Reviewed: Big Dipper, Banquet Hall

Big Dipper Crashes On The Platinum Planets' second track should have been its first. It's a lament, but also a prayer of sorts to activate the muse for this, the first new Big Dipper album in over 20 years (sort of) - hoping for "voices that guide a rising chorus that opens wide!" So goes Gary Waleik's "Robert Pollard," which worries that a classic era of songwriters like namechecked Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, Jagger-Richards, and Newmans both Randy and Colin, is coming to end and all hope lies with Guided By Voices oracle Robert Pollard (who also created the album's cover art) may be the last man standing to carry the torch. The merits of that argument are called into question by its very existence as "Robert Pollard" is catchy as hell.

But maybe not as catchy as "Princess Warrior," drummer Jeff Oliphant's highly hummable tribute to cancer recovery. The refrain's plead "help me get back on my knees, I'm begging you, begging you please" is as big a hook as they make 'em. The album covers some wider ground too: Goffrier's "Joke Outfit" has biting guitar and smiting lyrics, and his "Hurricane Bill," "Pitbull Cruiser," and "Happy New Year" are grand, smooth pop. Waleik's "Sarah and Monica" recalls Dipper's longtime (and perhaps over-estimated) association with scientific and extra-terrestrial imagery (c.f. "Lunar Module," among others), but is as much a memory of summers past spent under "constellations in summer skies," though it does ask "is memory matter, in that it can be destroyed?"

Big Dipper Crashes On The Platinum Planet is everything we'd hoped it would be. Full of catchy hooks, idiosyncratic playful guitar jousting, and that essential silliness that make the band what it is. That latter bit may be the most important. Whether it's oddball characters called Lord Scrumptious, or the way Bill Goffrier hesitates while reaching for a high note in your face, or the way his guitar jabs in response to Gary Waleik's, Big Dipper continues to remind us that this whole music thing is supposed to be fun.

The self-recorded album out this week (very limited blue vinyl available here and signed CDs here) is their first since their 1990 major label debut (and finale) and their 1992 breakup. This reunion run started in 2008, when Merge, doing a great public service, reissued the band's Homestead catalog (an EP and two nearly perfect albums), along with a revelatory collection of an album's worth of material recorded but never released after the band's very short major label tenure. That collection, and the band's joyous reunion shows, hinted at what they were still capable of. Now we know for sure.




This is just the latest in a great classic Boston rock renaissance that I've talked a lot about in this space. These last few weeks alone have seen reunions of legends Human Sexual Response (who played literally every song they released in their short 80's run) and 90's indie pop favorites Fuzzy, who played a birthday show for one of their guitarist-singers, along with Tanya Donnelly playing a few Belly hits with Buffalo Tom as her backing band, along with the latter running through a few of their biggies as well.

This isn't just about reunions, though. I always closely associated Big Dipper with their contemporaries The Cavedogs as they trod the same boards around town and were in the same rough neighborhood of 'pop,' but the latter with their own bent and a bigger rock sound and more 12-string jangle. Like Big Dipper, the Cavedogs had their own flirt with the majors that led to their downfall. Their guitarist, Todd Spahr, spent the 90's leading greats Merang and then The Gravy before pulling up stakes and moving to Los Angeles. Save a couple of Cavedogs reunions (like this one a couple of summers ago), we haven't heard from him in awhile.

He finally resurfaces as a member of Banquet Hall, along with a couple of other Boston transplants. Rick Shaw, a criminally under-appreciated songwriter that some called the Godfather of the Northern Worcester County post-punk scene (by 'some' I mean I called him that) when he fronted his early band, Navy Blue Nuns (grab their great compilation here) before leading a couple of quality Boston bands like The Meltaways and Krebstar, handles the other guitar and Paula Kelly, who cut her teeth in cult legends Drop Nineteens and remained a prominent scene figure throughout the late 90's and early aughts, plays the bass and does some arranging as well.

After grinding it out in L.A. clubs for a few years now, the band has just released their debut album, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?, which is the sum of its great parts. Right off the top of it feels so great to hear Spahr's playful jittery guitar chords on leadoff track "Stars After Stars" and Shaw's pop classicist approach to "Puppets," with warm lounge harmonies from the Watson Twins. Later, Spahr's "Urban Renewal" betrays an Elvis Costello influence wrapped in a cozy acoustic guitar, Shaw's "Bells On" is the kind of heart-on-your-sleeve pop song that Boston songwriters (like, say, Buffalo Tom) seem to do so well, and the band resurrects an old Merang single to great effect with lost classic "Drunk and Quartered."

Here, have a listen:


-Michael Piantigini


Big Dipper: Facebook | Twitter 
Banquet Hall: Facebook | Bandcamp

20: Lilys | In The Presence Of Nothing

[UPDATED] Lilys' In The Presence Of Nothing is a hugely important record for us at Clicky Clicky HQ, one that features some of our favorite songs of all time. Foremost among these is the album closer "Claire Hates Me," but we also strongly favor the icy, narcotic stunner "Elizabeth Colour Wheel" and even the epic instrumental vibe-out "The Way Snowflakes Fall." Truth be told we had grander plans of memorializing the album's 20th anniversary, but the big-deal (to us) piece we had hoped to publish hasn't yet been delivered, so que sera sera. As we have another "20" feature slated to roll early next month, we wanted to make at least some remarks about In The Presence Of Nothing, the colossal full-length debut of the constantly shape-shifting Lilys, before 2012 gets away from us altogether.

In The Presence Of Nothing is a stone-cold shoegaze classic, one so good that, paradoxically, its brilliant execution may have earned it as much dismissal -- due to its strong, unmistakable and unapologetic My Bloody Valentine influence -- as acclaim. It was co-released in September 1992 by two storied labels, the still quite prominent Slumberland and the now sadly defunct Spin-Art, and it bore the dual catalog number DRYL 020 / Spin-Art 2. Band mastermind Kurt Heasley -- who, as regular readers know, continues to occasionally release Lilys records even now -- regularly changes the personnel of Lilys, but for In The Presence Of Nothing he was abetted by members of Velocity Girl, The Ropers and Suddenly Tammy!, as Wikipedia helpfully points out here. The record is long, long out of print, but we are hoping that some sane individual or group of individuals will one day rectify that. In the meantime, copies pop up on EBay now and again, and we were dumbfounded to see today that one completely INSANE individual is currently selling copy number 1 of the first edition of 500 In The Presence Of Nothing LPs, which affords us the opportunity to show you what the vinyl art and package (as opposed to the CD art above) looks like. Image 1. Image 2. Image 3. Image 4. [NOTE: as KF points out in the comments, all 500 copies of the original LP pressing were labeled "1 of 500," so we are slightly less dumbfounded by the above, but still...]

Enumerating the many reasons this record is special to us seems to straddle the line between pointless and self-indulgent, so we'll avoid getting too deep in to the underbrush in that regard. But we will say Lilys' full-length debut is among the records that changed our relationship to music forever, by showing us that excellent music wasn't only made by people you'd never meet in places you could never go. Music could be learned, amazing records could be made in places like Lancaster, PA -- as In The Presence Of Nothing was -- and not just in sterile, thousand-dollar-an-hour studios in New York, Los Angeles or London. That a more-than-reasonable fascimile of the sound on Loveless could be created for what has been rumored to be a tiny fraction of the budget of MBV's magnum opus, by dudes that you could go see play in local clubs: that was a mental game-changer for us. It brought it all home. It gave us the gumption to pick up a guitar, to have a much deeper relationship with music than we had previously. So happy belated 20th birthday, In The Presence Of Nothing. And goddammit, nobody outbid us for that number 1 LP, okay? Download two tunes from the album below courtesy of the very cool people at Slumberland Records.

Lilys -- "Tone Bender" -- In The Presence Of Nothing
Lilys -- "Claire Hates Me" -- In The Presence Of Nothing

Midriff Residency Night X: Home for Little Wanders Benefit With Soccer Mom, Eldridge Rodriguez, Ex-Planets, Relations

We're grateful. You're grateful. It's Thanksgiving. Let's keep that feeling (sans the awful stomach pain we have right now) alive for a few days, long enough for you to drag your weary, overstuffed frame to Radio Saturday night for the latest installment of Midriff Records' year-long residency. This particular event is the 10th of its kind, but it is a special kind of special in that it serves both as a memorial of sorts for a friend dear to the Midriff camp who recently died, as well as a benefit for a cause close to that friend's heart, Boston's Home For Little Wanderers. Allow us to crib from The Home's web site for a moment: "The Home for Little Wanderers provides a seamless continuum of vital programs and services for every stage of child and family development. For more than 200 years, we’ve earned a reputation for doing whatever it takes to strengthen vulnerable families and keep children safe in their own communities, even when they don’t have family support. Serving children and youth from birth to 21, The Home makes a positive impact on over 7,000 lives each year through a network of services including behavioral health, therapeutic residential and special education, adoption and foster care. In addition, a number of innovative programs provide specialized assistance to youth transitioning to adulthood from state systems of care."

That's real shit. Important shit. Those things alone should be enough of an inducement to guarantee your patronage Saturday, but on top of it being a benefit for a good cause in honor of a righteous dude, you will also be rocked by Clicky Clicky faves Soccer Mom and Eldridge Rodriguez along with Ex-Planets and The 'Mom's 100m Records labelmates Relations. E.R. will be performing hits from his repertoire of The Beatings, Eldridge Rodriguez and No Love songs accompanied on the piano by Mel Lederman, also of the No Love cohort and formerly of Victory At Sea.

These Midriff residency nights have been, as our friend BRD has been known to say, something other than else. If you missed the Halloween show last month (as admittedly we did), you missed E.R. and friends including The Beatings' Erin Dalbec and Soccer Mom's William Scales doing a cracking set of Pavement covers. Fortunately, some enterprising individual recorded the set, and you can hear the entire thing via the Soundcloud embed below. We're also posting streams of Soccer Mom's recent cataclysmic single "A Canoe Shy" b/w "Brides," which is 31 flavors of awesome and which can be purchased via 100m Records right here. So chew on that along with your leftover turkey for the next 44 hours or so. Then get yourself to Radio Saturday night. Here's the Facebook event page, too, wherein you can pledge your allegiance.

Today's Hotness: Pile, Calories, Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam

>> We've been meaning to circle back to our recent feature in The Phoenix on Pile, the Boston indie rock quartet whose formidable LP Dripping was released late last month. As the band plays a hotly anticipated tour homecoming show Wednesday night with now-band Metz and Northampton-based leading lights Speedy Ortiz, we figured there's no time like the present. Our conversation with Pile founder and fronter Rick Maguire was both long and interesting. He hand-rolled and smoked cigarettes, we drank some beers, we talked about music, it was delightful. One of the many things we didn't have the space to hammer in our Phoenix piece that we found remarkable was Mr. Maguire's understandable yet surprising lack of familiarity with acts from the late '80s and earlier '90s that Pile sounds like. Sure, he knows Jesus Lizard, Polvo and the like exist. He's even heard some of their records a bit. But Maguire said he wasn't conversant in their music. And then he said (well, we're paraphrasing) what we thought was a particularly smart thing: he said at this point he didn't WANT to know those bands' music well, he wouldn't want to be influenced one way or the other by hearing them at this point. We like that, that independent thinking, that drive to be pure. You can stream Dripping via the Bandcamp embed below; buy it from Exploding In Sound Records right here. It's a great record, dark, drop-tuned, regular outbreaks of mayhem, melody, aggression. The show tomorrow night is going to be awesome. Hit the Facebook event page here for details and to proclaim your faith.



>> Birmingham, England-based indie punk quartet Calories have revealed more about what they are doing these days, and how they are doing it, dispelling some of our questions about the recent revelation of Burning Alms yet adding new questions. So, for starters, Calories announced it will issue sometime around Dec. 1 a new EP titled "DMT," and there is an ace video for the strikingly effervescent tune right here. According to the band, the video had 1,000 views in just five days, which is none too shabby. As you can hear from watching the zany, "Benny Hill"-esque clip, "DMT" has a lighter touch that Calories' heretofore characteristic dense, blunt and forceful attack. Indeed, "DMT" is downright jangly. What else? Well, a Facebook status from the band refers to not one, but two new side projects. There's Burning Alms, which we already wrote about here last month, which is referred to as Thomas Whitfield and John Biggs'. But there is also a new bass-less project being helmed by Calories bassist Pete Dixon called Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam, who is joined by two chaps Andrew Bullock and Ralph Morton. Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam has apparently been busy making rock and rock videos as well, as evidenced by this recent video for the very great tune "Halloween." So chew on that, why don't you? No word yet on what formats Calories' "DMT" will be available on or what label will release it, but we'll keep up our vigil and bring word about the EP when we can. In the meantime, how about streaming Calories most recent, and quite excellent, full length Basic Nature via the embed below?

Review: The Snowy Owls | Within Yr Reach EP

Richmond, Virginia-based shoegaze quartet The Snowy Owls popped onto our radar about a year ago via the compelling digital single "Yr Eyes." The tune has proven to set the template for what has followed, as the dark, hazy promise of its JAMC-inflected fuzz and echo feels fully realized on the foursome's excellent new EP, Within Yr Reach. The act self-released the 30-minute set earlier this week and feted it with a release show in its hometown Friday night. Its eight songs double down on the band's '80s alternative rock and darkwave influences, presenting an affecting amalgamation of the early music of The Cure and The Chameleons that is as remarkable for its songwriting as it is for its consistent, pervasive tone. The Snowy Owls have a world view, and it is dark, concise, guitar-drenched and weirdly beautiful.

Within Yr Reach commences with one of the collection's two short intrumental tracks, "Pilcrow," a slow march of gauzy, reverbed chords from which catapults the firm beat of the title track. The song "Within Yr Reach" echoes It Hugs Back's early single "Other Cars Go," but eschews that band's motorik rhythmic tendencies in favor of just a touch more swing. Perhaps the best example of The Snowy Owls' relatively straightforward approach is the jaunty, feedback spangled rocker "Fortunate Isles," which trades on a sturdy rhythm, a simple arrangement of over-driven guitars, bass and drums, and well-conceived production, all of which highlight the fact that when you've got a great song with a great melody, there's no need for the extreme and heavy-handed auditory trickery many shoegaze acts favor. The foursome's respect for solid basics extends to a certain extent to fronter Matt Klimas' lyrics, which balance blurry abstraction and literal clarity, and even repeat certain imagery, to plot in simple terms the dimensions of an idealized -- if unconsummated -- relationship across the EP's eight songs. Within Yr Reach succeeds because the arrangements are relatively spartan, allowing each instrument to tumescently billow within the open aural space, even as Mr. Klimas and his band of merry men wash everything with reverbs and regularly distress the guitar leads with barely controlled distortions.

Brilliant and patient album closer "Falling" emerges from an elastic bass line into the sort of dysphoric dark vibe that made The Cure's Faith and Pornography so terribly affecting. Guitars gather for the chorus in proportion to the deepening reverb on Klimas' murky vocal. The play between the steady inevitability of quarter notes and so much saturated reverb, along with the song's wistful melody, makes it a fitting final statement for Within Yr Reach. Thanks to the good graces of Mr. Klimas, we are able to offer you a free download of the track, which you can snatch at this link. Stream the entire, excellent EP via the Bandcamp embed below; you can buy the collection at Bandcamp for a scant $3 American dollars for a limited time.

The Snowy Owls: Internerds | Facebook | Bandcamp | Twitters

Review/Preview: Eddie Japan | Modern Desperation Part 1

All the buzz in Boston rock this week is on Eddie Japan, who have been making the radio and blog rounds as they prepare to celebrate their new EP, Modern Desperation Part 1, tomorrow night at Cambridge's cozy Lizard Lounge.

Confidence ripples throughout these five tracks of tight pop - some driving, some jangly, all ambitious - that could only be have been made by a collection of scene veterans, several of whom are holding it down in more than one band.

The EP's anchor is undeniably showstopper "A Town Called Nowhere, " which every review will call "cinematic." I'll join them, because that's surely apt for this widescreen epic. Its a swing-for-the-fences arrangement of Spaghetti Western strings and horns and harmonies that hold aloft an ace vocal from songwriter David Santos.

Tomorrow's show will likely be one of the few - or only - times club-goers will get to see the full arrangement in person, as Eddie Japan augment themselves with a string section for their release party. It'll be a packed show, too, with The Daily Pravda and Gene Dante and the Future Starlets rounding out the bill. Grab yer tickets here.

The album is available now at many of your favorite digital outlets. Stream the entire thing via the Bandcamp embed below.

-- Michael Piantigini



Eddie Japan: Intertubes | Facebook | Twitter | Bandcamp

Review: Johnny Foreigner | Names EP

Daniel. Lauren. Tom. Sam. Jonny. Chloe. Sophie. These are the names of Names, the stormy new EP from Birmingham, England's noise-pop goliaths Johnny Foreigner. At bottom, the short, searing collection comprises four catchy, intricate songs, extending the sci-fi ARG soap opera futurepop themes of the band's dominating 2011 full-length referenced below. But Names is more than that: it's a renewed challenge from a band operating at the top of its game, a quartet brandishing kaleidoscopic, quasi-fictive anthems bent into denser and ever more sophisticated shapes by the out-sized songwriting talents of fronter Alexei Berrow and his cohort. As we've come to expect from the incredibly prolific and reliable act (which, among many other things, released Clicky Clicky's favorite album of 2011, the full-length Johnny Foreigner vs. Everything), the briskly paced songs bristle with hooks, melodies and ideas. Condensed and potent, the set contains no ballads, and each of four possible tunes carries the characteristic concoction of desperation and bravado that we first noted upon the release of Johnny Foreigner's first EP, Arcs Across The City, in late 2007 [review].

Sure, a lot has changed for the band in the intervening five years: Johnny Foreigner now boasts a different U.K. label (Alcopop!), a U.S. label (Swerp), and a second guitarist (Lewes Herriot, perhaps best known to date as the guy responsible for all of Johnny Foreigner's art from the blistering "Our Bipolar Friends" single onward). But the heart of the band -- its desperate energy, disarming sincerity and brilliant songcraft -- has yet to falter. "Maybe Daniel's All The Push I Need" opens the EP at break-neck pace, 140 seconds of sputtered lyrics, stop/start dynamics, and slashes of guitars spraying every which way. "Killing In The Name" does its best to pull itself apart with lyrics that almost fall out of meter, and lyrics that shout other lyrics down ("you don't get to say it! you don't get to say it!"), while at the same time keen attention to vocal harmonies and a quiet and sweet guitar section impose order where possible. That order is challenged by dense salvos of chords in the final third that do much to perpetuate an intensity that makes Names fly by in what feels like an instant. "O When Will This Honeymoon End?" is less chaotic and places great emphasis on vocal hooks and melody, and the repeated lyric "all these nights and all these chances" repeats in cascades to a calming conclusion, the kind and meaning of which one can't remember upon waking. The set closes with the brilliant anthem "3 Hearts," with its affecting confession "stop making sense, god knows I've tried." The song succeeds in reframing and restating the themes of the collection, has a nifty false ending, and is yet another marvel of clever composition.

And so Names does its job: we can't wait to hear more from the quartet. Not all four songs from Names are on offer in a single package; to whit, a t-shirt and digital pack from the band's American label exclusively includes "O When Will This Honeymoon End?"; a badge set and digital pack from the U.K. label exclusively includes "Killing In The Name." However, it is quite simple to get whichever extra song you need as a stand-alone download, so the minor inconvenience -- while still admittedly inconvenient -- is easily dispelled. Names was released by Swerp and Alcopop! Oct. 27; buy it via the links supra and stream it in its entirety via the embed below. Johnny Foreigner continues its trek across North America, the so-called Vs. The Atlantic tour, the dates of which you can review here at Facebook. The tour has been augmented with an additional slate of Canadian dates which are posted in this recent blog post from the band.



Selected Prior Coverage:
That Was The Show That Was: Johnny Foreigner | Bowery Ballroom
Review: Johnny Foreigner | Arcs Across The City EP
Review: Johnny Foreigner | Waited Up 'Til It Was Light
Review: Johnny Foreigner | WeLeftYouSleepingAndGoneNow
Review: Johnny Foreigner | Grace And The Bigger Picture
Review: Johnny Foreigner | You Thought You Saw A Shooting Star But Yr Eyes Were Blurred With Tears And That Lighthouse Can Be Pretty Deceiving...
Review: Johnny Foreigner | Certain Songs Are Cursed EP
Review: Johnny Foreigner | Johnny Foreigner Vs. Everything