Human Switchboard’s Who’s Landing in My Hangar? is one of the few tenuously Cleveland connected punk/new wave classics to lack a proper reissues. Bar/None Records thankfully rescues this great album from a future of shitty YouTube vinyl rips. The reissue includes close to everything the band released. A droning John Cale type synth drones over tracks much more fleet-footed than anything the Velvets would dare to play.

Yet the sound is still distinctly Velvet-y, unlike some of the Velvet Underground speed-ups that came directly in their wake (here’s looking at you, Mott the Hoople). Their keyboard, guitar and drums less build upon each other as awkwardly accumulate like acquaintances walking down a narrow sidewalk or young lovers who can’t quite keep in step. Lots of toes are stepped on and correspondingly small apologies are given. There is something reminiscent of the Shaggs about the whole affair, and I mean that in the absolute best sense possible. The wobbly and off-kilter, if it’s not all wobbly and off-kilter, is better than a prairie oyster to restore the drifting rock critic to some semblance of sensitivity to contour and nuance.

Having owned Who’s Landing in My Hangar? for a while now, the main joy of this anthology is to see the loose ends and detours gently trod then forgotten. Who knew the Human Switchboard had made an attempt at alt-country? The anthology does, and puts it perhaps rightfully, at the end. Bob Pfeifer’s voice is too wild and unhinged, think Chris Stamey after a couple Red Bulls, to convincingly pull off “Always Lonely For You”.

However, at other points, Pfeifer and Myrna Marcarian use this genuine sense of the unhinged in their voices to great effect. Pfeifer is too anxious to be the Lou Reed doppelganger much of the rock press has attempted to paint him as. When the two of them figure out how to make their voices complement each other, either in non-harmonies or in snaking responses such as on the epic “Refrigerator Door”, the results are stunning.

Marcarian is a grown up, assured Moe Tucker, without any of the fake ‘feisty’ posturing that is so endemic to these ’80s records. “I Can Walk Alone”, not the comment on muscular dystrophy it threatens to be, is in fact an anti-love song. Marcarian throws little details about wedding rings to heighten the drama and imply narrative. The song even has a sequel on the flip side, “Don’t Follow Me Home”.

Half the fun of Who’s Landing in My Hangar? is in the dangling narrative loose ends. What other album would have a line like “I think I’ll go back to dry humping cigarette machines”? For that line alone, “In My Room” would be a standout track, but it’s got a bell groove too. Pfeifer dangles precariously from the top of the bell groove. The narrative of the lyrics suggests alcoholism, lost love, lost intellectual pursuits, improper use of the drop slot… pretty much everything a song needs.

It even has one of the few urban decay anthems to stack up with The Pagans’ “Street Where Nobody Lives”: “In This Town”. While many records of the period have musical nods to traffic congestion and construction work, these two are among the only ones to directly address the issue.

This is a ready-made cult item, the missing item to complete what is, at least on my shelf, the Cleveland new-wave trifecta with Dub Housing and All the Wrong People Are Dying. Grab it before it slinks back out of print.

RIYL: Felt, The Velvet Underground, The Styrenes, Pere Ubu, Moe Tucker, Television, The Raincoats, The Shaggs, The Monks

MP3: Human Switchboard – In This Town

Human Switchboard – Refigerator Door

Human Switchboard – (Say No To) Saturday’s Girl

Human Switchboard – Prime of My Life

BUY

The post Human Switchboard – Who’s Landing in My Hangar? (2011) appeared first on Obscure Sound: Indie Music Blog.

by Daniel Levine

There are occasions in the girl group canon when the genre, so wholly given over to the ephemeral, will unwittingly create something briefly sublime. These moments are so fleeting that they often won’t even encompass the entirety of the track. They flare up briefly, brilliantly, only to fall back into the pattern of immediate and temporary gratification they were created for. The first 13 seconds of “Tell Me That You Care” by Elaine and the Shandells, the first gentle harmony hit in “Tell Me” by The Termites, the brief periods in “Sally Go ‘Round The Roses” by the Jaynetts – where the vocals recede in the mix and the organ’s car-horn riff give the impression the music was coming from a distant apartment building – are a few apt examples.

San Francisco’s Grass Widow manage to coax some of these moments on their most recent LP, Past Time. Though their M.O. hasn’t changed drastically from their 2009 eponymous self-release, the sound was distinctive enough to merit this further exploration. Hooks and melodies drift in and out of the mix, and even if individual songs aren’t in a hurry to distinguish themselves, the atmosphere they create collectively entrances the listener.

Grass Widow’s essential tension is one of competing timbres, those of the drawn out, interweaving vocals and the insistent menacing bass lines courtesy founder Hannah Lew. Tension is ratcheted up by the slightest addition to their sparse instrumentation. It builds and builds until slinking childlike vocals provide welcome release, only to begin again. Dynamics are skillfully engaged and augmented by the ever present element of discord in the vocals and arrangement of instruments.

Their sound is a restructuring of the jagged edges of 60s pop music; its subconscious elements seem in constant danger of derailing. Something in both the meandering melodic tendencies of The Shaggs and the aggression lying beneath the surface in surf guitar speak to something far beyond their intended reach. Grass Widow realize this tension and let it derail, allowing for a certain catharsis.

In the music video for the album’s sort-of single “Fried Egg”, a de-saturated haze is given to the film stock, the video itself feeling aged and loose like a home shot super 8 or scopitone. This suits the atmosphere of the record to a tee.

However, for all the atmosphere provided, the band still has yet to give the songs, and thereby the record, a tangible shape. Standout tracks show huge promise, and have been scattered throughout the group’s still young career. The highlights on Past Time are “Uncertain Memory”, with its spaghetti-western bass line, and “Fried Egg”, which has the most pronounced vocal hooks on the album.

7.5/10.0

RIYL: Sleater-Kinney, The Shaggs, Vivian Girls, Christmas Island, The Mantles, Mika Miko, Thee Oh Sees, Eternal Summers, Woven Bones

Grass Widow – Fried Egg

Grass Widow – Shadow

Official Site / MySpace / BUY

The post Grass Widow – Past Time (2010) appeared first on Obscure Sound: Indie Music Blog.