Créme de la CREEM
Crème de la CREEM
Oh hey, didn’t see ya there! What if there were a magazine that wasn’t owned by a multinational conglomerate or run by a boardroom, and was written by cool people who actually went to shows on the reg? Well, I reckon that mag would have a section that would be an incredible resource for new bands, upcoming releases you need to hear, and tours you shouldn’t miss, masterminded by a team of blindingly attractive individuals. We’ll keep a lookout for that, and if we find it, we’ll let you know! Until then, here’s this month’s Creme de la CREEM.
The CREEM Archive presents the magazine as originally created. Digital text has been scanned from its original print format and may contain formatting quirks and inconsistencies.
BÉTON ARMÉ
As a longtime fan, the current interest in Oi! music is utterly fascinating—the larger acceptance of a musical style that is virtually trend-proof and has not changed much in nearly 50 years. The recent wave might be traced to the British hardcore explosion of bands like Violent Reaction, Arms Race, Crown Court, and the Chisel, but continues on with bands like Rixe, Chubby and the Gang, and Montreal’s Béton Armé. Or maybe all of this is bullshit and the true center of influence comes from the current political climate, with the rise of the far right and the musical reaction to it all, similar to Reagan and Thatcher in the ’80s.
Well, that’s Béton Armé guitarist Olivier Bérubé-Sasseville’s opinion. “Interestingly enough, I did a PhD on that very topic,” explains Bérubé-Sasseville. “What I feel is happening right now is that the historical right-wing skinheads are not skinheads anymore. They’re trying so hard to enter the mainstream, and they’ve identified that the skinhead look is too drastic and radical to do that. The irony of that is anyone from traditional skins to left-wing militants has taken ownership of that look and name. We have this group in Quebec City that has been like a problem for 10 to 15 years. Now they’re all wearing suits, have beards, cover their tattoos, and they’re politically involved militants. But the affiliation between right-wing political parties and right-wing skinheads, I think that has changed in the past 10 years.”
Now that we’ve psychoanalyzed and politicized and dissected the shit out of Béton Armé and their intent, let’s ask the most important question: Do they rip? The answer is, indubitably. And considering the band’s two 7-inch releases and their subsequent touring around them, CREEM has the feeling that they’ll be causing pile-on sing-alongs for some time to come.
Béton Armé are Danick Joseph-Dicaire’s throat, Fabio Ciaraldi on low end, Remi Aubie behind the kit, and of course Bérubé-Sasseville on six-string. Formed in early 2018, the band released two EPs and as many splits in the years that followed. But it was that second EP, 2023’s Second Souffle, that caused quite a stir when it was released, as it quickly was tagged one of the best of the year. Melodic to the core without ever conceding muscle tone, Béton Armé are emblematic of some of the more obvious influences of a band of their style, from Blitz to Cock Sparrer, the Business, the 4Skins, the Last Resort, and many more. But where Béton Armé diverge is with the influence of classic Oi! from France and the recent scene there as well. “When I started going to France for my studies at the university, I ended up living about six years of the past 15 in France. Living out there really helped develop my taste for the music,” recalls Bérubé-Sasseville. “The scenes were a little bit different, and the skinheads were younger and doing multiple bands. It was all very exciting to be part of that at that time. When we all got together and decided to start the band, the main influences that we were trying to do were to sound like the Chaos en France compilations that came out in the early ’80s. So, that sort of original French Oi! sound with a twist that sounded a little bit like Italian bands like Nabat.”
Béton Armé have been spreading their Oi! gospel across North America and beyond, but look for the band to make even more of a mark in 2025 when their new LP hits via La Vida Es En Mus. “We are well into writing the new record—most of the songs are written. There’s been some polishing to be done, and I think we’re gonna record it in November to be out by next summer. We’re going to Japan and Australia at the end of October for some dates, too, our first time there.”
It’s probably safe to say that the end of 2024 will see Béton Armé having made a mark in North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia. I guess the rest of the world will have to patiently wait for the new LP with the rest of us.
TRAUMA RAY
Is skateboarding the great “tell” in music? Time after time, musicians—genre agnostic—when asked about their childhood, talk about a life of skateboarding or hanging out with skateboarders. Is it that they’re inherently rule breakers? Skate here, don’t rail-slide here, don’t try to ollie those steps or you’ll break your leg, yada yada? And what about the rest of us, like me, who was devoted to skate punk and metal, owned a skateboard, and found it to be the No. 1 threat to my health and well-being, and a conduit for every emergency room trip in my early teens? At some point, I decided that all of the stitches weren’t worth knowing which records in the sketchy Lost & Found discography I should skip.
Anyway, surprise, surprise, here we are with another delightful band in Trauma Ray, a slowcore-meets-shoegaze-meets-post-rock hybrid with former flow skater Jonathan Perez. Hailing from Fort Worth, Texas, the band was one of a zillion at SXSW 2024 to have an element of shoegaze in their sound, but also one of maybe a dozen or so that were actually worth a shit, if I’m being real. Yes, in a week of highlights and must-sees, Trauma Ray were an actual highlight and must-see.
After living in the Bay Area for a long time and attempting to start bands of his own, Perez eventually moved back to Texas to help his father with health issues. “I moved away from Texas in 2006 after high school and then lived all around the country for a while, but I ended up staying in the Bay Area like San Francisco/Oakland for about a decade for skateboarding,” recalls Perez. “I was in some magazines and getting free shoes and boards. My closest and best friends were pro skaters. My father is a diabetic, and he was losing limbs to diabetes. And so after seeing my father go through that, I think I kind of had a life realization that I need to refocus my priorities.”
So music it was, and despite being at ground zero for the dawn of Bay Area shoegaze favorites Whirr, Perez took inspiration from ’90s alt and the OG wave of shoegaze—bands like My Bloody Valentine, Swervedriver, Dinosaur Jr., Unwound, and more. But a chance meeting at a Texas karaoke bar of all places helped cement both Trauma Ray and a friendship with future member Uriel Avila. “I had just moved back and was at a bar during karaoke like happenstance, and in between people singing karaoke songs, someone was playing, like, Slowdive, MBV, and even Duster,” recalls Perez pensively. “It’s a very folk rock community in Fort Worth, so I went up to the karaoke booth and Uri, and the first thing he said to me was, “I DMed you on Instagram to start a band.” That very next day after we met, we met at his practice space and played together and started writing ‘Relay’ from the debut EP."
Trauma Ray’s new LP Chameleon hit in late October via Dais Records, and it hits like a baseball bat right in the feels. While yes, outwardly it may seem that bands of this style are a dime a dozen, the difference here is the addition of some different elements that switch up the overall vector of the record. Slowcore and clean tones, like those of Earth, Mojave 3, and the like, are clearly inspiration in addition to a nü-metal influence in some of the guitars, which all adds up to another angle of familiarity. The result is similar to Texas favorites Narrow Head but in a different direction—a blended mix of ’90s alt and heavy music that feels entirely familiar but never leans in any one direction long enough to make a clear distinction. I’d say the name Chameleon is right-on. And so are some of these riffs. Sheeesh.
TUBE ALLOYS
Technically speaking, I think the term is dorkspeak. But there’s a certain vernacular, a shorthand that exists between fans of similar music that includes specific landmarks. A little bit into a discussion about the wave of Melbourne punk that gave rise to Mikey Young and bands like Eddy Current Suppression Ring and Total Control, Jai Love drops it.
“So DX and Al Montfort and all of those guys in Melbourne, and the tons of bands that they were all involved in... I mean, Melbourne’s never recovered since all of those bands sort of faded away. Did you ever read DX’s zine Distort?”
And by referencing a limited, xerox-copied zine that collected all of Melbourne musician Al Monfort’s bands into a single issue, I knew that Jai was a serious head—interested in not just the major bands of the time, but all their offshoots. So it wasn’t just knowledge, but a genuinely voracious appetite. A fact further evident in the sound and approach of L.A.-based post-punk favorites Tube Alloys.
Vocalist-guitarist Jai Love originally hails from Australia but has lived in SoCal for many years and started the band during the pandemic, which eventually ballooned into its current five-piece configuration. And while Tube Alloys admittedly take notes from bands like Total Control in addition to the Fall, Wire, Suicide, Rudimentary Peni, and Joy Division, they are far from strictly following in the footsteps of that Melbourne scene of the ’10s. In fact, there’s an urgency that exists in the band’s latest EP and their recent Magnetic Point LP from 2023 that replaces the icy-cool, nihilistic monotone that permeates many of those releases. It’s the sort of thing that reminds you that after brushing away the synths, jangly rhythms, and focus on hummable melody, at the core of it all is punk, furious punk.
The love of punk isn’t just core to Tube Alloys; it’s something that has, on occasion, been thrown in their face. “I love hardcore and grew up on it, but it is quite funny being on a pretty notorious label that has specialized in cold and underground hardcore,” chuckles White, referencing the band’s current label home, the great La Vida Es Un Mus. “I think so many people have absolutely no idea how to take our band. Sometimes we’ll play shows with cool hardcore bands and people will be like, ‘What are they doing?”’
Clearly the staff at La Vida Es Un Mus, CREEM, and anywhere that has even a modicum of varied taste realize that there are a lot of definitions for the term “good music.” And it has shown in their very short existence, with Tube Alloys playing many coveted opening slots in their native L.A., including dates with the Spits, Hank Wood and the Hammerheads, Pissed Jeans, the Kids, VR Sex, and the Mummies—cornering that garage punk market like a blanket, or maybe some bandages from head to toe.
And that stellar taste extends to Urge Records, the label that Love and Sydney native Alan Gojak (bassist for RFMC) share between the two continents. Besides housing their respective bands, the label has released key records by Antenna (ex-Royal Headache), Gee Tee, and more, a few of which were in rotation during a recent Tube Alloys tour that stopped in Memphis for Gonerfest 2024 during a string of East Coast dates, the first trek for all associated bands. If you missed Tube Alloys on that recent jaunt, don’t fret. We have reason to believe that they’ll be out east soon enough and, judging by the quality of their latest 7-inch EP, not shuffling off this mortal coil for a while.
THE MYSTERY LIGHTS
As the Mystery Lights started to set up for their gig at Knockdown Center, their fans and the curious started to gather. First it was a vampire, then an undead Bushwick guy with a gaping wound and Carhartts, and it progressed more and more, adding sexy (insert occupation here) costume, witches, Green Man from It’s Always Sunny, and so many more. To answer your question, no, it wasn’t just a freak show at Knockdown on this temperate Thursday night. It was quite the opposite: Halloween, a night where everyone scrambles to have a good time, and this year the good money was on a packed-out Jonathan Toubin gig featuring the band, fresh off a jaunt in the E.U.
To be fair, the odds were in their favor. The Brooklyn-based band has a rep for an exhilarating live show—inspired by the psychedelic pop-rock of the ’60s with nods to everyone from the Kinks to the 13th Floor Elevators, though one name repeatedly came up during my conversation with Mike Brandon (vocals/ guitar): Fred Cole of the Rats and the legendary Dead Moon. “I do have to say some of my biggest inspirations are people that I’ve met,” admits Brandon. “Which is cool because it feels like the people I’m surrounded by are more inspiring than the gods—you know, like the heroes like Fred Cole, Billy Childish, or Dave Davies. Am I the best guitar player in the world? Not even close. But can I play the shit out of a guitar? Hell yeah, I can. And that’s what it’s about. Some of the best musicians can be kind of bad if you look at them on a technical level. Just like Fred Cole. Think of the Dead Moon solos—they’re botched in the best way. But that’s not what it’s about. It’s about heart and intention.’’
And the Mystery Lights have the intention and the heart live, which brings us to the songs, a new set of which they have now finally revealed. Earlier this year, TML introduced their second LP with Purgatory for Wick Records, a Daptone imprint, and it's been worth the wait—exploding with Nuggets-y proto-punk, with nods to everyone from Velvet Underground to Badfinger to the Idle Race to the Byrds. Basically anything that grooves, moves, and sounds better with a tambourine.
It all sounds so inspired, something that definitely was not the case a few years ago when the band hit a bit of a crossroads. “We kind of crash-landed from burnout, from touring too much. I just kind of lost touch with why I started playing in the first place—lost that passion,” recalls Brandon. “I decided I wanted to go and figure out what was going on inside my mind. So I had to do some meditation, some inner shadow work, and sort that shit out. And then after a while, I got back into why I loved music in the first place. So when we went in to record, we kind of reconnected with our younger selves—the teenage self that was, like, excited to do it. We just had fun with this record. It’s probably why it sounds so different and all over the place, because we didn’t have any rules or any real vision. We were just like, ‘Let’s just get in there and have fun.’ And now we’re having the best time of our lives touring.”
And with that, the band has repositioned their ideas of what they want from this creative endeavor and seems as energetic and as fun as they ever have. Which made the audience bounce like crazy at Knockdown Center, swaying and flailing as if their view wasn’t blocked by a giant inflatable chicken costume.