Rock-a-Rama

JUDAS PRIEST, Invisible Shield
As Invisible Shield is Judas Priest’s 19th album, there was some effort put into writing this review as a play on Steely Dan’s “Hey 19.” I got as far as “Way back when in ’69... something something/Sweet things from Birmingham/ So young and willing” before I realized it wasn’t going to happen. Outside of an absurdly high level of technical proficiency, the fact that—like Donald Fagen—Rob Halford is a major dude looking to tell you about the demons at the door, and a talent for shameless melody (if Halford doesn’t own a copy of Aja, I’ll eat my leather cap), the two bands don’t have a ton in common. Well, actually, what the two bands do have in common is almost impossibly rare; both bands have gone half a century without embarrassing themselves. And both bands have done so by dint of talent, guitar lines so bright a cat could nap under ’em, an ineffable charisma, and a wholesale incapacity for embarrassment. Invisible Shield constitutes another notch for Priest (in all those aspects). Glenn Tipton’s solos still sound like plucked silk. Scott Travis still plays with a tasteful restraint that serves the songs in a way that belies the faint praise of calling a metal drummer “tasteful.” Halford still sings like Broadway Sweeney Todd’s razors. And, with “Giants in the Sky” following “Sons of Thunder” and “Escape From Reality,” the band still writes songs that could work just as easily as Dungeons & Dragons modules. (“Hey 19/That’s a dragon.” Sorry. Had to try one more time.)

METH MATH, Chupetones
We here at CREEM don’t write much about hyper-pop, for the same reason we don’t talk much about pop-pop; we respect our lane and don’t have any particular need to get death threats or be called “bestie” on social media by 26-year-old sociopaths. So, in writing about a disco/ not disco/reggaeton/not reggaeton band like Meth Math (because we think they’re super weird and fun), we do so in a context that we and our audience can grok. So, when we say Angel Ballesteros—the anarcho-sprite frontperson (accompanied by producers Error.Error AKA Efren Coronado and Bonsai Babies AKA To Robles) of Meth Math—sounds like an autotuned Allison Shaw, we’re not under any delusion that Shaw’s chamber-goth outfit, Cranes, is big with the Mexican alt-dembow set. We’re just saying that—as documented by some books we skimmed when we were 16—there is a continuum. There are strands of interdimensional pop-gothic-electronic energy that leap from bat cave to dance floor, wherever the kids are borderline excruciating on hard drugs and eyeliner. From the Gang of Four, 100 gees bloom. From Bad Bunny, a Bunnicula shall rise. It’s not an exact science. We’re just saying that, way back in 1994, when the Cranes’ singer squeaked out the lines, “And the sun casts a shadow on the clouds/And I’m dreaming...where am I? Where am I,” that call went out, like a techno-faerie Betty Boop riding on gossamer cyber-wings. And, 20 years later, in Mexico City, some similarly goth-minded freak-futurists answered with, “La playa, me meo/La arena, el cielo/Flotando, el pelo.”

THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN, Glasgow Eyes
At the risk of reaching for a Steely Dan reference for every review, the new JAMC album has a song called “The Eagles and the Beatles,” which I half hoped was going to reference “Turn up the Eagles/The neighbors are listening.” But, like the roller skater of the Dan’s “Everything You Did,” I didn’t know her. Instead “The Eagles and the Beatles” is a blood-on-their-face romper stomper ode to classic rock and JAMC’s dead parasocials. (Or the Reid Brothers were listening to House of Love’s sweet/maudlin “Beatles and Stones” and, mean boys they are, decided to make a better version.) When it was released before the album, the single “jamcod” filled the reviewer with preemptive weariness. Here was an archetypal JAMC song, almost a direct interpolation of Automatic’s “Blues From a Gun” with a coda of the song’s title repeated (“JAMC OD” get it???) redeeming the exercise by a cunt hair, while simultaneously raising the question: “If they know they’re going through the motions, why bother?” I love Jesus and Mary Chain, but my inner monologue provides more deadpan intonations to stop caring than I can use as it is. Sol was relieved to discover that “jamcod” was a honey trap for their fans—the ones who want nothing more from the band then infinite “Just Like Honey.” The rest of Glasgow Eyes largely eschews JAMCliche. Rather, as on Psychocandy s wall of fuzz and Darlklands’ melancholy bubblegum, the band’s classicism is balanced out by an ornery instinct for recarving the wheel to the Reid Bros liking. The (I assume) patented heroin hoohaw has been replaced with more age-appropriate fixation on time sweeping away all their heroes that heroin missed. The wordplay that remains is often funny, even when it might seem goofy on paper (“I was kicking the ’caine, cos the ’caine wasn’t able.” Do the Bibles in Scottish NA meetings come with Fun With Puns sections in the back?). The mix of piss, vinegar, and sardonic grieving makes the unsparingly lovely Glasgow Eyes a slab of rock and roll radio worth remembering.

RICKSHAW BILLIE’S BURGER PATROL, Big Dumb Riffs
Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol’s new album is called Big Dumb Riffs. The band members explain the music’s statement of intent as “what if we write a record that will make everyone say ‘wow that is dumb’?” With no disrespect to the individual members of Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol, both the album title and its framing expose a profound misunderstanding of what it means to be a stupid person in 2024. First of all, dumb people don’t say that they’re dumb. Whatever else they might be lacking in terms of raw intelligence, they generally have a Fight Club interiority so impenetrable that none of their aspects, neither Brad Pitt nor Edward Norton, have even an inkling of the truth that they’re sublimating. Ironically, this is true despite the high numbers of stupid people who have seen and enjoyed repeated viewings of Fight Club.

Second, dumb bands don’t give their songs titles like “1800EATSHIT” or “clowntown.” Dumb bands don’t sing about clowns or towns, they sing about their pain, their exes, and their views on cancel culture. They give their songs titles like “Abyss Rapture,” “Disinformation Superhighway (The Media),” or just something with “whore” in the title, used in such a way that it’s clear that the song is about an ex-wife and not an actual sex worker. Dummies in bands in 2024 use “toxicity” and “self-care” the way their forebears used “nookie” and use “liminal” to mean anything at all.

Finally, actually dumb bands don’t take Helmet’s most Reich-ian riffs and squeeze them into the song template set by Wire’s Pink Flag as some sort of high-concept art project. I mean...Jesus. How does Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol not know this?

We should discuss the quality of the material. The quality is high. The songs are tight and tuneful, as flavorful as they are compact, like fruit gushers. Helmet riffs played by nerds who love Wire. How could it be otherwise? I bet Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol own multiple Sonny Sharrock albums and are thoughtful to their loved ones. I bet they read Gene Wolfe novels. If one of these dudes isn’t a teacher of some sort, I'll donate $100 to a charity of their choice. They should have called the album “i like math.”

GREEN DAY, Saviors
Saviors came out in January so it’s already been embraced by fans looking for a “return to form” and been ripped apart by critics. On his (extremely entertaining) YouTube channel, Justin Hawkins discussed how “One Eyed Bastard” bears an uncanny similarity to Pink’s “So What.” He went on to call the album devoid of original ideas. Considering that Saviors cribs from not exactly obscure sources like Big Star, the Offspring, and the Verve, criticism was accurate. Still, when the Darkness’ frontman accuses you of pastiche, it almost feels like overkill.

Seeing as this review runs in March, I’m inclined to project upon Saviors the generosity of hindsight. After all, it’s history that Green Day is getting slapped around with. If Billie Joe, Tre Cool, and The Other Guy had had the good sense to die (or otherwise give the world some breathing room), Saviors might be treated differently. Look at Robert Pollard. The Guided by Voices dude sings sped-up power pop in a terrible English accent as well. But he’s from Ohio and dresses like a hamper, so critics love him. Because Green Day have constantly churned out good-enough guitar pop, and have managed to do so at levels of success that obliterate the possibility of any sort of “comeback,” Green Day can’t catch a critical break. So I guess that makes them underdogs after all! Underdogs who play to packed stadiums, sell hundreds of thousands of records, cosplay as buskers with Jimmy Fallon, and perform the theme song for Bill Maher’s long-running celebration of sub-Borscht Belt hackery and blunt-lord Islamophobia. But, still, underdogs in the sense that, if Saviors was good, no one would admit it. I mean, it’s not but still; woof woof.

MARY TIMONY, Un tame the Tiger
According to the competition, the ex-Autoclave/ex-Helium/ ex-Wild Flag/Ex-Hex guitarist Mary Timony is the 95th greatest axologist on Earth. Cozily nestled between Mark Knopfler at 96 and Joe Satriani at 94, Timony’s placement makes sense. If there’s any shredder who—at ease with both baroque romanticism and gallant hardcore—has made a career of stalking the border between swinging sultan and surfing alien, it’s Timony. Her influence on the indie sphere is easily discernible. It’s mostly pointed out in the context of the ladies (because boys are shy), but a revered six-stringer like Steve Gunn will happily cop to the possible influence when asked via email (he used to see Helium in high school). Regardless how one might feel about hierarchical rankings in art, and setting aside a broken-clock rock mag being right once in a blue moon, consideration of legacy stays a tricky, arguably pointless thing. But if one is paid to revel in the pointless, one can get one’s kicks by considering Mary Timony’s true designation as the heir apparent of the ex-Fairport Convention/ ex-Linda guitarist Richard Thompson.

On Untame the Tiger (certainly more so than in the hip shake ’n’ strutter riffmongering of Ex-Hex), Timony shines and expands within this lineage. She utilizes the same lilting/melancholic fingerwork to her guitar as Thompson (along with sharing—on a number of Tiger’s tracks—Thompson’s drummer, Dave Mattacks), maintaining the convivial, almost conversational, warmth, while packing the sound into the chunky, cutting style that she (and some notable peers) has been using to deconstruct “More Than a Feeling” since the ’90s. There’s also the shared dryly minimalist tone, with always a hint of a creeping fuzz around the bend, staved off by our wily heroine. Her solos come out in unexpected places, as if interjecting only when they must, or like a Slayer song. Unlike Thompson, the silver Timony rains down (sorry) when her instrument rarely explodes. Instead, and maybe this is Happy Joe Walsh’s influence, Timony plays like she’s skipping stones across a pond, with each skip leaving its own small wake of distortion.

If, lyrically, Timony eschews Thompson’s specificity or character studies, she also eschews his occasional nastiness. Rather, even while strongly implying that she fulfills her quota of falling for feckless jerks, she confines any nastiness to the riffs, with her voice telling the story as her voice provides the rhythm. If the new album isn’t “untamed” exactly, the sense of control isn’t confining, either. Just direct, with nothing wasted, in line with Timony’s deft songwriting and the stalking grace of her instrument. To paraphrase another rock icon: Un tame the Tiger doesn’t go crazy. Untame the Tiger goes tiger.

ANGRY BLACKMEN, The Legend of ABM
“Experimental hip-hop” is out. To quote the writer and provocateur Gary Suarez, writing as part of an obituary for the term: “Rap journos unsure of how to approach an unusual or atypical set of sonics have often found solace in labeling it experimental and then leaving it at that.” And the term “noise rap” should arguably have been discarded the day that Public Enemy’s “She Watches Channel Zero” dropped. Conversely, maybe it should be taken as a sign of respect that the critical intelligentsia is eager to attach as many borderline meaningless subgenre names to hip-hop as it has to punk and metal. Hip-hop just turned 50. When it turns 100, a NYT podcast might announce the first power violence rap album.

The Legend of ABM is a rap album. Even if the resonance of Blixa Bargeld (indirectly, maybe) informs the work (from the First Born Is Dead thunderclap that opens the album, to the Einstiirzende Neubauten-esque clanging that runs through it), The Legend of ABM works less as strategy against architecture than a using of industrial music’s blueprints for Angry Blackmen’s own purposes. The Chicago duo (Quentin Branch and Brian Warren) rap more traditionally than their peers (like, say, Death Grips or Armand Hammer), and they allow their guests (particularly Fatboi Sharif and SkechlSS) to do the wilding out. It’s no coincidence that, amidst the class warfare, suicidal ideation, and Chicago doom-bragging, there are lines about giving the fans what they want. The duo’s traditionalism doesn’t feel staid, however. Rather, in their easy, on-the-beat interplay, the two men ground the noise that surrounds them; one part Will Brooks from Dalek, one part Special Ed. And the duo might be gratified to hear that I was thinking “I wonder if I can get away with a Gang Starr reference,” just a moment before Angry Blackmen beat me to the punch.

FAT WHITE FAMILY, Forgiveness Is Yours
In the hotel room where I both converted to Islam and got married, the audio selection (of classic vinyl reissues) was curated by the singer of Fat White Family’s ex-wife. If we want to say, for narrative’s sake, that this was the moment I started to come around on Fat White Family, I say “Let’s go for it.” Because I have disliked Fat White Family for so long that I no longer remember why. And I’m looking to grow.

I’m pretty sure my initial issue wasn’t the music. Their first album (2013’s Champagne Holocaust) is largely insufferable. A few John Peel-bait bangers, surrounded by a lot of rinky-dink provocations and the kind of self-conscious lo-fi that, had it been born in New Zealand in the ’80s, would have died there. But the album is the kind of insufferable I usually defend. And it was 2013. Anno Domini nostri Yeezus. I should have credited FWF for even showing up.

At any point since then, as the band got slinkier and synthier, I could have been reasonably expected to get with the program. Brutalist sleaze is one of my favorite genres. I like bands that pick fights with Idles. FWF should have made my proverbial panties drop faster than a proverbial lucifer (jk he’s real).

I imagine my disdain had something to do with jealousy (people enjoy Fat White Family) or the fact that I saw them once (after being told how astounding their live show was) and the way they unbuttoned their shirts struck me as more jam band than bad seed.

Regardless, I am glad to report that, even beyond my newfound association between the dissolution of Fat White Family’s marriage and the best day of my life, I’m pleased to report that either I got over my bullshit or Fat White Family got better. If it’s the latter (and it is), I’m happy for all involved.

Forgiveness Is Yours is a treat. It sounds like bunch of sickos—born anew from the fire of heartbreak and being outpaced by the 1975 in the transgression Olympics—playing at Reichstaggian melodrama, dappled with ’80s Walker Bros., run through with the historic Sheffield sound (space age pop, seething irony, class resentment, a smattering of bleeps and bloops). The band says the LP is torpor-based. Fair enough, in a good way! Apparently it was torpor-y enough for one member to quit midway. After one takes Berlin, what’s left? Throw in the fact that the anti-woke website Lias Saoudi writes for is now behind a paywall (like Fortunato!), and I officially “get” Fat White Family. I feel unburdened. I feel viper jazzed. This must be what it feels like to not wear a shirt.

MEATBODIES, Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom
Full disclosure: Meatbodies’ band bio was written by a CREEM staffer. I didn’t know that when I picked it out of the album pile and, in case you haven’t noticed from all the music sites shuttering, money’s too tight to mention; if we blacklisted every album touched by a peer’s side hustle, we’d have nothing to review but Taylor Swift’s stock options and Eric Clapton’s newest defense of polio. That said, at CREEM Magazine, Integrity ain’t just a metalcore band in Ohio. To ensure that this review is entirely nepotism-free (and rest assured that this reviewer is not friends with any band with “meat” in their name), no bands mentioned in the official bio will be referenced. In fact, no bands that anyone but complete nerds will know about will be referenced. In this way we stay pure.

Luckily, direct references—to certain British Invasion bands with names that rhyme with “pinks,” or to the band that came after Spaceman 2 and before Spaceman 4—are unnecessary. Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom is a gorgeous slab of moonbeam metal on its own merits. The album combines the power-pop harmonies of the woefully underappreciated Flop, the proto-stoner crunch of Bang, the sweet and woozy sonic accoutrements of all those bands that are called Beatlesque but aren’t, and the wily songcraft most commonly associated with the better paisley bands; the kind who sang about honeydew and harmony while banging out their bass player’s wife (unsurprisingly Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom is a concept album about promising to not fuck things up again). Yeah, one song is a bit too cherubic in its rock for this reviewer, but I’m pretty sure new guitar bands including at least one Corgan rip is required by California state law so, really, Meatbodies should be commended for their restraint. And if the Meatbodies have also clearly studied their British Pop of the 20th Century, then they should be commended for their taste. And they should be further commended for playing out their anglophilia as if we lived in an alternate reality where, instead of getting pissy about grunge and becoming monarchists, England’s 24-hour party people had embraced the flannel and made all those tuff riffs sound positively giddy.

BUTTHOLE SURFERS, PCPPEP
Psychic...Powerless...Another Man’s Sac (1984), Rembrandt Pussyhorse (1986), and PCPPEP (1984)

There are three prevalent ways of doing “psych” (short for psychedelic, in theory) rock. One is the classic mode, as exemplified by the 13th Floor Elevators, where the guitars go “woo-wa-woo” and there’s an electric jug playing on nearly every damn song, like some kind of drowning owl. Another kind, born out of the ’70s Hawkwind tradition and best illustrated by that band and more recent bands like Comets on Fire, sounds like the Pixies loud/quiet tradition played as a motorik marathon to.. .somewhere, if you’re lucky. The final mode of psych rock is the most contemporary; bubblegum freak-folkers utilizing all the pet sounds of the cosmos to “get free” from the “The Man” and his fascist “memorable choruses.” All three of these takes on psych are fun to listen to. But what about the other psychedelic experience? After all, acid has strychnine, cough syrup makes you feel like an abandoned astronaut, and mushrooms? If you’re a sweetheart or cynic, mushrooms can open up the world. But, like, remember that viral tweet, the one that went “Why do we bash ‘dead-beat’ dads for not being there for their kids but we never question if the child has bad vibes? Or if they’re just unpleasant to be around?” Well, what if you’re one of those children, cursed with bad vibes, born to be unpleasant or unloved? What if you were cast out into the world with nothing but the Sonics’ “Strychnine” and Black Sabbath’s “Supernaut” as guiding principles? Or what if you were loved by a dad, but that dad was an almost absurdly archetypal psychedelic Texan-American in that he was both a local television children’s entertainer named “Mr. Peppermint” and an on-air reporter during the JFK assassination (and whose brother, to gild the “Texas Is the Reason” lily, was a major general in the United States Marines)? What do psychedelics do to an erstwhile rocker then? What does that hellride into that particular madness—one part gnosis, one part gastrointestinal distress—sound like?

Psychic...Powerless...Another Man’s Sac (1984), Rembrandt Pussyhorse (1986), and PCPPEP (1984), remastered and reissued on vinyl, now available on Matador Records.

WAXAHATCHEE, Tiger’s Blood
As a caricature of a rock critic, I don’t know “real” country from a hole in the ground. My favorite country song is “Wild and Blue.” My favorite Emmylou Harris albums are the Eno-esque goth one and the cowpunk one she did with Linda Ronstadt. All my favorite country bands contain English people. I get my tips on cowboy music from Don’t Rock the Inbox and don’t go west of the Nassau County line if I can help it (I did huff gas in West Virginia once, but who hasn’t?).

So, point being, feel free to take what I have to say with a grain of salt: Tiger’s Blood—as masterminded by Katie Crutchfield and backed by a Wednesday, a Wilco, and two Megafauns—is a classic. A goddamn masterpiece. Country? Alt country? Indie? Probably Tiger’s Blood isn’t outlaw country or cosmic country, either. I couldn’t care less. What matters to me is that, when Crutchfield sings, “You swerve to hit a dead deer/A girl like that would bore you to tears baby/It’s cosmic,” she infuses that last word with enough wry pleasure that it ought to be illegal.

If I’m a poser and Tiger’s Blood is not a classic, if half the album is merely fantastic, then at least “Evil Spawn” (with Crutchfield coolly laying it all out, singing, “Take my money, I don’t work that hard/I fall asleep in the beating heart/Of a dying breed peddling some lost art/Watch it fade, watch it fall apart”) and “Right Back to It” (where Crutchfield and MJ Lenderman harmonize with weary joy, like Graham Parson’s holy trinity/throuple—of Truckers, Kickers, and Cowboy Angels—finally approaching peace) are instant canon. Or at least one of the songs will be when some Nashville-vetted bohunk (named something like “Bryan Chevy”) with red, white, and blue teardrop tattoos, and a ten-gallon hat bigger than a broad interpretation of the Second Amendment, records a version slick enough for Nashville. And that’ll be fine. Whatever gets ears on this music. If there’s some sort of “real” country gauntlet that only Nashville (or the Americana authenticity police) can throw, then Tiger’s Blood catches it like a Waffle House chair. If Tiger’s Blood is country, then I’m a patriot. If Tiger’s Blood isn’t country, I’m joining the CCP.

PISSED JEANS, Half Divorced
On Why Love Now, their Lydia Lunch/Arthur Rizkproduced celebration of misandry, Pissed Jeans took their laffin’ hyena infused hard time rock as far as a band can go before becoming self-parody (a danger that countless noise bands could attest to if they weren’t buried in David Yow’s backyard). As an outfit both savvy and uninterested in being called “smart” by writers, Pissed Jeans have solved this conundrum by going pop-punk. Or so they claim, with their promotional one-sheet (written by Chelsea Hodgsen, an author familiar with the concept of the unreliable narrator) quoting frontman Matt Korvette as saying, “We realized that we’d never really fucked with pop-punk and we thought, this is something that isn’t going to be immediately recognizable as cool. So let’s challenge ourselves to make it feel cool to us.” While—in a landscape where Travis Barker is an industry Svengali—one can quibble with the premise, Pissed Jeans do indeed go big on the hooks. They do indeed cover a song by Florida pop-punkers Pink Lincolns, and they do manage to fuck with some pop-punk lyrical tropes (hilariously on ’’Everywhere Is Bad,” weirdly on “Helicopter Parents”). Still, Pissed Jeans’ idea of pop-punk is less “Lookout! Records” and more “Hey! Remember when hardcore bands wrote catchy songs?” Meaning, there’s nothing on here that would be improved by being sung in a nasal whine instead of Korvette’s sufficiently tuneful bark and growl. Meaning, Sean McGuinness has a project with Chris Richards (of Q and Not U and The Washington Post), which puts the Pissed Jeans drummer within six degrees of both Bad Brains and Henry Kissinger. It shows in the playing. Meaning, Half Divorced is the best Poison Idea album since Feel the Darkness.

Korvette, not the kind of philosopher to blame the crabs for the state of the bucket, wouldn’t want to succeed at the cost of Poison Idea’s discography being underrated. “Best” isn’t quite accurate. What shines brighter than the sun? Considering the amount of art splatter these songs spit out even at their most thuggish, “mid-period Black Flag” might be a better comparison (if not necessarily a compliment its recipients would want to parse). So let’s just say that Half Divorced shares in Jerry Lang’s particular joie de vivre. It’s pop in that any gum chewer with a heart can sing along, and punk in that you can do coke in a bathroom half a venue away and it’ll still sound pretty sick coming through the unisex door.