/|\(;,;)/|\ There's an ocean of music, and I'm swimming as hard as I can. I use this blog to post music & commentary; I hope you find something here that does it for you. Peace!
Doc Shoe posting on bonus-tunes:
Here’s the Lost Sounds demo for their song “Blackcoats Whitefear” (album version HERE) featuring the talents of Alicja Trout and the late great Jay Reatard. The completed studio version of this song is like a amphetamine freak tearing down your front door with an axe, but the demo is more deliberate, with more obvious shades of early Synth Punk pioneers like Devo and The Screamers. Damn, I miss this band.
“I Don’t Wanna Work” covered by Black Sunday
Alicja Trout & Co cover The Queers.
“Plastic Skin” by Lost Sounds
Jay Reatard and Alicja Trout combine Screamers-style Synth-Punk with apocalyptic Garage Rock.
“Energy Drink & the Long Walk Home” by Lost Sounds
Jay Reatard was a motherfucking genius, but Lost Sounds was as much Alicja Trout’s band as it was his. “We both have this apocalyptic mentality,” is how she once explained their chemistry. Just listen to her sing this track and I think you’ll get what an “apocalyptic mentality” sounds like. (Hint: It sounds awesome.)
“Cancer” by Destruction Unit (Jay Reatard)
Jay Reatard was probably the most prolific recording artist in America for a while, but we ought to remember that he had some very talented friends who were willing and able to follow him from one project to the next, the better to enable his workaholic tendencies. Take this band, Destruction Unit, for example: This is Jay Reatard playing with Elvis Wong and Alicja Trout. Elvis Wong was a member of The Reatards and also played with Jay in Angry Angles and Digital Leather. Alicja Trout—Jay’s former girlfriend, I might add, and don’t you wish you got along with your ex that well?—anyhow, she was also in Lost Sounds and Nervous Patterns. And I’ve already written how the Oblivians basically gave Jay Reatard his start. My point being, nobody makes it on their own.
Afterthought: Fuck, I forgot to say anything about the record itself! Well, when Jay Reatard started Lost Sounds, he didn’t intend to stray far from Reatards-style Garage Rock—“The Dwarves with keyboards,” is how he described his original conception of Lost Sounds. It was up to Alicja Trout to encourage Jay to explore a different creative direction, and Elvis Wong introduced him to the Synth-Punk sound of The Screamers, and the rest is history. But with this side-project, my guess is that Jay got his wish; Destruction Unit sounds a helluva lot like The Dwarves with keyboards.
“Punish Or Be Damned” by Lost Sounds
If you need any further reason to check out Jay Reatard’s band Lost Sounds, dig this: Even their outtakes make for better listening than most other bands on their best day. Here’s Jay, Alicja Trout, and the rest of the crew covering their under-appreciated Synth-Punk forebears: The Screamers’ “Punish Or Be Damned.”
“Heart Felt Toys” by Lost Sounds
With the possible exception of Final Solutions, I’d have to say my favorite Jay Reatard band has got to be Lost Sounds (though to call it a “Jay Reatard band” is unfair to the contributions of Alicja Trout, who’s an amazing artist in her own right). After a few impressive-but-unfocused records in which they tried to be a Garage Rock band with synthesizers, here’s the record where they finally figured out what they were up to: Black-Wave. Yes, there is such a thing as Synth-Punk, and with this record Lost Sounds could teach even The Screamers a thing or two.
“Blackcoats / White Fear” by Lost Sounds
“I wanted to be a ’60s garage band, when that stuff wasn’t in Spin Magazine.” —Jay Reatard
If you only pick up one album by Lost Sounds, may I recommend Rat’s Brains & Microchips? Every Lost Sounds record is great, of course, but I think they really hit their stride with this one—they’d figured out who they were as a band with Black-Wave, and they proceeded to do what they do better than anyone. And what they do is write complex (by Punk standards, at least) songs with a Synth-Punk bent and an apocalyptic attitude, almost like a cross between two of Jay’s favorite bands, Devo and Emperor. If my description sounds muddled, that’s kind of the point: nobody sounds quite like Lost Sounds.
Addendum: I’ve listened to this song roughly eleventy-billion times before someone told me that “Blackcoats / Whitefear” is supposedly about the Columbine shootings. Huh.
“Pictures On My Wall” by Nervous Patterns
Jay Reatard would sometimes do acoustic sets when he was touring. Yes, Punk has an acoustic side—just look at Stza Crack’s acoustic shows, or Folk Punk bands like Andrew Jackson Jihad, The Casual Terrorist, Ghost Mice, and Defiance, Ohio. What you’re listening to right now isn’t an acoustic track, of course, but I bring this up because this song is surprisingly… well, maybe “gentle” isn’t the word for it, but my point is that Jay Reatard could get under your skin without screaming or assaulting you with feedback. Take this track, for example, which he recorded with Alicja Trout (from Lost Sounds) under the moniker Nervous Patterns. It’s amazing what you can accomplish with a simple melody and emotional directness.
“Rat’s Brains and Microchips” by Lost Sounds
Nothing against dumb three-chord Punk—I happen to love that music—but this track is light-years beyond all that. When he first formed Lost Sounds with Rich Crook and former girlfriend Alicja Trout, Jay Reatard wanted their new band to sound like The Dwarves. It was up to Alicja to put Jay behind the keyboards and encourage his more experimental tendencies. She said in an interview:
One of the things that sparked my ideas was that I was sick of hearing and writing songs that were about the same kind of garage rock subject matter - about girls and guys and your sexual self esteem or something like that. I had a really apocalyptic view of the world and I think Jay does, too. We’re all a little bit mean spirited.
Or as Jay himself added, “You can only stick the microphone so far up your ass until it just gets boring.” They wanted to do something different, and boy did they ever.
I want to play this song so loud it’ll bruise the ears of all those Punk Purists writing their letters to Maximum RocknRoll, yelling “sellout!” at any band who doesn’t sound enough like Cro-Mags circa 1986. Fuck those guys. Punk isn’t about adhering to a rigid form. It’s about breaking free of whatever everyone else is doing.
And another thing: This track is included in the Blac Static retrospective, which is a great place to start if you’re new to Lost Sounds. Personally, it broke my heart a little when I bought this record. “Best Of” records are like a tombstone for a band. When you put out a retrospective, it means the glory days are over.
As you may have noticed by now, I hate how the Record Industry squeezes female talent into little boxes: the Breathless Emo Girl, the Pop Cocktease, the Untouchable Virgin, the Commercial Whore, etc. I like girls who are unabashedly themselves and who like to make a lot of noise. I love Alison Mosshart, Poly Styrene, Bleached, Aretha Franklin, Patti Smith, Holly Golightly, Wax Idols, Janis Joplin, Ani Difranco, Bikini Kill, Alicja Trout, Tina Turner, Brode Dalle, Jessie Mae Hemphill, Nico de Gaillo, Le Butcherettes, PJ Harvey, The 5.6.7.8’s, Erika Wennerstrom, and many more. And whenever I post songs by women like this, I add the “Women Who Rock” tag.
My Alicja-Pop record finally arrived in the mail!
For Those Of You Who Just Arrived: Alicja-Pop! is a solo project of Alicja Trout. It’s an outlet for her more melodic, Pop-oriented material. But she’s also done some killer records with her bands Black Sunday and River City Tanlines, and of course you’ll remember her work with Jay Reatard in the Synth-Punk band Lost Sounds as well as side-projects like Destruction Unit and Nervous Patterns. She likes to keep busy, is what I’m saying.
Reaffirming my obsession with Women Who Rock, here’s Alicja Trout and her band Black Sunday playing “I Feel So Nervous,” from the Gli Amanti D’oltratomba 7” record. I got this off a compilation of splits and 7” releases from Ms. Trout’s band Black Sunday and her solo project, Alicja-Pop!, which I’m particularly fond of. She’s admitted to having an “apocalyptic mentality”—which explains why she and Jay Reatard were so great together in Lost Sounds—but as I explore all these various bands and projects she’s worked on, she sheer variety of her output shocks me. This particular track is catchier and more Pop-oriented than I expected, and I fucking love it.
Incidentally, I just ordered the new Alcja-Pop! release, the I Play The Fool 7”, which I’ll be sure to post just as soon as it shows up in my mailbox. Because everything this lady touches turns to awesome.
You might remember Alicja Trout from the band Lost Sounds. She was Jay Reatard’s ex-girlfriend and frequent band-mate, which must have worked out better than you’d expect because they were constantly teaming up for projects like Destruction Unit and Nervous Patterns.
She’s prolific as hell. Like the departed Mr. Reatard, Alicja just doesn’t seem to be satisfied unless she’s working with half a dozen bands at any given time, and her current outlet is the River City Tanlines. Here’s the band getting hard and heavy with a song called “He Said Yes,” and Alicja’s wild vocals make me wish dearly there were more women like her in the music world.
