock. The meticulously crafted BOSS is a nearly identical departure from the Markers’ previous LPs (which were basically anemic documents of noise-rock jam sessions). But instead of Eisenhower, the Markers turn back the clock to George H. W. Bush. Produced by Sonic Youth’s Lee Renaldo, BOSS revives the “alternative nation” SY helped spawn in the late ’80s.

Singer-guitarist Elisa Ambrogio and drummer-pianist Pete Nolan have never sounded so groomed. They’re like a totally different band. The duo even wrote several dark ballads, including the atmospheric “Bad Dream/Hartford’s Beat Suite,” which blends goth, vintage dream pop, and Hole. The same goes for the grunge-inspired “Circle,” wherein Ambrogio transforms herself into the sinister goddess Kim Gordon always wanted to be.

BOSS won’t go down as the Markers’ definitive album; it’s too anachronistic. But it’s one gutsy-ass departure.

(This record review appeared in Cleveland’s Scene magazine, Miami New Times, and SF Weekly.)

Some Forgotten Country opens with picket-fence guitar, Harry Smith banjo, and a bluesman spitting marbles: “Going to Atlanta just to look around…”

I’ve heard this stoned baritone before, almost 40 years ago. He’s the willing trucker “smuggling smokes and folks from Mexico,” the strung-out hillbilly “with a needle and a spoon,” the back-alley drunk pleading for “Available Space.”

The baritone disappeared around ’72 or so. After that, the American troubadour split in two: the traditionalist and the lysergic freak. Each one has never been anything more than half a man, pumping out a lot of really incomplete music.

This is why Some Forgotten Country sounds so needed in 2007. Currently living in New York and calling himself D. Charles Speer, the baritone has returned, bringing the total musician back to life. Culling his backing band from Sunburned Hand of the Man and NNCK, Speer wanders America in both words and sound.

“You and old/North and south/People all know the white guy’s a louse,” he cryptically chews on the hilltop sermon “Stingray Leather.”

When Speer falls silent, his rustic unit, augmented with phantom lap steel and Butterfield’s electric axe, ventures where lyrics can’t, painting sparse but sweeping landscapes that stretch from ’60s San Francisco to archaic Appalachia.

Who knows how long the baritone will stick around? But it feels damn good to have him back.

(This record review appeared in Cleveland’s Scene magazine, the SF Weekly, Phoenix New Times, Miami New Times and Broward-Palm Beach New Times.)

Singer-songwriter Cayce Lindner sports a thick gray beard, calls Northern California home, and plucks an acoustic guitar. This means most music writers are gonna describe his new project, Flying Canyon, as a symptom of this whole freak-folk, indie-hippie fad. And while Glenn Donaldson’s production — transforming doom-metal grooves into woodland dirges — does lend a modern sound to Lindner’s rustic folk rock, the dude truly possesses a fragile old soul. On “The Bull Who Knew the Ring,” the voice reflectively muttering, “Bring me one last song for Jerry Lee/This old boat ain’t gonna make it out to sea” feels as torn and frayed as Kris Kristofferson’s during his “Sunday Morning Come Down.” Meanwhile, the candlelight introspection of “Down to Summer” and “Revolver” recall the lush, summer-of-love balladry of the Jefferson Airplane’s Marty Balin — “Today” and “Comin’ Back to Me,” in particular.

Then again, Lindner is no retro-revivalist still bemoaning the death of the ’60s. His music hovers in a netherworld between the past and present, returning us to Donaldson’s recording techniques, which further enhance Flying Canyon’s not-this-but-not-that vibe. As a member of the ambient-drone outfit Thuja, the dude honed an aesthetic that can only be described as granola-industrial (picture exotic flora reclaiming rusted-out steel mills). It’s a sound he applies masterfully to Lindner’s tunes, making Flying Canyon’s debut a true slice of American beauty.

(This show preview originally appeared in the SF Weekly.)

Western civilization poisoned Mother Earth and self-destructed in the process. Humanity’s only hope for survival lies in turning to Native Americans and their ancient knowledge. This is the neo-Hawkwind, sci-fi concept behind Sunset at the End of the Industrial Age, The USA Is a Monster’s latest disc for Load Records. It’s a collection of big-time anthem rock fusing nervous Minutemen funk, ‘70s prog à la Rush, hardcore invective, intricate tribal grooves, and a toy synth. It kicks total ass and also helps cultivate maize.