Thee American Revolution
Buddha Electrostorm
Fire Records
Revolution indeed. Revolt against bourgeois notions of instrumental proficiency, clean living, song length, and other such musical bugbears and myths. Rather hoist aloft treasured copies of Perfect Prescription on flagpoles shaped like syringes. See, don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s all about innovation; J. Spacemen STILL drops in copious musical nods to the Stooges and Velvet Underground in every album he writes and it’s been a good few decades since he started nodding out and fuzzing up.
So goes with Thee American Revolution, a rabble of reprobates who had their hearts stolen by the Brian Jonestown Massacre, the Sonics, Spacemen 3, and the Mary Chain and now they’re taking their own part in a neverending fucked-up, one-chord musical monoconversation. And it works. There’s not much point in describing these songs, because you’ve most likely heard them before in slightly altered forms on various prized slabs of vinyl. Shambolic rhythms barely push along primitive blown-out guitar riffs that you can predict (in the good way, as in, wouldn’t it be cool if the guitar did THIS), the vocals an ecstatic sneer, everything cloaked in too much distortion and reverb.
And in the same way that I’m completely weary of bands aping various punk-pop godfathers or Neurosis (badly), stuff like this, I’ll always have time for. It’s an eternally invigorating strand of music DNA – the very building blocks of the music that your parents warned you about. And c’mon, you have to be genius to play this dumb. (P.S. It’s the side project of Apples In Stereo’s Robert Schneider, which makes my last point completely valid!)
Fire Records: http://www.firerecords.com
