This 7″ is a coup-de-grace for Harding, who has the rhythm section of Dinosaur Jr. playing on the somewhat poppy A-side (think late-era Hüsker Dü or Gumball, but dirgier), and Emperor X helping out on the B-side’s “Pure Reason,” a screamo-hardcore punk track with the same kind of smirk you’d find on the Beastie Boys’ Some Old Bullshit. The final track—Harding solo—goes back to pop, but the lo-fi kind that you can only get when remixing something originally recorded to cassette (and this one may have originally been recorded in 1996, if I’m reading the liner notes correctly). Overall, it is an excursion into the 90s, but the good side, the one where grunge had already petered out but boy bands hadn’t quite yet reemerged. It’s worth getting for the harmonies on the A-side alone, and as a bonus, Harding used his pull with David Lynch (who he’d worked for in the past) to use a rather delicious photo of Mädchen Amick from Twin Peaks for the inner sleeve.

—D.M. Collins

Photos and videos of the Shrine always show the boys skating in pools around broken furniture and tattered debris. Listening to the Shrine’s Bless Off demo works well to evoke that same mindset, where the fast-paced dangers in front of you actually slow down time and give you a sense of manic focus. It’s the difference between hippies, taking massive bong hits, and revolutionary freaks snorting the same prepared cannabinoid snuff the Zulu used to knock the shit out of the British. The Shrine are hesitant to call their music “metal,” though that seems the best fit for all the solos going up and down the fretboard, and singer Josh Landau’s occasional falsetto (more of this, please!). But it’s young, very American stuff, the kind that brings a can of spray paint when it leaves the house and owes as much to Black Flag’s My War as that album owes to Black Sabbath, all with a late seventies flair that hints at what could have been in the NWOBHM had been the NWOAHM (look it up). Think “Stone Cold Crazy” by Queen, or the fastest of fast Thin Lizzy, or a more boogie version of Motorhead—true Americana by people who learned it second-hand. Lyrically these songs seem to be first-hand accounts, sticking to angry hangovers, Troglodyte pride, and deceptively insane girls: “She had her head on straight/or so it seemed!” Boy, can I relate. You’ll be surprised at how familiar this music feels, even if most of the trucks and wheels in your life come from dodging traffic on the 10.

—D.M. Collins

My L.A. RECORD compatriots cautioned me that Beth Jeans Houghton “doesn’t need our help” to get her album promoted. But perhaps YOU, fair reader, need encouragement to look past the U.K. gossip rags and Houghton’s Gaga-esque costumery, and really engage with this album’s songs. Do it! This carefully crafted yet free-soaring song assortment combines folk with pop as well as Nick Drake ever did, and pairs twee micro-orchestration with deceptively dark lyrics in a manner reminiscent of Love’s Forever Changes—hell, to hit the point home, Houghton shoots a bird out of a tree in the very first verse of the very first song, mimicking “Live and Let Live” before “setting the scene” with angelic trumpets, pianos and Floyd-esque midget helium voices. And this is just her first song—each one that follows is a masterpiece of time changes, swirling harpsichords and banjos, or perhaps a clunky waltz interrupted by a Mad Hatter tea party, the constant thread being her gorgeous voice. Oh, that voice! Though she’s capable of angelic flights and smart multi-layered harmonies with herself or her Hooves, her preferred voice is a womanly Mia Doi Todd alto, put to best use in the summery “Atlas,” whose amateurish lyrics about dating an older guy are the album’s only clue to Houghton’s barely-legal youth—though my favorite is “Veins,” lyrically like PJ Harvey but evocative of an alternate world where Christine McVie was the best part of Fleetwood Mac! Houghton’s next move is probably to Los Angeles, to record a sophomore album with Neil fucking Young—let’s hope she sticks around to show my fellow writers what for. P.S. The CD has a hidden punk track?!?

—D.M. Collins

THE KOREATOWN ODDITY
Buzzmixer’s Revenge cassette
self-released

I’m too recognizable—at this year’s L. A. Zine Fest, I had to fight off a Pigpen-esque cloud of bashful young people flurrying around me, all of them asking, “Hey, do you know Dan Collins from L.A. RECORD?” as they thrust their cassettes and business cards and manifestos into my hand. And so I learned a couple new things: one, I need to change my name (done), and two, there’s a crazy kid named “the Koreatown Oddity” making musical collages in the name of hip-hop. No iMac here—this lo-fi assemblage of beats around looped vocal clips feels put together with twine, and reminds me of one of the best eras of hip-hop, when groups like EPMD really got out the scratchy vinyl and put together smart, evocative new songs that respected their source material while standing on its shoulders to achieve something utterly new. Except, you know, EPMD had rappers, and here there are none, except maybe the loops of Ned Flanders saying “Son of a gun-diddley-un!” over a maudlin orchestral piece. TKO (hey, I bet that acronym is intentional!) doesn’t hesitate to fade out the beats in order to play Dr. Seuss records, or to do a random mic check with lots of F-bombs. But it’s not just fucking around. When a groove suddenly breaks out based around the chiming music from an Egyptian orb knocked over by Homer and Lisa in an ancient Simpsons episode, you realize you’ll never watch TV the same way again.

—D.M. Collins

But I’d already secured a house to crash at in Indio with a pool and a gaggle of good folks, and I’d been to Coachella the week before anyway. So on I went, out to Desert Hot Springs and up to Dillon’s Roadhouse, to see a lineup of rad bands that I myself would actually have booked–as opposed to, you know, a hologram of a dead rapist.

I got to Desert Daze late on Friday night, so only saw a couple bands on the inside stage, including Ahkiyyini, who scared me with their extreme modern hippie garb, only to blow my prejudices out my third chakra with their evil, hard-hitting psychedelic tunes right out of the fucking gate. Only ten minutes into the weekend, and already I’d heard my favorite band.

These guys had sent me their demo in the past, and while it was… adequate, it didn’t quite capture the power of their live show, which featured dueling male/female vocals from Tait Alexander Nalley and Ali Kellog, both so shamanistic and sexy that combined together, they became a totemic hermaphrodite god(dess) from down the corner of the cerebellum, ready to spring forth right out of your loins into the part of your neck that creates the death rattle, where they’ll scare the shit out of you with a hearty “hoooWAAAAAAAH!!” These songs had a driving, juggernaut cadence, almost like something you’d recognize from those early Hawkwind albums, yet darker (insert Amon Duul/Chrome/Guru Guru reference here), with a touch of Edgar Allen Poe. It was Dionysus electrified, or maybe an Egyptian deity, bare-bones as a shriveled skeleton yet fat as a crocodile.

I stayed a bit for the next bands, then got a good night’s sleep and stumbled in early the next day, right into the set of Mysterious Everything. This guy didn’t attract a huge audience, partially because people were just starting to roll in, partially because people thought he was tuning up for a bigger band! A one man project (one of the 10,000 one-man bands better than Greg Ginn), Mysterious Everything had a bit of a raga Cluster thing going on. Maybe he had some pre-recorded tones and notes saved in his keyboard, but it seemed his refreshing drone tones were based on notes he’d just laid down, similar to how N O W operates but far more mysterious and minimal. Sure, it was hard to concentrate on in a desert bar, and I talked loudly to my friends right through the whole set. But I felt bad about it.

Next was Sleepy Owl, a psychedelic outfit put together by Tait Nalley of Ahkiyyini, my faves from the night before. But where Ahkiyyini had the strong feminine power of Ali Kellog as the co-anchor, in Sleepy Owl, Nalley led the charge alone, playing both yin and yang in a summery dress. To kind of up the ante, he’d brought two fantastic female backup singers with him, who were grooving and shaking things and in general making me wonder why this wasn’t OUTSIDE, where the shadows and contours of the music could have fully fleshed out the spirit of this project.

Then again, it made more sense to let the sun shine on a band called Joy, who mesmerized me so much that I had to order a Sailor Jerry’s drink special just to snap out of it. A gleeful, burly trio, these man’s men played stoner rock so stoner, it wasn’t anywhere close to heavy metal anymore. But it sure was bombastic, making one reminisce about an era I never knew, when radio rock was trying one last time to be relevant through sheer sweat, before the shiv of punk rock pierced right through it.

Back inside Dillon’s Roadhouse, I caught Silver Chords, who were led by the fabulous Sasha Vallely of Spindrift on vocals, plus two other lovely lady singers flanking her, all harmonizing together like if they reshot The Fly so that Three Dog Night discovered too late that Bananarama had been in the teleportation machine with them (for those keeping score at home, that’s a thumbs-up!). The legendary Bobby Bones stood to the side, aloof, on guitar, and some dude with amazing rooster hair and a mustache tickled the keys. They played some great garage-y psychedelic-tinged rockers, concluding with “Lucifer Sam,” an oft-covered song that usually lacks the punch of the Pink Floyd original; the Silver Chords made it their own.

And whoever scheduled Silver Chords right before Strangers Family Band was a genius, because if there’s any band guaranteed to transition well from a cover of “Lucifer Sam” into their own set, it’s Strangers Family Band. Some bands, like Flaming Lips, love Roger Water’s mid-era stuff too much. But this is the first band I’ve known to have a therapy-worthy obsession with Waters as a bass player: like, literally, the first eight notes of their set on the outdoor stage were the descending bass lines of “Lucifer Sam,” and many of their other songs fell into that same template; what the Amen Break is to jungle, “Lucifer Sam”’s descending low end is to Strangers Family Band. It’s well past the point of mere reference: their song “Strange Transmission” is a reworking of “Lucifer Sam” that beats out even the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “Crimson and Clover” make-over “Our Time” for second place in the Songs I Can’t Believe They Didn’t Get Sued Over competition (first place of course going to James Brown’s swept-under-the rug theft of “Fame” for “Hot (I Need to be Loved Loved Loved Loved”).

Strangers Family Band, I love you utterly, so please take these words in the positive spirit of healing that I intend: you can do better. You guys are the real deal, and with your skills, you could be headlining every Psych Fest from here to Austin to fucking Milan and Ibiza. You could be playing the Outdoor Stage at Coachella, printing your own brand of LSD, forcing Anton Newcombe to cry, replacing Roky Erickson’s backup band, and getting some top-shelf, all natural beav from gorgeous, wide-eyed hippie girls with powder blue dream-catchers in their hair.

You could be making Dead Meadow open for you! But instead you’re giving audiences the impression that you lack ideas. What you’re doing to Pink Floyd is not appropriation, and it’s not sampling; it’s hero worship. And your friends are too chickenshit to tell you, so let me spell it out as clearly as I can: STOP HERO-FUCKING ROGER WATERS’ RICKENBACKER 4001S. If you must steal, at least copy some obscure riff from the Orange Bicycle or Aphrodite’s Child or the third West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band album; then only me and DJ Nobody would know you’re biting people’s songs. But as it is, you are copying the first Pink Floyd album with transparent recklessness, and everybody knows it, and that’s a psychedelic sin.

Other than that, I still loved hearing you. I loved your shamanistic seriousness, your honest lack of showboating, your lyrical luminescence, your charm, and the classy way you kind of stay above the fray—especially you, John Rondano, and the crazy space-aged keyboard console you play that looks like a giant alien electric typewriter.

I love you guys, and I promise, my next review will be all nice things, because you are a dynamite combo. But please promise me you’ll find a cure for this malady. Take up thy stethoscope and walk.

Back inside the bar, after rejuvenating ourselves on the sounds of psych-blisterers Poor Sons, and the vodka from a clear crystal skull, we went outside again to see Spindrift, a band that further sweetens each time I see them, delicately, like bourbon; in another analogy, time is pulling them together more tightly, like the willow warping against the maple wood of a Stradivarius fiddle. It’s a pity that they didn’t put Bobby Bones of Silver Chords onstage, who had played the role of preacher in the film The Legend of God’s Gun, since some of their best tunes of the night were from the album of the same name, e.g. “Girlz Booze and Gunz.” I loved their cover of the Shadows’ “Apache,” but perhaps their best tunes were the ones slated for their upcoming album, Cowboy Songs and Campfire Ballads, some of which are theme songs that bandleader Kirpatrick Thomas culled from old TV westerns. It seems L.A.’s most cinematic cowpoke is turning to the small screen for inspiration.

Another one man band, Barefoot Shrubs, started playing inside, and like the night before (has he played every night of the event?), his eclectic, sound-collage, electronic noise-adelia was a 180 degree switch from what we’d seen outside. The audience watching him was actually a bit sparse, and the friends of mine who cared to comment about him had nothing to say but derision. But I liked it, even if the hippie girls clutched their ears.

Back outside, Dead Meadow were a bit dull, so dull that at first, I didn’t recognize their sound. I chalk up their lack of zing 100% to the absence of Stephen McCarty on drums, now that original drummer Mark Laughlin is back. And it’s sad: perhaps they reached their zenith with the Three Kings album and film just two years ago. Now their attempts to sound more Hendrix-esque are backfiring, making them seem like a working-man’s band at best, rather than an awe-inspiring monster of mindfuck. Come back to the light, boys. Even with McCarty, you guys have to do something to get that tight trio sound away from all the shenanigans and goings on that are making you weak sauce. Though perhaps the lack of oomph stemmed from the outdoor stage’s sound, and not the band itself—Dahga Bloom inside were able to keep us excited with their steady go-go-go psych sound, with energy very similar to Dead Meadow’s Hollywood Forever show in 2012, albeit with a sound that was very different, kind of Middle Eastern, with vocals like Mike Patton’s drunken Muppet son.

The rest of the night was a bit of a, well, a daze, as the heat and my own exhaustion were causing me to fall asleep as I took notes in the dark corner in the back (and yes, there are embarrassing photos on someone’s Instagram that I’d gladly pay to destroy, if this were the 70s and one could still destroy photos). Cosmonauts were sounding more mature, like they’ve grown even since I saw their performance at SXSW months ago, and Crooked Cowboy once again proved they were just as fast on the trigger as Spindrift—it’s always a pleasure to see both bands on the same bill, especially in the desert. It’s a friendly creative sparring that reminds me of Matisse and Picasso in the later years of their lives, but, you know, with Ennio Morricone being the paint they both use, which they dab on rough canvas with sagebrush.

But the sandman was calling me, and I’ll have to give a conclusive verdict on the winner next time.

-D. M. Collins

ABBY TRAVIS
IV
Educational Recordings

Abby Travis has been around forever, and this is finally the solo album she SHOULD have been doing for the last couple decades—a glam-themed rocker that lets her voice get full-on Sparks while the dueling licks and chiming harpsichords around her lift ever upward into a world of ROCK! Travis was in the Love Dolls in the 80s, and went on to play session bass with everybody from Beck to the Bangles to the Meat Puppets to KMFDM, yet for some reason she’s let her solo career be dictated by her love of cabaret and torch songs. That made a bit of sense in the mid-noughties during the reign of cabarets, Club Bricktops, and her own Mata Hari nights at Tangier, but it didn’t work at all when opening for her buddies in bands like Celebrity Skin, where her gentle ballad-pop simply got drowned out by its lack of sheer might. With this album, she hasn’t lost the narrative lyrics or the chord changes, but now her voice doesn’t stand alone in a field of schmaltz—she’s finally brave enough to let her lovely voice (it really sounds better than ever) compete with the big guns of bass, guitar and drums. If only she (or Kristian Hoffman, who might still be her keyboardist) could ditch the Casio string section, she’ll finally be free!

—D.M. Collins

It’ll also come out on the upcoming Polyamorous Affair album, The Future Isn’t What It Used to Be, produced by Best Coast-er and all-around babe bewitcher Bobb Bruno. Keep your eyes peeled.

-D. M. Collins

Is Indio becoming Seattle, and Coachella becoming Bumbershoot? Except, you know, without the umbrellas, because Coachella has a policy of not letting people bring umbrellas? Yesterday was a cold, rainy, miserable day, which after the hot temperatures of years past was actually one of the nicest ways I’ve experienced a day of Coachella.

After wrangling with the surprisingly nice people at the Media Check-in, I showed up just shy of 1 p.m., where I discovered I had missed Abe Vigoda due to a typo on the official schedule! Instead, the Gobi tent was ripe with the sounds of Wolf Gang, a Brit who still plays the kind of softly driving indie rock that finally, thankfully seems to be on its way out. He certainly was earnest, standing their stoic with his Ewan MacGregor good looks, but considering that James formed in 1980 and they are actually PLAYING today, there’s not much role for Wolf Gang here, or in the world.

I had a much better time at the Safari tent watching honeyhoney. Though their first song scared me—“strong” white girl vocals with standard four-piece rock lineup—it was just the eye before the storm blew the barn door off. honeyhoney is a country-style rock band that occasionally plays country-style country, and if singer Suzanne Santo is a little modern-country sounding in the pipes, those pipes are pretty damn expansive, giving her some serious dignity at this otherwise sanitized and somewhat ridiculous concert series (dignity despite her patchy, I-missed-a-couple-spots sunburn). “Last time I was at Coachella, I was serving barbecue in the VIP section” she told us, before they launched into “Angel of Death,” the song that apparently has a video coming out soon. It’s the kind of music that would lend itself well to visual imagery—sure, country, but not old-timey or traditional despite the banjo. But it was certainly evocative and, at times, beautiful.

Back at the Mojave tent, Other Lives was setting up, and boy do they look like Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. But this bunch of Okies is not a band that celebrates joy and names songs after their band members. Jesse Tabish, the singer and bearded longhaired genius, never smiles. No one in the band smiles, though Jenny Hsu on cello seemed like she was having fun as she switched from cello to vocals to keys and back again. This afternoon, their songs were anthemic, and mysterious, maybe even tragic, and each one introduced a new instrument, be it a violin (played by Jon Mooney, a damn look-alike for Jona Bechtolt from YACHT) or a xylophone or a squeezebox harmonium, or…. is that a cornet?

It was so chaotic that even the weather changed, from an “oh hey yeah no we’re gonna still have sun this year” to “what? Huh? Okay, yeah, it’s gonna rain, but just a sprinkle… a long sprinkle…” Taking a quick shot of Yuck was hell, because it would start sprinkling each time I’d try to bust the camera out. It was fun to hear singer Daniel Blumberg talk, because while his singing voice is very Stephen Malkmus-esque, his speaking voice is pure Brit: “This song is dedicated to Explosions in the Sky, because one of my pedals exploded.” I would have liked a few more explosive moments in his set, but that’s the problem of playing a big festival in the desert: everyone sounds tired.

Except the professionals! Now, James didn’t dress professional; there was a time when the band members would wear complementary outfits of shimmery lame, but this time they just dressed in their street clothes. Boy, has Tim Booth turned into an Anton LeVay look-alike. But he hasn’t lost a lick of his ability to rile a crowd, and when they kicked into “Sit Down,” their most full-of-laud love anthem and Brit Rock template, Booth jumped down from the stage and up onto the divider between himself and the band, singing into their faces with glee! He got so close, a strange Asian man popped out of the crowd, his head covered in strange black writing, and seemingly tried to pull Tim Booth into the crowd, like Barbara’s brother at the end of Night of the Living Dead.

But Booth was unfazed, and in fact, a tad sarcastic: “So this is Coachella! On a Friday afternoon. I hope you enjoy the festival, and all the great bands that are playing later. Do everything your parents wouldn’t do!” Yeah right—our parents were hippies and disco queens! We’re only now catching up with the kinds of orgies their generation had, which is why they didn’t need songs called “Laid.” But I’m glad James was here to play it.

At this point the rain was light but the wind was heavy, and I saw Liam Philpot of Jimmy Cliff’s band nearly run for cover as the giant dangly trusses of lights and cables above him wiggled violently in the wind. Whoever the DJ was, he had a smirky sense of humor, as he played “Riders on the Storm” throughout setup.

And god bless Jimmy Cliff, even if he is an atheist! I’d seen him perform a few months ago at a private event, and the man had more energy and charisma than most performers 1/3 his age. This time he came out regally, in a shimmering yellow outfit (the kind James should have worn!) and just rocked it out right from the get-go with “You Can Get It If You Really Want,” with Tim Armstrong and a cast of cool mod-looking dudes behind him jamming out sixties style.

Aside from one major “whoopsie!” on his very first spin, Cliff is a man who is in full control of his body and mind, and uses that power to duck walk. And with that fine-tuned voice, and a lifetime’s worth of amazing songs in his arsenal, it was painful thinking I might have to leave his set to go be a journalist elsewhere: he did “Treat the Youth Right,” and a mournful “Many Rivers to Cross,” and even a not-bad cover of Rancid’s “Ruby Soho”—which Tim Armstrong looked very satisfied playing.

Cliff did his amazing version of “Vietnam,” which he updated to being “Afghanistan” (including a poor soldier’s mother getting an ‘email’) but his best song was the soulful “Save Our Planet Earth,” a screaming, crying, secular prayer pleading for solutions to our environmental crises. It could have been hokey, but when he screamed “Yaaaahhhh!!!” in a voice that was both strong yet worn, jagged, it removed all irony potential, even when he started leading the right side of the crowd, then the left side, in chanting “Save our planet earth” louder and louder and louder.

But unfortunately with a festival like this, there are always several bands playing at once. So I took off to see Death Grips, which did not disappoint—except, well, in the fact that we couldn’t discern Stephan Burnett’s lyrics, my favorite part of the album. Burnett was lean and muscular and full frontal when it came to his crowd work, all the while Zach Hill hit hard and firm on the drums behind him. I hadn’t realized their act was totally live drums, and maybe in the studio, it’s not. But live, Hill was hitting with no headphones, so either there was no sound sync, or he’s just that fucking good. For some reason, there were two giant inflatable pharmaceuticals in the tent, which Burnett kept swatting into the crowd.

I skipped off to see GIRLS at the Outdoor stage, where Christopher Owens was as gloomy and depressed as the grey skies behind him. When he sang songs like “Honey Bunny,” with those beautiful loser lyrics about being loved for all the reasons everyone hates him, he sounded like he fucking meant it! Though for my money, GIRLS is all about their big hit “Lust for Life,” and that song sounded a little watered down today. You know, I bet Owens can afford that beach house he’s after? And I bet they have pizza and a bottle of wine in the green room.

Arctic Monkeys on the main stage were surprisingly good, though normally I don’t go in for that kind of high-class garage. Give me Russell Quan and give me trash rock! But these slicked-back dudes (seriously, they dressed like early Depeche Mode) knew how to keep my attention, with rapid-fire, almost surfy guitar licks. Despite their singer sounding like, well, Tim Booth, they brought the rock, not an easy feat on a giant festival stage in the late afternoon. I may have been a little skeptical about their sound, but David Hasselhoff was there next to me to let me know it was all okay.

I figured Pulp would be covered in detail elsewhere, including by L.A. RECORD photographer Lindsey Best, so let me just skip ahead from the DJ playing Milli Vanilli’s “Blame It on the Rain,” omit Pulp, and go right to Mazzy Star. You know how women-folk will sometimes refer to male celebrities like Jon Hamm or Michael C. Hall as their “boyfriend?” Well, Hope Sandoval is my “girlfriend,” a lovely young chanteuse with an amazing voice that I have loved since my teens, and I am so happy that Mazzy Star is doing more shows. This band has never been too original with their vintage sound, but they do it so well, and their powers have not diminished over the years. I hope the Ecstatic children candy-flipping on acid tonight appreciated their psychedelic tones. I sure appreciated “Fade Into You,” which sounded exactly like the CD from 20 years ago, but all the better for it.

At that point, I had a crew, and some of that crew was high as a kite. And so we walked to see Afrojack, which the high people loved but the sober-er people found a little uninspiring. I don’t think it’s because Afrojack doesn’t “bring it,” but the sound systems here are so… respectable, and by that I mean not quite loud enough. You could tell this was complex, interesting stuff, but without feeling that complication twisting the marrow in your bones through sheer volume, it had a lack of oomph.

Not so with Atari Teenage Riot, who were screaming and jumping around. “They don’t get it, they just don’t GET IT!” Indeed they DON’T!!!!! It was politically charged and harsh and, aside from a foray or two into sampled distorted guitar, the worst cheat of industrial music, it was pure digital hardcore. It’s weird when the music of hate is the most fun you’ve had all night.

It was quite the contrast with what was happening at the Outdoor stage. Explosions in the Sky somehow took the premise of shoegaze—that feverish fast-paced distortion  and echo can sound lush and dreamlike—and one-upped that by being even MORE frenetic and yet somehow more gentle. Honestly, I feel their songs, at least the meat of them before the slightly punkier crescendoes, could easily fit in a set with Enya or Carly Simon. Yet on paper, this should be violent punk: hell, the drummer is playing sixteenth notes, basically drum soloing for the whole song. But out of sheer precious guitar tone (and maybe a bit of rim tapping) they pull off not the ethereality of shoegaze, but the tenderness of a good deed for a new friend.

Refused were the last rock band on my list, and honestly, it was a bit of a disappointment, one that singer Dennis Lyxzén acknowledged, in a better American accent than my own. “I’m always super skeptical about reunions. If you have been skeptical, it was only a fraction about how skeptical these guys were!” He sounded so sweet, yet songs like “I’d Rather Be Dead!” and “Coup d’Ètat” had a harshness that just felt flavorless and flat (well, kinda) after Atari Teenage Riot. The general sentiment seemed to be what Devon Williams later tweeted, that “REFUSED are a shit band. Always were.”

There was so much more I would have liked to see—and I caught snippets of them, both the driving hip hop inspired beats of Datsik, and even the beginnings of Amon Tobin and his amazing moving wall, which might have topped Daedelus’s Archimedes mirrors from last year. But my impromptu travel roommates wanted an early night, so I’ll have to experience that at another date. There’d be plenty more to see the next day.

-D. M. Collins

Exhibit A: here’s a great new video, directed by Sebastian Mlynarsky, of the song “Window in the Wall” from their upcoming album, Dismania. It’s dark and moody and even a bit evil…

Exhibit B: And here’s the complete opposite of that. We actually caught up with a couple K-Holes serendipitously at the L.A. RECORD showcase in Austin for SXSW, where they were patrons of the Spits, Thee Oh Sees, Kid Congo Powers, and the Gories. Below is the little interview I badgered them into, right outside Emo’s East and a crowd of shiftless fans, homeless citizens, and taco truck patrons who didn’t really care whether I got a good interview or not. Normally I ask bands about their song lyrics, their place in music history, and their dreams; this time, the focus was all about buttholes.

Where’s your saxophone player tonight?

JULIE HINES (bass): At a metal show.

Which one?

JULIE HINES: Whoooooo knows?

JACK HINES (guitar, vocals): Sarah the Sax Fifth Avenue is at a metal show, because she’s a metal head!

I’m a metal head, too, but I’m here at the Gories. What brought you here tonight?

JACK HINES: Honestly, the Spits, more than anything else, personally.

It’s my first time seeing them! Do they usually wear those giant Jack Chick robes?

VASHTI WINDISH (lead vocals): Ha ha, those Reagan masks? Yeah, they usually wear something. There’s always some fun theatrics involved. Their pyrotechnics are amazing.

JACK HINES: I’ve seen Ronald McDonald, which made me think I could be in the band, because I have the same hair as Ronald McDonald.

Do you have the same buns as Ronald?

JACK HINES: Mine are skinnier.

I love your first album, the name of which eludes me at the moment because I’m suffering from exhaustion…

VASHTI WINDISH: We put our title in too late, so it just became self-titled.

I just blogged about you a few days ago, from your performance at Scoot Inn. It’s hard to describe you guys! You guys have a saxophone, so all I could say was, like, it sounds roughly like the Stooges’ “Fun House.”

VASHTI WINDISH: That’s nice, instead of “No Wave,” which is what we’ve been getting this whole fucking trip, ha ha!

When you go “I sound like this!” in your head, what are you thinking about?

VASHTI WINDISH: Gravel.

Gravel? The substance, or the band?

JULIE HINES: Yeah.

JACK HINES: Steve Miller Band.

Like the early psychedelic stuff, or like the “Abracadabra” era?

JACK HINES: You know, “The Joker,” “Fly Like an Eagle.” Yeah.

JULIE HINES: HAAA HAAA HAAA HAAA! [She kind of loses it.]

If you could fly like an eagle, what would you fly into?

JACK HINES: The future! I suppose…

It’s been done. For instance, there’s a band called the Steve Miller Band, and they actually flew like an eagle into the future. And that was 40 years ago. So not only are you flying into a copy of someone else’s future, but you’re actually flying into the past.

JULIE HINES: I feel like we’re flying into a butthole.

Like a gaping butthole? One that’s been flown into a lot? Or like a new butthole?

JULIE HINES: We like all holes.

Courtney Love’s Hole?

JULIE HINES: We love Courtney Love’s Hole.

JACK HINES: I don’t love Courtney Love’s hole.

[Suddenly a man walks by who is clearly attempting to bum for change.]

VASHTI WINDISH: I don’t want to fly into Courtney Love’s hole. No Courtney Love hole for me. [She gestures to the change bummer] Maybe that guy’s hole.

Sir, do you want to fly into Courtney Love’s hole?

CHANGE BUMMER: I don’t understand the question. Who is Courtney?

She’s a singer.

CHANGE BUMMER: [Pause] I’m 50 years old and I don’t know her.

She was married to Kurt Cobain. He was the singer for Nirvana.

CHANGE BUMMER: Okay, “Nirvana” sounds familiar…

Look it up later, you’ll be like “oooh, those guys…” [CHANGE BUMMER leaves. I turn to VASHTI.] So, this may be a stupid question, or a rude one, but your very fair hair… it comes out of a bottle, right?

VASHTI WINDISH: Uh, yeah. I was born blonde but I didn’t stay blonde.

I’m a redhead, but barely. What was it like playing with Thee Oh Sees?

VASHTI WINDISH: Um, awesome. I love those guys! I used to play with them a lot. They’re fucking amazing, and they’re the best I’ve ever seen them with the two drummers.

That’s one of those things I thought would never work! Like, the Grateful Dead did that…

VASHTI WINDISH: I know! It was amazing… I was like, “I dunno, do you guys really need that?” But it really worked out great.

[Suddenly the interview is ambushed, when the band Ketamine meets the K-Holes and they have a little powwow about their similar names. I try desperately to continue the interview around the ever-spreading annoyance of their kindling friendship.]

Meeting Ketamine begs the question, how did you guys decide on the name “K-Holes?” Why not, like,“A-Holes?” “Maypoles?”

JULIE HINES: Our friend Jane was like a waitress, and when she’d fuck up at work, she’d be like, “Oh, sorry, I was in a K-hole!” And then, we were like, that’s really funny, because no one even talks about K-Holes! That’s like a… gone term. Does anyone even do K? And then our friends asked us to be a one-off month band, and they were like, “Just be something stupid!” And we were like, “We’ll be the fucking K-Holes! That’s really stupid.” And we did it, and then everybody liked it, and they asked if we wanted to play again, and we were like, “Okay …”

JACK HINES: We accidentally wrote some pretty decent songs for the one month band.

Yeah, not too shabby! And where was this?

VASHTI WINDISH: We’re live in New York. Actually we’re all from the south, except for the sax player. I’m from Florida, they’re from Atlanta…

I’m from Oklahoma, originally, but Los Angeles seemed like a sunnier clime. Why would you guys live in the frigid tundra of New York, when you could live in the beautiful, expansive, orange-scented valleys of Los Angeles?

JACK HINES: Well, me and Julie moved to New York because she got a job that she no longer has…

Were you guys dating?

JACK HINES: We’re married.

Married?!? Oh my god! Are you guys ever gonna have any little K-Holes?

JULIE HINES HINES: Maybe we’ll have little kiddie holes. But New York is like, New York …

JACK HINES: There’s like sewer gas, and pizza. It’s awesome!

Where’s the best place in the city to live?

VASHTI WINDISH: Probably the City [Manhattan, for you L.A. folks!], but we all live in Brooklyn because we can’t afford the City. Everything we can afford in the City is too small.

JACK HINES: I’d like to live on Charlie Place, and Thompson Square Park, and check out all the record stores.

JULIE HINES HINES: Yeah, I’d like to live on the West Side.

VASHTI WINDISH: That’d be nice. You know, curvy streets, not the grid system.

JULIE HINES HINES: You know, old, old, old, amazing, beautiful, amazing… where my favorite poets are from.

I’m glad you are clarifying, because my L.A. readers are going to be like, “What? ‘Pervy’ streets?”

JULIE HINES HINES: Yeah, there’s pervy and curvy streets.

VASHTI WINDISH: Very pervy, very curvy. That’s how we like it.

When are you coming to Los Angeles?

VASHTI WINDISH: Hopefully after our record comes out, May 1.

Good plug! Damn, I feel like this is a terrible interview. What’s something I didn’t ask about that you want our L.A. RECORD readers to know about you, or life in general?

JULIE HINES: God, that’s fucking hard! Deep thoughts…

VASHTI WINDISH: What’s been our quote throughout the whole thing? I forgot.

JULIE HINES: “Our hole’s your goal?”

VASHTI WINDISH: No no no no! We’re trying to keep everyone’s holes safe!

That’s important on the road. What’s the craziest road story you have, just getting here to Austin?

VASHTI WINDISH: Well, Jack got some really sweet food poisoning from some chicken livers.

JACK HINES: I ate chicken livers from a gas station, which I wouldn’t recommend to anybody. They were delicious!

Were they at least behind the counter? Or did you find them by the pumps?

JACK HINES: They were on a hot plate behind the counter. A dollar seventy-five.

Was this a sober decision?

JACK HINES: Yeah, it was pretty sober. The middle of the day.

JULIE HINES: Oh yeah, we pumped $90 at this same gas station, drove half an hour and realized that nobody had bothered to pump the gas. We had to go all the way back and get it! Luckily there’s no one else in Alabama who looks like us, so when we got back and walked in, the lady was like, “I thought y’all’d be back!”

-D. M. Collins