You’d be wrong, but I wouldn’t blame you.

Back in 1985, NYC-born songwriter Walter Salas-Humara and Florida native Bob Rupe (later of Gutterball and Cracker) formed The Silos. Based in NYC, and purveyors of what the critics would eventually call “alt-country,” the band released a fine record called About Her Steps as their debut. But it was on the next album, the 1987 release Cuba — a record that resulted in a “Best New Artist of the Year” tag from the critics’ poll at Rolling Stone magazine — where everything really came together. Combining expert songcraft with wide-open/spare — but never lacking — arrangements, Salas-Humara, Rupe, violinist Mary Rowell, and drummer John Galway created a goddamn masterpiece of rootsy tension and release. Brilliantly sequenced, the record holds up to all the critical accolades it received at the time. Hardly anyone bought it, mind you, but the indie-rock cognoscenti loved Cuba. Revisiting it 39 years later, I can tell you that this is one that the cognoscenti got right. Let’s head to Cuba….

Despite the fact that, by my utterly unscientific count, Mary Rowell’s violin plays more of a “lead” role on the whole of Cuba than Bob Rupe’s guitar does, it’s Rupe who tosses the first match into a barrel of combustibles when the opener, “Tennessee Fire” kicks into gear. The song (and album) opens with the momentary calm of Salas-Humara’s strummed guitar laying down a simple pattern. On the fourth time through that pattern, a hi-hat sizzles, a snare cracks, and Rupe launches into a absolute burner of a brief guitar solo, an unholy hybrid of, say, Duane Eddy and Stevie Gaines.

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face” is a line I’ve seen attributed to Mike Tyson, perhaps by way of Joe Louis. Whoever said it could be describing a listener’s reaction to that beginning of the Cuba album. “Tennessee Fire” opens by lulling the listener into a false sense of security and then delivering a substantial wallop, thanks principally to Rupe and Galway. But instead of permanently riding that high for the whole song, the band then quickly retreats for a bit. But just for a bit. Then they’re back, a little louder and more driving. It’s an oft-repeated trick on Cuba, and a highly successful one. You could call it a play on the loud/soft delivery of so many early Pixies and Nirvana songs, but it’s different than that. The trick itself may be punk-adjacent, but the Silos aren’t playing punk rock and their loud/soft shifts are more gradual, punctuated almost always by the gloriously spare thwack of John Galway’s snare drum.

“See you soon, but not like this….” Walter Salas-Humara sings in “Tennessee Fire,” as everyone but drummer Galway backs off. Walter is driving from Ohio to Tennessee to see his flame, but he hasn’t “heard from [her] in weeks.” Then the whole band is back in, burning bright for a few measures, then back out. Again, Galway’s insistent kick/snare pattern is the constant. But there’s a lyrical twist.

Walter isn’t just wondering if his relationship has gone awry. He has an even more pressing issue: it’s nighttime (“driving by the moonlight”) and he’s 30 miles from the nearest service station, “running out of gasoline.” Soon, after a chorus, and a gloriously near-Sonic-Youth-ish violin squall/solo from Mary Rowell, our hero is now 50 miles from the nearest gasoline. And Galway’s kick/snare pattern never lets up.

“Tennessee Fire” is nearly six minutes of that sort tension and release. You can feel the car rolling up and down the back roads of Ohio taking the protagonist to an an uncertain future in Tennessee, and the band is up/down/on-again/off-again in volume and attack. It’s brilliant and… it’s just the first song on the album!

From there, Cuba never lets up in quality, but it has just enough variation in its sequencing of songs to keep the listener riveted and never seem uniform or rote. Next up is another sparely-arranged rocker — “She Lives Up the Street” — but, unlike what you just heard on “Tennessee Fire,” it’s one of two Bob Rupe lead vocals on the record. The contrast in vocal styles is both significant and a real bonus. Rupe’s deeper, more reserved, delivery imparts both “She Lives Up the Street” and side-two opener “Memories” with a more down-home/country feel than Salas-Humara’s more standard rock delivery. But there’s nothing “country” at all about the killer guitar solo that Rupe rips through in “Memories,” reminding the listener that, despite the sometimes twangy trappings, the Silos are a motherfucking rock band.

The rest of the record goes back and forth between a few quieter, mostly acoustic beauties in the middle of the respective album sides and the rockers that surround them. The middle of side one features two of those quieter ones back-to-back: “For Always,” a gorgeous love song/paean to a partner who always listens and speaks “straight from the heart,” followed by “Margaret,” a part-time dad’s ode to the joys of seeing his kid “four days a week and you’re a family.” And side two’s quiet number is “Going Round,” which sounds like “Comes A Time”-era Neil Young to my ears.

But let’s talk about the rock that remains to be heard on Cuba, because, good lord, the Silos know how to do that well. At the close of side one, Mary Rowell’s violin gets to drive the bus on the urgent “Mary’s Getting Married.” If you liked the way the band tore things up on the loud parts of “Tennessee Fire” with slashing guitars, wailing fiddle, and the ever-solid Kenny Aronoff-circa-Mellencamp-style drums of John Galway, you will find a lot more of that to like on “Mary’s Getting Married.”

I already told you just how strong Bob Rupe’s “Memories” is as a side-two opener, but its juxtaposition with “Just This Morning” — a shuffling, joyous, raucous ode to the simple pleasures of hearing your favorite songs on the radio — is a stroke of brilliance. “Memories” could bring a tear to the eye (“Have you ever been alone? So lonely you thought you’d find memories on your doorstep of a love you’ve left behind?”), and you’ll be wiping away that tear quickly as you yell along (“Side A! Side B!”) with Walter on “Just This Morning.”

And then there are the two album closers. “It’s Alright” and “All Falls Away” don’t have anything to do with one another lyrically, but I can’t imagine listening to one without the other. That’s how perfect the song order on Cuba is.

“It’s Alright” begins with four metronomically strummed chords to count the band in, and — assisted as always to perfection by John Galway’s simple, yet clinically effective, drum dynamics — the song builds into one of the album’s finest rockers. Lyrically, “It’s Alright” is another one about the intricacies and intimacies of relationships, but it builds into a frenzy that the quieter songs on the album about similar topics don’t reach. Then “All Falls Away” addresses the subject of the album’s title: Cuba.

“I came down here on an airplane,” Salas-Humara sings over pounding drums and a driving bass line, as he tells us about visiting the country of his parents. He “cut[s] across the lawn to [his] parents’ house,” wears his father’s watch, and expresses love for his parents and siblings. There’s a brief Spanish verse that Google tells me is an ode specifically to Walter’s mother: “Y con Mama hablamos de Cuba y de los tiempos del ano mil. Y que te susede es por algo que te tiene que suseder.” (“And with Mama, we talked about Cuba and the days of the year 1000. And whatever happens to you is happening for a reason”). And if all that family focus sounds like it couldn’t possibly rock, well you’d be wrong again. “All Falls Away” is yet another song on Cuba with a quiet, yet insistent beginning that turns into a full-on rock blowout by the end, with the guitars, violin, and drums competing with and complementing one another in a glorious race to the finish.

The Silos certainly didn’t stop making great records after Cuba. They released a string of fine ones, including a self-titled one (a.k.a. “The one with the bird on the cover”) that is nearly the equal of Cuba. Maybe I’ll talk about that one in a future Substack piece; it’s well worth it. For now, though, give Cuba a few spins. It’s a near-perfect roots-rock album, and, despite accolades 39 years ago, a sorely neglected one at that.

Brethren of the Long Ryders and Dream Syndicate in the Paisley Underground scene, Green on Red — Dan Stuart on vocals/guitar, Chris Cacavas on keys/guitar/vocals, Jack Waterson on bass, and Alex MacNicol on drums — had released their first album, Gravity Talks, in 1983. Produced by fellow Paisley Underground-er Matt Piucci of the Rain Parade, Gravity Talks was a garage-y/roots-y/psych hybrid that worked pretty well, but Green on Red’s next move is where the traces of Neil in that first album morphed into a goddamn maelstrom of overt influence.

That “next move” was actually two moves. The first was welcoming guitar-gunslinger extraordinaire (and later successful solo artist) Chuck Prophet into the band. The second was recording and releasing an album called Gas Food Lodging — a record so Neil Young in all but its brevity (just 31 minutes long!) that all the other bands with alleged Neil influences surely must have been envious. It’s an Americana classic. Let’s dig in….

Any Neil Young uberfan knows that there are many versions of Neil the chameleon, but on the Gas Food Lodging album Green on Red smartly chose to focus on two of Young’s most critically-acclaimed sounds: the brilliant country-tinged slop/genius of the so-called Ditch Years (1973-1975) — particularly Time Fades Away (1973) and Tonight’s the Night (1975) — and the guitar-driven Neil and Crazy Horse evident on the electric side of Rust Never Sleeps (1978).

Gas Food Lodging opens with an impressive slice of the latter. In fact, “That’s What Dreams (Are Made For)” bears musical resemblance — in its combination of a deliberate-yet-not-quite-dragging pace and guitar-forward groove — to “Country Home,” a song from the Ragged Glory album that Neil and Crazy Horse wouldn’t grace us with until 1990. But, in a theme that continues almost unabated throughout Gas Food Lodging, while that Neil song is full of hippie musings on his love of the peace and quiet of rural living, Dan Stuart is a disgruntled FDR Democrat in the middle of the very non-FDR Reagan presidency. By 1985, Dan had had enough. “Guess I’ll just be poor the rest of my life,” he sings, “But it’s better than giving up the fight.” Dan’s a dreamer, like Neil, but he “got the word at ten that [he] was through,” yet believes that — despite preachers and others who “sold [him] down the river” — he’s still young enough that “that ain’t true.”

Overall, the lyrical darkness on Gas Food Lodging mostly eclipses the light. Sure, there’s a standard-issue “road song” (“Black River”) and a love song (“This I Know”), and the closing take on “We Shall Overcome” definitely leaves the listener with some hope, but, damn, the rest of it gets bleak. There’s alcoholism (“Hair of the Dog”), a tale of mental instability (“Fading Away”), a consideration of ending it all (“Easy Way Out”), a story of a man who lost every one of his sixteen children to unspeakable early demise (“Sixteen Ways”), and the double whammy of “The Drifter”/“Sea of Cortez” that goes from entries in the diary of a murderous vagrant to a lament that while “it takes money to make money they say, ain’t it funny how love doesn’t work that way?” Not exactly “Walking on Sunshine,” eh?

But, despite the somber, Ian Curtis-worthy wordplay, musically Gas Food Lodging isn’t anything close to Joy Division. It’s… Neil Young — nearly evenly divided between the two versions of Neil described above.

“Black River,” “This I Know,” “Easy Way Out,” and “We Shall Overcome” — all driven to great effect by the dominance of Chris Cacavas’ piano — could all fit comfortably amidst the late-night tequila vibes of a Ditch Years masterpiece like Tonight’s the Night, and then there’s the rest of it, where Chuck Prophet rules the roost.

Whether on the simple barroom stomp of “Hair of the Dog,” the menacing groove of “Fading Away” and “Sea of Cortez,” the laconic-but-tense vibes of “…Dreams” and “The Drifter” (that only gets enhanced by the delay/drag in that Prophet riff that transitions the chorus back into the verse each time), or the country/blues twang/feedback dichotomy of “Sixteen Ways,” Prophet burns bright on every single one. His contributions on lead guitar are both the biggest factor in the Neil-ification of the album and in distinguishing this record in all the best ways from its predecessor, Gravity Talks.

I only saw Green on Red once, at J.C. Dobbs in Philly in June 1986. By then, they’d followed Gas Food Lodging with the equally impressive, slightly more countrified, No Free Lunch EP. At the time, Dan Stuart and Steve Wynn of the Dream Syndicate had also recently released a very Green on Red-sounding album called The Lost Weekend under the moniker of Danny and Dusty with help from their respective bandmates as well as some Rain parade-ers. Those three releases — and a burning desire to rock the fuck out — dominated the setlist that 1986 evening, and it was glorious. My only regret is that I never saw them again.

For whatever reason, finding a copy of Gas Food Lodging for streaming purposes can be a bit hit-and-miss. It’s not on Spotify in the U.S., but it is on Bandcamp as well as YouTube. If a Neil and Crazy Horse-inspired musical trip into the dark underbelly of the American dream sounds up your alley, you owe it to yourself to check out Gas Food Lodging. It’s a keeper.

Last night I saw a show performed by a human with a guitar. Human will not be identified here. Human is about 60 years old, a songwriter whose late ‘90s and early ‘00s work I like quite a bit. Human takes the stage at 8:05 p.m. By 8:20 Human is mentioning that Human will be taking a “short break” at the 30-min mark. Really? Yes, really. Human is drinking from a very large glass of dark liquid. I surmise that Human’s beverage is fairly high-octane based upon Human’s demeanor, which is quite rambling but not stupidly sloppy. The sizable beverage may explain the need for a break so soon. It is certainly not exhaustion from the high-speed pace of the show. <Morgan Freeman voice>: “To be clear, nothing about the pace of the show would qualify as high-speed.”

At the 28-minute mark, Human has played a few songs (a number of which I like) and declares that it is break time. Human then takes a 20-minute break. Do the math. The break-to-actual-music ratio is pretty horrendous so far.

I speak with Human briefly during the break to discuss whether Human might be able to play either of a couple songs from a fine album from which Human has already played a couple. Didn’t seem like a reach. However, Human demurs. Human does “not know either of those any longer and it would be a mess.” OK, fair enough. I mean… “We certainly wouldn’t want that,” I think, until….

Human retakes stage, glass of dark liquid refilled. Human plays a song, then rambles about how Human has “considered” asking an audience member to tell Human a short story after which Human will spontaneously create a song. “Ohhhh, for fuck’s sake,” I think, “Stop ‘considering’ that, immediately!”

Too late. Others are more enthusiastic about this opportunity to, er, glimpse inside the creative process. Guy in the audience tells Human a very short tale about a dog destroying a birthday cake, after which the “song” is “created.” The spontaneous songwriting exercise is, shall we say, halting and easily interrupted by Human’s own self-created foibles. It is also wildly unsuccessful. I’m quite convinced that you will not be finding that “song” on any of Human’s upcoming releases.

Other songs are played. Some are good, but most are done in the most uncompelling of ways: while Human is staring at Human’s phone — presumably for lyrics help — which occasionally requires Human to momentarily let a chord ring out while Human advances the screen. One unreleased number is even played after Human spends a considerable amount of time listening to a home recording of said song through the speaker of his phone as we watch him hold it up to his ear for some time until he finally says, “Oh right! Got it!” and launches into that one.

Another guy in the audience — most easily identified as “me” — wonders to himself just how much worse either of those songs that I requested could have possibly been as compared to, say, the way Human is currently slopping their way through the set. But then again, maybe the answer is “actually much worse.” Maybe he would have had to listen to them even longer through his phone speaker?

At another point, Human says, “Any requests?” which nearly made me laugh out loud at the irony, but also surprised me because it seemed like a good bet that Human wouldn’t be able to deliver.

If only Kalshi had offered odds on that proposition, I could have been rich. A person in the audience takes the bait that Human has offered and requests a song. Human: “Uhhhhh, yeah I haven’t played that one in so long that I can’t do it.” I decide to test Human and call out a song that I know Human played at least a couple of times in the last week. Human actually delivers a decent version of that one. Mind you, the measure of “decent” was extremely relative at this stage. I wouldn’t have let Human drive my car at that point, but at least Human was still functioning.

Eventually — after maybe a 45-minute second set — Human is done playing. The show was not awful. It was okay at times, but mostly it was just depressing. Here is a truly talented artist with a fine back catalog of songs who decided that it was cool to take people’s money (not a lot, but that’s not the point) and then get onstage with nearly no plan at all for the evening — except to have a break so pre-worked into the night’s festivities at the 28-minute mark that Human announced it three songs into the night. This person treated a paying gig like, at best, free open-mic night at the local Irish pub.

And look, I’m no prude when it comes to performances well-lubricated by alcohol. To name a few (of quite a number of) examples, I’ve seen Jon Langford, the Replacements, and Soul Asylum all quite a few sheets to the wind and yet absolutely tearing it up on a stage. But going into a gig seemingly without a plan at all, without a full grasp of your own lyrics, and then self-lubricating with a fair amount of booze? That seems like a recipe for disaster, or, more precisely, a recipe for treating your paying audience like shit. It was rude, and this particular artist has been around long enough to know better.

That’s the end of my speech. If I were Human’s parent, I’d be like Mike Brady and tell them, “I’m not mad, kid, but I sure am disappointed.” Do better. The music fanatics deserve it.

That ‘97 show at the Troc in Philly was solid, but in some sort of “failed thereafter to get my arse in gear” slacker solidarity with the boys from Stockton, I just never bothered to see them again for a very long time — a time during which they were, more often than not, no longer a going entity. Color me surprised when earlier this year I just happened to notice that Philly indie station WXPN was sponsoring something called Make the World Better fest and that Day One of said festival featured Pavement as headliners with just one other band on the bill: Chicago up-and-comers Ratboys. The other thing I noticed that day was that, holy shit, tickets are on sale right now and there are two seats in the third row, center section, available! I pulled the trigger on those without further contemplation. It was a very good choice.

A quick word about the charitable foundation behind the festival: Make the World Better is devoted to urban public-space revitalization projects that provide safe outlets for recreation, sports, and arts-based activities, and their yearly music fest raises money for those very worthwhile goals. Right before Pavement hit the stage, MTWB founder/former Philadelphia Eagle player/current team executive Connor Barwin thanked the crowd for their support. He also told us just how they got Pavement to come to Philly on this extremely short summer jaunt of theirs: Steve Malkmus’ daughter, Sunday, is a student at Drexel U. and suggested to MTWB that Pavement would be perfect for the festival. She was right. Now, about that Pavement set….

I have absolutely nothing negative to say about this show, but, my god, it made me wish I’d also seen the considerably different sets that the band played the night before in Cleveland and the night after in Richmond. I love a band that mixes up their setlists night to night — it’s literally why I have seen Built to Spill, Superchunk, and Yo La Tengo so many times — and Pavement were no slouches in that department. They have played something close to 50 different songs over just a few shows this time around. But unlike what I do when those other bands tour, I didn’t consider seeing multiple Pavement shows this year. Dumb decision, Steve. But let’s focus on what we got on Friday in Philly, not what I personally missed out on by not seeing the band on additional nights.

Opener “Silence Kit” set the scene and the mood well for the rest of the show. The instrumental prowess of the band is considerable, their vocal skills not quite as much. But does anyone go to a Pavement show expecting vocals that are greater than, say, ramshackle? I would hope not. Steve Malkmus is a baaaad motherfucker of a guitar player, and will always be mostly — but definitely not entirely — in the neighborhood of what I’ll call Camper Van Beethoven tunefulness with his vocal contributions. Scott Kannberg, a.k.a. Spiral Stairs, will take a few lead-vocal turns that barely wander at all from their studio counterparts, and relative newcomer Rebecca Cole (most famously from Wild Flag, also on keyboards) will smooth everything over with harmonies that lean more toward the angelic than the slacker. Then there’s Bob….

Let me be clear: Bob Nastanovich has the greatest job in rock and roll. It’s also a completely absurd job in all the best ways. Bob “sings” and Bob plays percussion. Pavement doesn’t need his help in either respect, but the band likes Bob and Bob likes them, so he’s been a formal member of Pavement since just after the first album, and he’s been playing with them longer than that. Bob has an excellent sense of rhythm, so his percussive contributions — whether on various shake-ables or on a sit-down drum kit that lacks a kick drum — are spot on. On the other hand, Bob’s vocal contributions are, from any strictly musical perspective, nearly preposterous. (I say this with love). He’s more of a cheerleader than a tunesmith. But here’s the thing: live Pavement really wouldn’t be Pavement without him. He rants; he raves; he yelps. He dances with audience members (at this show, suitably, on “We Dance”). The “Ba-ba-ba-da-da” part on “Debris Slide,” to name but one, simply would not be the same without him. He’s an American treasure.

And then there’s the rhythm section of bassist Mark Ibold (also of latter-day Sonic Youth fame) and drummer Steve West. They’re perfect together. They do exactly what the songs need. They are clearly playing off one another. Steve delivers all those Gary Young hook-y moments from songs recorded before Steve was in the band (a stunning “Frontwards” comes to mind), and grooves in his own self-created space on longer jams, like the absolutely killer “Type Slowly” that was played near the end of the main set.

There were no dull moments that night, but I’ll hit a few of the absolute highlights for you. “Grounded” has always been one of my favorite Pavement songs and it was the guitar-driven slow-burn that I’d expect. “Frontwards” was a tasty slice of an EP that I wish they’d hit harder. “Embassy Row” rocked hard, while the songs that featured Kannberg’s three lead-vocal turns — “Two States,” “Kennel District,” and “Date w/Ikea” — all shone. “Debris Slide” was a joyful romp with Bob leading the chorus singalong, and Perfume-V,” one of seven (!!) songs from Slanted and Enchanted, let us know once again why that record is one of the greatest debut albums ever. “Type Slowly” was the reminder, as if you needed one, that Steve Malkmus is a goddamned guitar hero, and his instrumental interplay with Kannberg on that one was perfect. The Floyd/Barrett cover — “Lucifer Sam” — that followed “Harness Your Hopes” was a sweet piece of dark psychedelia, albeit a brief one, and “The Hexx” (a.k.a. “And Then”) was a more stretched-out slice of the same in the encore. “Range Life” featured a Malkmus-ian nod to Philly band The Strapping Fieldhands that mirrored his earlier reference to the Khyber Pass Pub for local hipster cred. “Summer Babe” is a never-unwelcome joy every time, and, just when I thought that SB was the final song of the night, a wistful “Here” wrapped things up beautifully.

It was a goddamned delight. Could it have been even better? Sure. In Richmond, it seems that the band played all of the Watery, Domestic EP plus “Home” — a run of songs that would be exactly what I’d ask for if anyone in Pavement wanted my opinion on five songs to play. But that’s not a complaint; rather, it’s fuel for the fire to get me to see multiple shows if they do this again. Summer of 2027? Yes, please.

A big “hell yeah” also goes to Ratboys, whose opening set was just the thing I needed after falling in love with their most recent album, Singin’ to an Empty Chair. Special bonus points for their amped-up attack in a live setting. The album’s fantastic, but they really shone onstage, particularly on lengthier blasts like “Light Night Mountains All That.” And I’d be remiss, especially considering my forever pro-drummer bias, if I didn’t mention just how much drummer dude Marcus Nuccio reminded me in all the best ways of 1994 Uncle Tupelo drum man Ken Coomer. Nuccio and bassist Sean Neumann are formidably locked in to one another’s playing. They’ve worked their shit out to great effect, and I’m there for it.

Finally, timing is everything in two respects. First, as I walked up to the venue (where all the staff are so damn nice, by the way; give them all raises!) I noticed Pavement were wrapping up an interview in a roped-off section, so, as a guy wearing a Squirrel Bait T-shirt at the time, I figured I’d start a conversation with a band member just by placing myself on their likely exit path, whereupon one of them would see my shirt and say something — because what ‘80s-indie fan can resist the bait of the Bait, right? Sure enough, here comes Bob Nastanovich who looks at me and says, “Nice shirt, man!” We talk briefly but…. the second part of “timing is everything” is that when the conversation quickly turned to me asking if the band could play “Home” — my favorite Pavement song if forced to choose just one — Bob told me that, sadly, Cleveland got that one the night before and they don’t usually do it two shows in a row. Later I learned that Richmond got it the next night. I’m telling you: timing really is everything. I’m in for more next time. This was a brilliant night of music — for a great cause, no less.

I mean a freestanding work of studio-created art. No repeated songs from an album. No live tracks. All new stuff, but condensed.

I’m talking R.E.M.’s Chronic Town, Squirrel Bait’s self-titled record, Let’s Active’s Afoot, Eleventh Dream Day’s self-titled debut, etc. Classics of the form.

Those records each happened to introduce a band to the world in an impressive multi-song way, yet a more-concise one than a full-length album.

What’s more unusual is the brilliant freestanding EP that comes after a band already has released an album, or albums (Replacements’ Stink EP, anyone?), which brings us to one of the finest examples thereof: the Watery, Domestic EP from Pavement.

After beginning their career from 1989 to 1991 with three undoubtedly solid, but imperfect, EPs, April 1992 saw Pavement release a drop-dead brilliant debut album, Slanted and Enchanted. The “band” on all of those records was just a three piece: Stephen Malkmus and Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg playing pretty much everything except Gary Young’s drum parts.

Watery, Domestic — ultimately released in late November 1992 — represented a change. No longer “a band” but actually a band, thanks to the addition of Mark Ibold on bass and Bob Nastanovich on percussion and backing vocals, and unwilling to rest on the laurels of having created an instant critics’ favorite with Slanted and Enchanted, Pavement recorded seven new songs, pared those down to four, called the ensuing EP Watery, Domestic, and immediately joined the ranks of the aforementioned purveyors of the classic freestanding EP. This one’s a keeper, folks.

Before we get to the music, though, let’s talk about the cover of the record. That rooster art? In fact, everything except the scribbling? It’s an album cover from a completely different band. In 1970, the prog/jazz fusion band Ambergris released an album that looked like this:

When it came time to pick out cover art for the Watery, Domestic EP, Pavement just scribbled lyrics and other phrases on the Ambergris cover and used that for their record cover. They even credited Thom Williams and Stephen Myers — art director and photographer on the original.

Why hijack another cover? Other than the band’s general predilection for Dadaism — which led them to do something similar with the album cover to Slanted and Enchanted (repurposing Ferrante and Teicher’s Keyboard Kapers) — I’ve never heard a full explanation. But I love it. It’s “original,” while not being original at all. Perfect.

Speaking of “perfect,” the guitars on this record are just that, and what better way to begin the entire affair than with a somewhat gnarly, effects-drenched guitar as an opening “Hell yeah” to the world? At the beginning of the first song, “Texas Never Whispers,” I hear a phaser, a chorus pedal, and distortion, but I’m a drummer, so it’s possible that I might not have a single clue what I’m talking about in that regard. Whatever is causing that gleeful guitar squall, it’s lovely and lasts briefly enough that when the song kicks into gear, you almost immediately miss it.

I won’t pretend to divine some deep overall meaning from the lyrics to “Texas Never Whispers.” Sure, the title is spot-on, because nothing about that state ever does, and there are also some fantastic individual lines like: “She’s so lackadaisical. Should have been a west-coast bride,” and “This tunnel is a Texas mile,” to say nothing of: “The way the river bends, the woman’s bending over me.” But what’s Mr. Malkmus really going on about in the whole of this song? Not a clue. I love it anyway, and, much like the rest of the EP, it’s because while there is the shell of a verse/chorus structure to “Texas…” it’s anything but traditional in that the second chorus, while musically the same as the first, is lyrically almost completely different. And there is no third verse or chorus; instead there’s just the hookiest little guitar solo, and the briefest of “Ba-da-da-da” singalongs before everything stops rather suddenly and it all shifts into an unexpected coda that then paradoxically ends on the most conventional note possible. It’s a weird little song, hooky in almost un-hooky ways, and an absolutely lovable weirdo at that.

“Frontwards” is more lyrically direct and likely more instantly accessible — not quite “Summer Babe,” but not far off either — plainly referencing the suburban-ish wasteland of Stockton, CA from which the band emerged. Malkmus “hear[s] the natives fussing at the data chart,” while he commands us to “be quiet” because “the weather's on the night news.” But it’s worse than just boring: “In the migrant hotels, they never sleep; they never will. Their souls are crumbling like a dirt clod.” Steve’s trying to rise above though. He’s “got style, miles and miles, so much style that it’s wasted.” Later he laments that, in fact, he has “so much style that it's leaving. Its pattern's torn and we're weaving.” But, as solid (and wistful) as the lyrics are, again it’s the guitars that provide the biggest hooks in “Frontwards.” In syncopation with a Gary Young drum roll, the guitar riff that follows each of the two choruses is The Big Payoff, reeling the listener in and then… bang. The song ends, leaving us only the briefest stray tech-y/computer-ish noise of a keyboard (or vibraphone?)

Speaking of suburban cliché, and a nearly chorus-absent approach, “Lions (Linden)” — alternatively known by the lengthier “Feed Em to the (Linden) Lions” — is the quickie here. A 1:49 blast of lyrics and aggressive guitar riffage, it’s mostly about that most American/suburban of things: a high-school football rivalry. Verse one introduces the Lions, from Linden, 20 miles east of Stockton where “every building [is the] same height, every street a straight line,” and the “team colors [are] yellow and blue.” Verse two is about the Redbirds, supposedly from Malkmus’ hometown, and while the team pays back its fans with “a goal line stand on 4th and two,” the third verse lets us know that it’s all a little bleaker than that. It seems that no matter who wins the game, “summer's dry and foul; reservoirs are shallow, spillways unexposed,” and “the fields will turn to yellow too” to match the school colors. “Lions (Linden)” is dark, discontented, and features the heaviest guitar on the EP. It’s also a fine audio-disrupter — the opposite of a palate-cleanser? — sitting between the more accessible “Frontwards” and the positively single-worthy “Shoot the Singer (1 Sick Verse)” that closes the record.

In some respects, “Shoot the Singer” is the fully-realized sibling of “Frontwards.” Both feature the most obvious verse/chorus structures on the EP; both also only have two of each, but where “Frontwards” simply concisely ends at that point, “Shoot the Singer” hunkers down for a moment. The stunning, chiming guitars momentarily disappear while the bass and drums soldier on, before it all lapses into a singalong “La-da-da-da-da” section so catchy that it makes the comparable part of “Texas Never Whispers” seem like an ugly duckling. This time the chant is lengthier and more joyful; it’s the monster hook to the song, and it’s deadly.

Finally — as if you need a warning/declaration that Pavement will continue to be unpredictable on future releases — the song fades out with two competing forces audible: Malkmus’ repeated mantra of “Don’t expect…” and, nearly hidden beneath the surface, the slightest tease of the guitar riff from “Box Elder,” the “hit” from that very first Pavement EP, way back in 1989. It’s been 11 minutes now since Watery, Domestic began, and they’re done. Don’t expect, indeed.

I’ve heard legitimate arguments for any of the first three Pavement albums as their “best,” but never forget this little gem that hides between the lo-fi legend of Slanted and Enchanted and the slicker (but hardly objectively polished) production of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. Those 11 minutes of Watery, Domestic are pure Pavement perfection.

(Photo from the Spiral Stairs archive; Pavement 1992, Khyber Pass, Philly)

But why tell you about the glory of that record? Because there’s a band from the Catskill region of New York State that, as soon as I started playing their debut album, landed me in that same headspace as early Eleventh Dream Day does. Pummeling drums, dual-guitar kerrang, dude who half-speaks/half-barks out vocals, woman who sometimes sings lead and more often provides great backups, and a literary bent to the lyrics? Check, check, check, right down the line…. The band is Sweet Harm and the album is Certain Sun, released late in 2025. Let’s dig in….

I would wonder if Sweet Harm’s guitar/vocal guy Dom Armao is an Eleventh Dream Day fan, but I bet he’s too young for that. Nevertheless, Armao is inhabiting a similar, immediately-distinctive vocal territory that Rick Rizzo does in EDD. There’s a swagger to his delivery of lyrics that makes the listener sit up and take notice right away. Then there’s the other guitar player/vocalist, Kate Larson. I’m probably not the first person to draw a Kim Deal comparison regarding her vocals, and I’m sure I won’t be the last. They are a sweet contrast to Armao’s pricklier delivery, and good lord, the whole thing works wonders in that regard.

But that said, the first three songs on the album are, vocally speaking, mostly an Armao thing. “Bee Stung” comes roaring out of the gate with pounding drums — we’ll talk about those in a moment, because well… fuck yeah — and Armao testifying over an instrumental track that alternately seethes and crashes to a halt, after which it blasts back in and then ends abruptly. “Vanilla Vine” kicks into gear with a bounce and swing that evokes “Terms of Psychic Warfare” vibes, and Armao rants and raves over it all. And “Maintenance High” sounds more like a single — a little hookier with a more traditional verse/chorus structure. But just when the listener might be getting complacent, extra layers of guitars come into the picture as Armao tells us he’s been “spending every night in the lights of that laundromat, picking out cigarette butts from a bucket of gravel and ash,” thoroughly justifying all my EDD/Beet comparisons in an instant. And — in a trick they play quite often on Certain Sun, but somehow never enough to be less than a surprise each time — just as Armao tells that “the coast is clear for days,” the song ends on a note (and beat) that you just didn’t expect. Well-played, Sweet Harm. Well-played.

But, speaking of destroying listener complacency, it’s the fourth song on the record — “Neon Cathedral” — that best serves that role, and goddamn it if it’s not the most perfectly constructed 2:47 I’ve heard since several songs on that Chimers album that I went nuts over a short while back. Simply put, if you don’t like “Neon Cathedral,” go somewhere else, because the rest of this sublime little record is not going to be your thing (and, yes, that means I’m not going to be your friend either).

In some sort of brilliant, Zen, album-sequencing trick, “Neon Cathedral” immediately is jarring, because it’s not so jarring. For the first time on the album, Kate Larson is singing lead, and that makes the song, vocally speaking, nothing like what came before it. Larson has such an appealing, completely different, vocal style from Armao that she manages a mighty trick: making a song that does not appear to have a chorus in any traditional sense seem like a hook-filled extravaganza. But remember that part about defeating listener complacency? She’s already done that for the first 1:47 of the song, but then they do it again, in the exact opposite way, when, out of nowhere, Armao is back on lead vocal for the final minute-ish of the song. The sonic contrast is complete genius. Then, right when you’re convinced that there hasn’t been a repeated vocal line during the entire song (because there hasn’t), while Armao does his vocal thing, telling us, “The final stage was a bond with a blade. Firing the clay before finding the shape,” Larson starts singing: “We talked the most; now we talk the least” over and over underneath his vocal, until he finally joins her in that refrain. A chorus? Not really. But hooks? Everywhere.

What might a great band do at that point of an album? Perhaps tear your head off with the most overtly Sonic Youth-ish song on the record? Yes, indeed. “Cool Blood” fills that role well, beginning with 20 seconds of swelling feedback before Liv Battell comes thundering in on the drums, and now is as good as any other time to invoke my usual pro-drummer bias and tell you what a fucking fantastic job Battell is doing on this entire record. Like so many great drummers, she’s not out front showing off; instead she’s playing exactly what the songs deserve at a given moment. Yeah, there’s plenty of aggressive pounding, but Battell is riding the dynamics of the rest of the band. When the guitars layer in over top of one another in waves, she’s right there with them, increasing the intensity of the whole affair. And when the songs need space, she provides it. It seems like a simple thing: play to the song (for fuck’s sake), but so many drummers are either too tame or too extreme. These songs all benefit immensely from the way this drummer steers the ship on them. Hell yes.

Back to the second half of the record…. In order not to turn this review into something absurdly longer than it already is, I’ll mostly just rely on my faith in you, dear listener. If you loved those first five songs, you’re going to dig the rest of it. But here are some (fairly) quick takes on the rest.

There are sweet vocal harmonies from Armao and Larson on “Painting the Ceiling,” preceding a smoking blast of punk rock on “Loaner” that wouldn’t be the same without the formidable rhythm section of Battell and bass player Mike Campbell (not the Petty guy) locked in tight through twists and turns, and Larson’s backup vocals that come soaring in right near the end. “Lilac,” another Larson lead vocal, sounds like it’s going to be one thing — “the slow song” — but then nope; it’s really not one of those. It all leaps into gear and Larson again turns a non-chorus of “I took us in circles, it was beautiful, right? Taking pics of sunsets for the rest of my life,” into a hook. Perfect. “Page Turner” is another piece of track-sequencing genius because it’s the yang to the yin of “Lilac.” Boom, it hits you hard from the outset with guitars that — unsurprisingly at this point — remind me again of Eleventh Dream Day, while once again there isn’t a vocal chorus to be found. I bet it’s a barnburner in a live setting. “Spit” — the closest to being “the slow song,” I suppose — positively breathes with the space that drummer Battell gives the verse, and then the stop/start stuff going on near the end of the song might even harken you back to Uncle Tupelo, never a bad choice.

It’s a few times now that I’ve noted the truly spectacular pacing/sequencing of this record. It’s only 31 minutes long — not a complaint; believe me — but, because it’s paced brilliantly and the tracks ordered so well, it feels like a complete album, with a real flow to it, not just a random collection of tracks that they threw together. Which brings us to the last song….

If it weren’t for the flat-out genius of “Neon Cathedral,” I’d tell you that Sweet Harm saved the best for last with “Fog Builder.” It’s maybe the most traditional verse/chorus song on the record, and it’s certainly the most shared lead vocal. Larson’s mostly singing the lead on the verse and then harmonizing with the best Deal-sister “Ahh Ahh”s yet on the chorus while Armao takes the lead there, but then, halfway through, they switch, to glorious effect, and the last vocal you hear is Larson soaring once again: “Stunned in the light of a calm and constant sun. Stunned in the light of a cool and certain sun.” I’m definitely stunned. What an album.

I also can’t wait to see this band over Labor Day weekend in Catskill, NY at DromFest (which I told you about here). As much as I love this record, I bet they’re even better live.

_{***A note: astute readers of this Substack — all 100 or so of you — will notice that this is the first album review that I haven’t done under the moniker “6 A.M. Record Club.” That’s because that particular name was the product of a recovery from knee surgery at the time. Basically I was sleeping so poorly because of post-surgery pain, etc. that I was waking up a lot and, at 5:30 or 6 every morning, I’d just fucking give up on the idea of sleeping any more that night, get a cup of coffee, and play an album. I’m doing better now, thanks, so while I’m still playing music (and am back to drumming!!) as much as ever, it’s not on such an insanely early schedule any longer. That means I’m using the more pedestrian title “Album Review.” I have faith that you can weather that change quite easily….***}

I’m not one of those people.

Don’t get me wrong…. I love the band’s albums with Willson-Piper and/or Koppes, but I’ve seen the Church do some killer shows after they both were gone — all thanks to a chance viewing of the band’s seven-song performance at the 2022 Cruel World festival in Los Angeles. It just happened that the overall festival schedule that day — full of overlapping sets on multiple stages (a fucking nightmare, I tell you) — was really conducive to my viewing the Church’s set between some other bands that I wanted to see even more, and the Church were so great that day that I declared, “I’ve always liked this band, but that was so good that now I really need to see them do a full-length headlining set with this lineup.”

The band was tight and powerful that day, but it was the guitar interplay that really impressed me. In a similar manner to the way that Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd spun musical webs around each other in Television, Naylor and Haug are absolutely dialed into one another’s playing. They’re both “lead guitar” in this band, but they’re trading solos and flavoring one another’s playing with harmonics and chiming, sometimes-E-bow-driven, melodic lines. Imagine the Bunnymen with two Will Sergeants playing off one another! It’s a bit like that.

I then saw the band do headlining shows a number of times in 2023 and 2024 but every one of those gigs focused on the band’s most recent album at the time, The Hypnogogue. They’d play two long, glorious sets, and while the song selection certainly spanned their entire career, it was heavy on Hypnogogue tracks and so, after three or four of those fairly similar shows, I was beginning to hope for something different the next time around.

In 2025, the band appeared to be granting my wish. They announced a USA tour that focused on their singles, but then a health issue in the band postponed the tour for a full year. Finally, last night at the Colonial Theater in Phoenixville, PA the Church “Singles” tour came to town something like 18 months after I originally bought the ticket. It was so worth the wait.

The Church have released many singles over the years and this tour — featuring 23 of them, spread over two sets and encore — isn’t attempting to play them all, just some extremely choice selections, spread out over their full career.

The two sets varied a bit. The first featured ten songs and an extremely loquacious Steve Kilbey. He really talked a lot after almost every song. While Kilbey is hilarious and a good storyteller, the sheer volume of words coming out of his mouth was honestly a little disruptive to the flow of the first set. It took them 75 minutes to play the ten-song set because he was talking so much. The second set was much more focused on just the music.

That’s not to say the first set was a dud, far from it. It just didn’t have the pacing of the second one. The absolute highlight from the first set, for me, was the six-plus minute “Block,” which I hadn’t seen them play before. It’s one of those subtle, hidden gems in the Church catalog that really comes to life at a show, rising and falling in intensity over the course of the song. As usual, with all my favorite Church songs, “Block” is mostly about the interwoven guitars and those moments where the entire band is riding waves of loud/soft dynamics.

In general, whether in the first set or the second, while I loved the more predictable/popular singles like “Columbus,” “Unguarded Moment,” “Metropolis,” “Reptile,” “Under the Milky Way,” and “Tantalized,” it was some of the deeper cuts that I either hadn’t ever seen them perform live — or hadn’t seen for a very long time — that really made the Singles show special. In that regard, “When You Were Mine,” “Constant in Opal,” and “Numbers” all were riveting. And even songs that I’d heard quite often in the past, like “Ripple,” “Destination,” and “The Hypnogogue,” had a (Pink) Floyd-ian sense of psychedelic power. This band is really well-rehearsed.

It was a long, fantastic night of sometimes-ethereal, always captivating music at a cool venue. The Colonial has reserved seats that actually are comfortable and have some legroom, and when I’m looking at a performance with no opener that goes from 8:15 to 11:25 or so, including the encore break, I have to say that it’s kind of nice to have a good seat.

One last thing: there were two new, fairly chill, songs in the second set: the mid-tempo “Western” and a slower one called “Sacred Echoes (Part Two)” — both of which are from an upcoming, still unreleased Church album called Lacuna. They fit well into the vibe and flow of the second set, positioned as sorts of palette cleansers after the more intense “Destination” and the loud, nearly-chaotic roar of “Tantalized.” I’ll be curious to see if Lacuna, whenever it’s released, is an entire record of that mellower mood, or whether it’s more diverse. I’m hoping for the latter, but this band is so on fire when they play live these days that I’ll be at the subsequent tour no matter what.

Surprisingly though, the Hard tour really wasn’t bad at all. The band — Jon King, Andy Gill, Lee, and newly-acquired touring drummer extraordinaire Steve Goulding (of Mekons and “Watching the Detectives” fame) — still had it going on live, and even the unimpressive songs from the then-new album sounded much better live. (That’s what happens when Steve Fucking Goulding comes in to save the day, this drummer reminds you). By the next time I saw the band — on a “Farewell” tour at the Ritz in New York City in 1984 — they were even better, only playing a few songs from Hard, and otherwise reaching deep into the three brilliant albums that had earned them their stellar reputation.

The next Gang of Four show that I saw wasn’t until a reunion tour — featuring the Entertainment!/Solid Gold lineup — in 2005 that I recall as a great gig that was strangely marred by Andy Gill’s hostile behavior onstage toward a bandmate that he told the audience had “fucked up” a song or two. (I remember being shocked that said bandmate didn’t knock Gill’s lights out right then and there). Gill was angry and weird that night and I never saw him play a show again.

Then in the early days of COVID, Andy Gill passed away, and then Dave Allen developed early-onset dementia that prevented him from taking part in a planned reunion of the remaining members. (Dave sadly died in early 2025).

Thus began the newest permutation in the Go4 lineup. In 2022, they played a spellbinding show in Philly at Underground Arts with original members Burnham and King plus Lee on bass and David Pajo (of Slint fame) on guitar. I had no doubt that King, Burnham, and Lee, with so many gigs from long ago under their belts, would be great, but Pajo was a real revelation that night: he replicated Andy Gill’s sharp/angular/blistering/paint-peeling guitar riffs with astounding skill. It was a hell of a show.

But that “new” lineup didn’t last. Lee wanted to retire, and Pajo left the band as well for other projects. King and Burnham next joined forces with bass player Gail Greenwood (of L7 and Belly fame) and guitarist Ted Leo, who’d been purveying quality post-punk with his band the Pharmacists for years.

That version of the band did a 2025 tour that they called The Long Goodbye — their way of telling the world that big tours were soon to be a thing of the past. Reviews were strongly positive for The Long Goodbye, but I missed unfortunately missed that tour. There was no Philly date, and none of the other shows were feasible for me to attend for reasons that I’ve long since forgotten. I assumed that my Gang of Four live experiences were done; I’d missed my chance to see them one more time.

But not so fast…. Last September, I had a chance conversation with Hugo Burnham in which I expressed regret that I’d never see the Gang of Four again, and he told me that, while they certainly were done with big tours, there might be very rare/occasional opportunities to see them at a festival here or there. He also spoke so highly of Greenwood and Leo; clearly all four of them were all having a blast when they played together. I held out hope that someday — in a few years perhaps? — I might actually see this lineup of the band. Outdoor festivals really aren’t my thing, but I might have to deal with something like that to see the Gang of Four again.

Fast forward to a few months ago….

“NO FUCKING WAY!?!” I yelled after seeing a Facebook post. The Gang of Four, in its Burnham/King/Greenwood/Leo iteration, was going to be doing a few northeastern-USA shows. Like Hugo Burnham had suggested might happen, they’d been booked to play Wilco’s Solid Sound festival in Massachusetts, but imagine my surprise when they weren’t just doing that one big show; they’d booked a few club dates around it as well: Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Woodstock, NY.

The Gang of Four was (ever so briefly) back, baby, to quote Frank Costanza. I got a ticket to see them at one of my favorite venues: the Bearsville Theater in Woodstock, NY.

The bottom line? My god, they were even better than — with already high expectations — I could have ever anticipated.

I told you how David Pajo channeled his inner Andy Gill to great effect? Well, goddamn it if Ted Leo isn’t doing exactly the same thing. Like Pajo before him, he understands the assignment well: shred the guitar with angular, brutal riffs, and handle some sizable vocals too. It’s a big job and he pours himself into it with enthusiasm.

And Gail Greenwood? Gail Greenwood brings all of her L7/Belly “righteous rock ‘n’ roll motherfucker” swagger to the band and… it works! Neither Dave Allen nor Sara Lee were prone to leaping about the stage. They just killed us with basslines. Greenwood is nailing all the basslines with expert skill like her predecessors, but she’s also bringing a neverending sense of fun/party/fuck-yeah to the proceedings. Her onstage energy is absolutely infectious.

What about Jon and Hugo? I can happily report that Jon and Hugo were still Jon and Hugo in all the best ways. Jon King has always been a compelling presence as a frontperson — howling and shouting and dancing and arm-waving and generally raising a ruckus — and Hugo Burnham is what I’ll call without hesitation the best Gang of Four-style drummer on the planet. He might not be the first guy you’d hire for a classic-rock space-jam session, but he sure as hell is still The Man when it comes to propelling these songs — with their sharp edges and syncopated tom-hits — like no one else.

There wasn’t even close to a dull moment in the 19 songs that we got that night, but I’ll note some particular highlights. “To Hell With Poverty” roared out of the blocks as a perfect opener. “Outside the Trains Don’t Run on Time” had the same punkier edge of the EP version of the song (as compared to the one on the second album). “Paralysed” — with Ted Leo handling the Gill vocal and Burham and Greenwood at their absolute peak rhythm-section mind-meld — was as tightly wound an exercise in tension and release as ever, quite possibly Song of the Night for me. Ted ripped and shredded the Gill guitar parts on “Love Like Anthrax” while simultaneously handling the substantial backing-vocal duties, and “He’d Send in the Army” was its usual glorious freak show, with Jon King rhythmically and systematically destroying a microwave oven with a baseball bat that he brings down on the “four” beat of each measure. The band does its thing in expert fashion all around that beat. I’m pretty sure they’ve played that song in that manner (although I don’t recall a microwave at the ‘80s shows, maybe just a metal plate that King struck?) every time I’ve seen them over the years, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. “At Home He’s a Tourist” was its pulsing, pounding, intense self, and then the encore featured two of my absolute favorites: “Capital (It Fails Us Now)” and “Armalite Rifle.” The latter (for which that’s a link to the live version from Woodstock in the last sentence, by the way) was a last-second add-on by Leo, who leaned into Jon King to say something when King appeared to be bidding the audience farewell after a brilliant “I Found That Essence Rare,” and King turned to the audience and said with a wry smile, “Ted really wants to play another one. <pause> He is such a wanker!” “Armalite Rifle” is one of the first Gang of Four songs I ever heard 47 years ago or so, and yet I’d never previously seen the band play it. What a fucking treat. Hugo swinging the beat; Greenwood leaping around joyfully while nailing the bass part; and Leo reveling in the half-spoken/half-sung vocals and the kerranging guitar chords.

Honestly, although I’ve seen great Gang of Four shows before, I’m kind of floored at just how off-the-charts perfect this one was. I truly hope there will be more chances to see the band in the future, but, either way, this gig was an absolute keeper: a band at the top of its game, having fun, taking names, and kicking ass. Absolutely glorious. Count me in for another round — y’know, if there is one.

I’ve previously written about the Hoodoo Gurus’ Stoneage Romeos — one of the greatest debut albums ever, and an absolute Australian classic. But recently I had the opportunity to be a guest on Rob Elba’s top-notch music podcast, That Record Got Me High, to discuss the album in even more detail than my original Substack post got into.

We dig deep, and you can too. Go here to listen to the episode, or listen to it on any of your favorite podcast-streaming apps, except Spotify, because, to quote Rob Elba: “Fuck those guys.”

I had a blast. And, yes, of course there’s lots of drummer-centric blahblahblah, because that’s what I do.

Me either.

But there’s a special kind of “festival” that can still catch my attention: the really small kind that barely feels like a “festival” at all, just — get this — a collection of great bands over a few days without all the bullshit that comes with “huge.” I used to go to Twangfest in St. Louis every year because it stayed small and mostly indoors. It felt more like a musical family reunion than a “music festival.”

For a few years now, starting in 2023, Dromedary Records — a small record label in Catskill, NY — has been holding DromFest, an annual gathering of indie-rock bands, some of whom you’ve heard of, and others you likely haven’t, that gives off much of the same vibe as Twangfest always did: the gigs are in and around a small Catskill, NY bar called the Avalon Lounge, not in a giant field with 50,000 people. I first took notice of DF in 2024 when, far too late to buy a ticket, I saw that Scrawl — whose wonder and glory I’ve waxed poetic about before — were playing DF ‘24.

And I’ll fess up that the “notice” I took of the 2024 fest was merely passing. I saw Scrawl was there, realized it was sold-out, and promptly forgot about the whole damn thing when I couldn’t go.

Then the 2025 lineup caught my eye… but again far too late. DF ‘25 was sold out by the time I noticed! I missed Yo La Tengo, Beth Kaplan of Salem 66 (who I last saw in 1986 in Philly!), Scrawl (again!), Madder Rose (who I’d last seen in 1994), and Phantom Tollbooth (reuniting for the occasion), among many others.

But that time I made a mental note not to miss the 2026 announcement.

Mission accomplished. Here it is, the 2026 DromFest lineup:

This time I am in, so fucking in. I have a hotel, tickets for all three days, and an overwhelming sense of wonder at just how the folks at Dromedary pulled off this killer lineup.

The top row of that poster is bookended by two bands that I’ve gone on about quite a bit here lately: Wussy and Come. Wussy is my favorite band of the last 21 or so years and I’ve seen them so many times that I’ve lost count. They’re stunning live and on album. And Come just roared through Philly in early May leaving me only with one regret — that I had no idea when I might get the chance to see them again. DromFest to the rescue!

Sonically adjacent to Come — because both feature the vocals of Thalia Zedek and a thundering musical attack — is Via, but Via hasn’t done a show since 1987! (DF to the rescue again). I finally get to see Scrawl for the first time since the late ‘90s and I couldn’t be more excited about that. Dumptruck is another band I liked a lot in the 1980s but I haven’t seen them since then. I’m thrilled that Beth Kaplan is playing music again after a long time off, and equally psyched to see Doug Gillard (of GBV and Cobra Verde fame) play songs from his fine new solo album, Parallel Stride.

The “side project” bands are a big draw for me too. I liked the two albums that Clint Conley (of Mission of Burma, another band that I’ve gone on about here) did with Consonant in the early ‘00s but never thought I’d get to see that band play, and the same is true with the Bob Weston/Chris Brokaw/Elisha Wiesner band Martha’s Vineyard Ferries. Can’t wait to hear them raise a ruckus. Earplugs will be mandatory and the roar will be glorious.

Antietam and Sleepyhead have both impressed me in the past when I’ve seen them open for Yo La Tengo, and although I never saw either Nice Strong Arm or Hypnolovewheel, both have stellar reputations — for fearsome noise rock and jangly indiepop, respectively — that have me digging into their catalogs in eager anticipation of their DF sets.

And that’s just half the lineup or so! The rest features some artists I’ve heard great things about — like Barbara Manning and Moviola — but never seen live, and a boatload of others that are currently mysteries to me. But the top half of the card is so strong that I implicitly trust the booking overlords at Dromedary to have chosen well on the rest of it. I learned years ago at Twangfest that at every really well-put-together (I refuse, on the basic principle that I don’t want to sound like a twat, to say “curated”) small festival like this, I am bound to return home afterwards with new musical obsessions with whom I was utterly unfamiliar beforehand.

Who is playing which day, you ask?

Here you go:

Friday, September 4:
Dumptruck
Consonant
Karen Schoemer & her “August” band

Saturday, September 5:
Wussy
Antietam
Doug Gillard
Moviola
Via
The Martha’s Vineyard Ferries
Barbara Manning
Stuyvesant
The Human Hearts
Tiny Blue Ghost
P.G. Six
Readings from Erica Fletcher, Scott Seward and Tim Sommer

Sunday, September 6:
Come
Scrawl
Nice Strong Arm
Hypnolovewheel
Sleepyhead
Beth Kaplan
French/Cell
Purple Ivy Shadows
Creative Writing
R.B. Korbet
Sweet Harm
Special screening of the film “Radiation” by Michael Galinsky and Suki Hawley

If past DromFests are a clue, the Friday lineup is nighttime-only, whereas the other two days start quite early (late morning).

Tickets are available here, and it’s my (fairly obvious) opinion that you should go (and buy the VIP pass if you can because $20 from that purchase goes to a local food bank in Greene County, NY). Lineups like this simply do not otherwise happen. DromFest! LFG!

It was an ad for an upcoming gig at Haverford College featuring Robin Hitchcock and the Egyptians. I said to a friend, “Oh that guy! He was in that British psych band The Soft Boys, and I’ve heard good things about his solo stuff. I might go?” Not long thereafter, I got a hold of three Hitchcock albums: the studio albums Fegmania! and Element of Light, and the live Gotta Let This Hen Out! (RH is clearly a fan of exclamation points in titles). I was immediately taken with all of it — the wild lyrical twists and turns, the ability of the band to shift seamlessly between rocking out and working a mighty groove, and, on the live album, Mr. Hitchcock’s penchant for twisted storytelling when introducing a song. I was in for sure. No advance tickets were needed; this was 1986.

That show was fantastic. The Egyptians were an ace band, a well-oiled machine, and they could shift dynamic gears with ease. And Robyn was a hell of an engaging, funny frontman. I was really impressed with it all. Thus began my Robyn Hitchcock fandom. His music became the hidden connector for me between, say, Piper-era Pink Floyd/Syd Barrett and the jangly guitars of R.E.M., with whom I was absolutely obsessed at the time. (A brief tangent: a very early version of They Might Be Giants opened that Haverford College show; just two of them in the band at the time and they used a lot of backing tapes).

In the years that have followed, I’ve seen Robyn Hitchcock a lot, but, strangely, almost entirely at solo shows where his penchant for between-song storytelling is even greater, as is his likelihood to head in any direction in his catalog at a whim. After that 1986 show with the Egyptians, despite my seeing a load of Robyn’s solo shows, it was over 30 years before I saw Robyn with a band again: in 2017 at the Bowery Ballroom in New York with Yo La Tengo expertly backing him for a full trip through all of the Black Snake Diamond Role album plus a whole lot of Soft Boys- and Egyptians-related extras.

After that 2017 show? I’ve again seen Robyn many more times, but all were solo until the past week when I caught two gigs with him and his current band (Patrick Berkery on drums, Rick Lollar on guitar, and Todd Bolden on bass, plus, sometimes, Jeremy Fetzer on guitar as well) — one at Bearsville Theater in Woodstock, NY, and one at the Ardmore Music Hall just outside Philly. Both were absolutely stunning trips through power pop and psych, with setlists that featured both strong nods to the past and more current songs including two from his upcoming album, entitled The Confuser, that absolutely held their own against the rest of the set.

The two shows — the Bearsville/Woodstock setlist is here, and Ardmore is here — generally had a lot of songs in common, and everything was great on both nights, not a clunker in the bunch, but as much as I loved Soft Boys standards like “I Wanna Destroy You” (dedicated on both nights to Donald Trump), “Queen of Eyes,” and “Brenda’s Iron Sledge,” I was particularly impressed with some of the less-predictable song choices. “A Globe of Frogs” had a swirling laid-back psychedelic feel and “Driving Aloud (Radio Storm)” positively pulsed with energy. “Oceanside” is a song that Robyn seems to save for full-band gigs, and now that I’ve seen him play it in two shows in a row, I see why. The band is so on their game and that song really bounces and swings as a result.

As always, I bring my drummer-centric focus to the proceedings and I could not have been more impressed with Patrick Berkery’s performance on both nights. His dynamics and “feel” are fantastic. It’s always nice to see a drummer that is unafraid to wallop the drums and give them a good beating, and Berkery does that for sure, but he also knows when to back off. That tension-and-release approach made “Autumn Sunglasses” the absolute standout of both nights for me. It’s a song that I’ve never paid a hell of a lot of attention to previously in its studio version, but in a live setting the band perfectly rode the dynamic waves and it instantly became a favorite of mine. The guitars created a psychedelic haze while the drums alternated between a quiet groove and an insistent thunder.

At Woodstock, guitarist Rick Lollar got to trade solos and riffs with Robyn, while at Ardmore, where Jeremy Fetzer was also onstage, Lollar’s role was more of a traditional rhythm player, and it was Fetzer who got the non-Hitchcock solo nod more often. While they certainly didn’t “need” the third guitar — Lollar, who also backs Emma Swift during her self-described opening set of “sadcore,” is more than up to the job — they used it well in Ardmore and both gigs were further enhanced by Swift’s backing vocals on a run of four songs in the back half of the set. Good lord, she can sing.

What else did I particularly love when I truly loved it all on both nights? It was great to hear my request for “Acid Bird” at Ardmore. That one’s been a fave since my very first listen to Gotta Let This Hen Out! back in 1986 (“That was about life in the west country before most of you were born and a long time after the rest of you are dead”). And big thanks to Robyn and Emma for generally managing song requests via social media. It’s cool when an artist actually gives a damn in that regard. Similarly, “Listening to the Higsons” — another highlight from Gotta Let This Hen Out! — was a delightful surprise as one of the solo songs that Robyn played to open the Ardmore show. The cover of “See Emily Play” in Bearsville sounded as “just like 1967 Floyd” as you could possibly imagine (bassist Bolden really shone on that one). And it was utterly brilliant to finish out both shows with a run of songs that included a cover of “Purple Haze” and a rollicking, joyful stomp through the Soft Boys’ “Rock ‘n’ Roll Toilet” by the full band before Robin ventured into the crowd both nights for a solo acoustic “A Day in the Life” that quickly turned into a crowd singalong complete with a songending “Bonnnngggggg.”

I’ll also note that, while I really like Ardmore Music Hall, the Bearsville Theater is a particular standout. It’s on the way out of the west end of the town of Woodstock, and, because they have a little bit of land out there, there’s a huge parking lot onsite as well as three bar/restaurants, with a big outdoor picnic area. It’s just the most laid-back, chill venue that I think I’ve ever experienced, and both sound and sightlines inside the theater are fantastic. Well done, Bearsville. (I’ll be back for the Gang of Four in a couple weeks). You have a good thing going there.

Both of these shows were so perfect from start to finish that I don’t think I can pick a favorite. Maybe the slightest of edges goes to the Ardmore setlist (on the other hand, Bearsville could brag that they got that killer “See Emily Play,” which Ardmore didn’t, but, then again, Ardmore got a smoking “I’m Waiting for the Man” that Bearsville didn’t; it’s a close call), but the venue/setting at Bearsville may have leapt into first place on my list of favorite venues anywhere. Thanks to Mr. Hitchcock and his merry band of ace musicians for a couple of great nights. I’m so glad I was there for both shows.

It was back in November 1991 at a small, but legendary, Philly music venue called J.C. Dobbs, and it was my first time seeing Dave touring his solo material. I’d previously caught him with X (during a brief period in 1986 where they had two guitarists: Dave and Tony Gilkyson), but I’d never seen him playing material from his solo albums. By then, he was on his second of those. Blue Blvd (1991) was at least the equal of Dave’s brilliant solo debut, Romeo’s Escape (1987), and I was psyched for the show.

But I was curious who was going to be in Dave’s band, and then I read somewhere that his backing band was also going to be the opening band for the tour: a supposedly crackerjack, seasoned, bar-tested, gritty outfit from Springfield, Missouri called the Skeletons. A little more reading, and I learned that the Skeletons consisted of three fifths of another legendary bar band from Springfield: the Morells. I’d heard good things about the Morells, but never dug deep enough on them to have any real idea of what I was about to witness….

The Skeletons were all that, believe me. Their set began with the glorious party stomp/rumble of “Outta My Way” and I was instantly hooked. Completely hooked. They blasted through straight-ahead rockers like “Trans Am” and “Very Last Day,” and headed easily into country with the social-justice tale “30 Days in the Workhouse” (“…but don’t you shed no tears, ‘cause if I’d been a Black man, they’d have given me 30 years”). I was flat-out exhausted by the end of their set, in all the best ways. The finest opening set I’d ever seen to that point from a band I’d previously never heard? Indeed, and it’s still a strong contender to this day.

It also boded well for what was to come. But truly, I still had no idea.

I had assumed — in light of the raucous party atmosphere of what I just witnessed from the Skeletons — that Dave was going to come out guns blazing with the boys from Springfield, but no. He threw us a curveball to start — a solo acoustic “Dry River.” It was beautiful, poetic even, but he knew we wanted to rock. From that point on, the show really never let up until way at the very end when he sent us home with an equally beautiful quiet take on “Border Radio.” Nearly everything in between was either a Blasters song or a song from either Romeo’s Escape or Blue Blvd. And the Skeletons absolutely ripped through every one of those, often at a quicker — dare I say “punkier” — pace than the studio versions. But it all still had a glorious swing to it, thanks in large part to ace drummer Bobby Lloyd Hicks (“playing his ass off” as Dave said to the crowd). That swing was extra emphasized when the pace slowed a bit on bluesier numbers like “Rich Man’s Town” or “Why Did She Stay With Him?”

Now, I could describe every single song they played to you, like how the whole set just kept getting tighter and tighter, with guitar man Donnie Thompson (a.k.a. the more professorial-sounding D. Clinton Thompson) sharing occasional leads with Dave, and consequently burning down the house with those — particularly on the aformentioned “Rich Man’s Town,” on “Long White Cadillac,” and on a goddamn four-alarm-fire version of nine-minute take on “Romeo’s Escape” that closed the first set (complete with a brief foray into “Tangled Up in Blue”). Or I could tell you how somehow the dual keyboard attack of Joe Terry and Kelly Brown was gritty as hell, rather than too smooth (as dual keyboards often can be), or how bass player Lou Whitney — introduced by Dave as “the future president of these United States” — delivered a smoking take on the Morells version of “Big Guitar” (a.k.a. “You Girls Goin’ South”) on the encore, or how Dave proved to us that his take on “Fourth of July” is just a little bit better than X’s (especially with the Skeletons backing him), but I can do you even one better:

HERE IS A LINK TO A RECORDING OF THE SHOW!! (If I can figure out how to embed the whole file/player into this piece here on Substack, I will, but for now just click on that last sentence and that’ll take you straight there).

Apparently that recording has been on that site since 2010, but I just learned about it last week. Back in the mid-’00s, I had seen a reunited Morells do a barnburner version of that very Morells song that I had seen the Skeletons do, but I couldn’t figure out the name of it. For years I’d remembered it as “You Girls Headed South?” but I couldn’t find it. (If only I’d bought the first Morells album, I’d have answered my own question).

Then last week, I stumbled across an interview with Donnie Thompson that contained an email address for him. “Why not ask The Man Himself?” I thought. So I did, and I got a nice reply from Don that: (1) told me the correct answer to my question (“Big Guitar”), (2) told me that “Big Guitar” was written by Bill Watkins, and also — because I had mentioned to him that one glorious show that I saw the Skeletons do in Philly in 1991 with Dave Alvin — (3) told me that there’s a recording on the Internet Archive of the specific 1991 J.C. Dobbs Dave Alvin/Skeletons set that I’ve been blabbering on about here! I wasted no time digging in.

In his email, Don Thompson expressed surprise at just how great that 1991 performance was, which tells you just how dead-on perfect the Skeletons must have been every single time, because I don’t know how it’s possible to forget a show this stunning, unless they’re all that stunning. My own reaction, expressed to my wife, who is also a big Dave Alvin fan, was, “Damnnnnnnnnn, this is so great that someone should release it as a live album.” Really. I’ve played it about ten times in the past three days, louder and louder each time.

I will leave you with this thought: if you have any interest in roots-rock/Americana played by some of the absolute best of the genre, then you should listen to the whole damn recording. But if TL;DL (“too long; didn’t listen) is your motto and you want a shortcut to sonic glory, check out just a few things: (1) that impossibly great “Romeo’s Escape,” (2) the title track of “Blue Blvd” that immediately follows “Romeo’s…” and (3) the boozy/swaggering version of “Big Guitar/You Girls Goin’ South” that happens right after we all sing “Happy Birthday” to Dave.

These are masters of their art, musical samurai if you like. Respect them. Honor them. Play the damn recording.

And yes, someone really should put this thing out as a legit live album. (How ‘bout it, Dave??)

“A tour just for you!” said the text back in March from my friend Jason.

I knew immediately what the subject of his message was: two of my favorite bands, Built to Spill and Wussy — both of whom I’ve seen upwards of 25 (30? more? maybe) times each in various personnel configurations — had just announced a six-date tour together.

None of those six dates was particularly close to my home concert base of Philadelphia. Damn.

I briefly hesitated. At the time I was just a month out of pretty invasive knee surgery and was nowhere near ready to leave the house very often, let alone engage in one of my favorite sports: rock and roll tourism. Believe me when I say that you never think about walking through airports until it hurts like fuck to walk through airports.

“I don’t know, man…. Will I be ready for that? Maybe? That’ll be like 15 weeks post-op. Not sure.”

Less than 24 hours later, before the on-sale date, I sent Jason a new text: “WHO WAS I KIDDING?!?! I’m in for Indianapolis and Cincinnati.”

His “hahahahaha” response was unsurprising.

He knows the deal, “the deal” being that I regard Wussy, from Cincinnati, to be the finest band — live and in studio — of the last 20 or so years, and that I regard Boise-based Built to Spill with the kind of reverence for their studio albums and live show that I otherwise reserve for Yo La Tengo. Both Wussy and Built to Spill are absolutely brilliant indie-rock royalty, and I see their shows whenever possible.

So you can guess where this review is going….

Yup, I loved every second of both shows. We’ll talk about that, but let’s start with a bit of calamity….

The Bee’s Knees (not mine… Chuck’s)

I’ve seen these two bands so many times that I’ve struck up friendships with some members of both, so it didn’t surprise me when I got a text from a person in Wussy just a short week or so before the tour was to start. But the content of the message was more than just a surprise; it was downright troubling: Chuck Cleaver — half of the principal songwriting team of the band (Lisa Walker being the other half), and wielder of one motherfucker of a mean guitar — had fallen and split his kneecap into pieces. The text said something understated like: “I figure you know a lot about knees. There may be questions.” It also told me that the rest of the band was “absolutely” still doing the tour dates opening for Built to Spill.

Chuck is facing knee surgery and a long recovery. He’s a great guy and I wish him the best. If you want more updates on his condition, head to Wussy’s social media (FB and Instagram) and they’ll keep you current on the situation. They posted this pic of the damage. Ugh. Ouch.

But about that tour…. Wussy shows with just Lisa’s songs? “Wow,” I thought, “I didn’t see that one coming.” Not one to mince words, I’ll just tell you this: I regard Lisa Walker to have written a higher percentage of drop-dead perfect indie-rock songs over the past 21 years than any human being on the planet. Really. Chuck’s not far behind in that competition, by the way, but a tour featuring only Lisa’s songs did not sound to me like even a remotely second-place/runner-up kind of affair. I was still as psyched for these shows as when I first pushed back against my own knee-related doubts and bought the tickets. LFG, and all that….

Indianapolis, Hi-Fi Annex, May 16, 2026

A little bit first about the setting and the nice people of Indianapolis….

Hi-Fi Annex is an outdoor venue that holds 900 or so people. They had graciously supplied me with an ADA seat at my request because while I’m at the point in my own knee-surgery recovery that I can likely stand through a single show, I wasn’t sure about how wise it would be to stand through two nights in a row. That ADA seat was spectacular. Kudos to the venue for placing their ADA section right up by the stage in a spot that neither blocks, nor is blocked by, standing attendees. Right on. Hell, there was even a porta-potty strategically located nearby. They are doing things right there.

And a shout-out to the nice people around me. There was a couple “from the suburbs” that talked music with me beforehand, and another younger dude, just over the rail inside the standing section, who did the same when he found out I had seen both bands a lot. It was his first time seeing either of them and he had questions. He left a big fan of both. Great success. Good times.

Speaking of questions, the Wussy set in Indianapolis quickly answered a whole lot of them that I had about their tour. Would bass player Mark Messerly immediately flip me off as he walked onstage as a way to say hello? Answer: yes. Hilarity levels around me were high as I returned the silent greeting. More importantly, would the band rock the fuck out? Indeed they would. I mentioned Chuck’s ace guitar playing earlier. They’d be missing that. They’d also be missing his backing vocals on many of Lisa’s songs. Would that bring down the vibe, maaaaaan? No it would not. Lisa’s a great guitar player of her own right, and new (in 2024) pedal-steel guy Travis Talbert is a goddamned wunderkind up there, playing all the parts that the late, great John Erhardt played on steel and adding more to cover the spots where Chuck would ordinarily be adding a glorious squall to the proceedings. Keep that guy on the team, Coach. But what about the vocals, you ask? Joe Klug is an ace drummer, but he’s also been singing backups on quite a few Wussy songs for years. He did a little more of that than usual, and I’m happy to say that that plan worked out great.

Highlights from Indy? I’ll tell you that the first three songs — “Little Paper Birds,” “Dropping Houses,” and “The Great Divide” — were all absolutely solid. The first of those took on a mellower character than if there had been all ten knees onstage instead of eight, but it worked well, as it often does, as a “let’s settle in” opener. “Dropping Houses” sounded more like Led Zeppelin — a compliment, believe me — than I’d ever heard Wussy before, and “The Great Divide” drove hard. But, seriously, those three were just a little warmup for what followed.

“Donny’s Death Scene” is one of my favorite Wussy songs. Yes, it’s all about Donny from The Big Lebowski, and it just hits all the right sweet spots — a killer lead vocal from Lisa and Chuck melting minds with his guitar. Click here if you want to see them perform it together a few years back as a duo. The version in Cincinnati? Travis decided that melting minds was for chumps and opted to destroy worlds instead. That song absolutely roared.

I thought it was cool that the band did a Chuck song — “Rainbows and Butterflies” — but I have to admit that it taught me that a Chuckless Chuck song is not better than a Chuck-present Chuck song. It was good, but if the Indy set had one just “good” point instead of “completely fantastic,” it was that moment.

But then, good god…. The four-song run that closed the set was just staggering. My inquisitive standing pal looked over after each of those songs and said something like, “They are amazing!” to me after each one. He did not lie.

“Inhaler” is already the best song on Wussy’s Cincinnati Ohio album from 2024, which I reviewed a few months back. Chuck has a sizable vocal part on the chorus of that one but, between Lisa’s powerful lead vocal and Joe’s backup, the four-person version of Wussy absolutely slayed it. And, as a drummer-centric blogger, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention just how much ass Joe kicks on the drums on the live version of “Inhaler.” The studio version is great, but what he’s doing on the live one is substantially more urgent and takes the song to compelling new heights. Nice work.

Next, a new one — as yet unrecorded by the full band, but available here as a Lisa-only demo — called “Indiana Wants Me Too” was so damn hook-filled that it had me singing the chorus to myself for the next 24 hours.

And then there’s “Pizza King.” It’s become their most thunderous, dynamic, perfect live song. Joe’s drums and Travis’ and Lisa’s guitars play off one another as Mark’s bass makes me think “Joy Division” — but the really Who-ish version of Joy Division songs that Peter Hook and his band play these days. Gahhhh. I’m never less than stunned by that song at a Wussy live show, and somehow it keeps getting better. Speaking of the Who, Lisa’s ode to being a teenage Who fanatic — “Teenage Wasteland” — closed the set, as it often does, with absolute anthemic glory, with Joe and Mark fully locked into each other’s playing.

Do I wish Chuck was on this tour? Absolutely. Did Wussy take names, kick ass, and stun me with just how great they absorbed the loss of the big guy and soldiered on? Damn right.

And that was just the opener!

Built to Spill has a long history with a veritable mega-roster of highly skilled musicians in the band. The constant is always songwriter/guitarist Doug Martsch. Lots of fans have their “favorite version” of the band. At one time, I’d have told you that my fave was the five-man/three guitar (Doug, Jim Roth, and Brett Netson) lineup that I saw close a 2012 Philly show with a 20-minute version of “Broken Chairs” that featured each guitarist melting brains with solos that were absolutely awe-inspiring. It was some ungodly/otherworldly mix of the sprawling exploration of Pink Floyd with the grit of Neil and Crazy Horse, and I was blown away.

But they’re even better than that now. Really.

There is nothing like touring incessantly to turn a band into a tightly wound, but improvisationally-sound, machine, and Built to Spill has reached that point. They don’t release a lot of albums these days, but they seem to rarely stop touring, and that’s made all the difference.

See, I’ve never been disappointed in a Built to Spill show ever. Except once. It was 2018 and I don’t know what was up that night, but the band — Doug and two other guys who were solid players, but seemed detached from the proceedings at that point — were, well, kind of dull. They had no fire. I left that show and said, “I think I’m taking a little break from these guys for a while.”

I did that, until one day I saw that Doug had hired two replacement bandmates, Brazilian guys, with whom he recorded a studio album and then toured. I love that album, When the Wind Forgets Your Name, but I missed that tour with the Brazilians because I was out of town. By the time I could catch the band again, there were already two new members of the trio — bass player Melanie Radford from Boise band Blood Lemon, and Teresa Esguerra from Albuquerque band Prism Bitch — and the Brazilian guys were out of Built to Spill, but opening BtS shows with their band Orua. (I highly recommend all three of those bands, by the way, but if I start going on about them, this review will never end :))

Let’s just say that I’ve seen this new Doug/Melanie/Teresa version of Built to Spill even more times than I saw all the other versions put together. That’s how great they are. They’re exploratory and improvisational, but never musically longwinded. Everything is tighter, and the setlists are fantastic.

I particularly have a thing for bands that don’t play the same set very night. Built to Spill seem to be currently drawing on a list of about 50 songs from which you’ll get 18 or so most nights. They are so worth seeing on multiple nights of a tour as a result. The Teresa/Melanie rhythm section is a goddamn joy to watch and listen to. Teresa was a solid drummer when she joined the band and, having watched her Instagram posts about never stopping the learning process and always growing as a drummer, I can say that her mission in those posts has been fully accomplished. She’s killing it. Melanie? She’s killing it too, as one of the most melodic bass players I’ve ever heard. The two of them are spinning webs around each other onstage at this point, and I’m totally there for it. And Doug is such an accomplished guitarist that he appears to be covering about two and a half guitars’ worth of parts at any point. They are a very skilled trio.

So about that Indy show?

The setlist is here. It was… perfect, like all their shows these days. Highlights? All of it, every fucking second, but here are some particulars…. I had used a secret request portal that I know of to request “Spiderweb” and the only mistake on that song was my failing to videotape it even when the keeper of said portal tipped me off that it was the next song. It’s the Built to Spill song that, in its studio version, most sounds like old R.E.M. to me and, as a drummer in an old-R.E.M. cover band, I appreciate that. But live “Spiderweb” has considerably more power. Its chiming guitar hooks are as firmly embedded as ever, but it just rocks more, and Doug takes the solo to even greater heights. The version in Indy was stunning.

Any Built to Spill set that contains “Get a Life,” “Mess With Time,” “So,” and “Stab” — like this one did — could not help but keep me fully entranced. When deciding to request a single song, I had considered every one of those, but opted for “Spiderweb.” As each one was played, I quietly said, “Holy shit,” to myself. They really were playing some of my absolute favorites. One other highlight particularly worth mentioning: the band brought Travis out to play some expert pedal-steel on what is a frequent BtS cover of the Heartless Bastards’ “The Mountain” featuring a Melanie Radford lead vocal that blows away the audience every damn time. This time was no exception.

Was there a dull moment? Nope, just a little collective sadness from the crowd when, at 10:10 pm or so, as the final notes of “Carry the Zero” rang out, it became clear that the local noise ordinance was going to prevent an encore. 16 songs that never let up. What a show. I’m running out of adjectives…. so I’ll keep things shorter for Cincinnati.

Cincinnati, Ludlow Garage, May 17, 2026

I know you have questions…. Like did Mark flip me off again when he walked onstage to start the Wussy set? Yes he did. I again returned the gesture, as one does. Much hilarity ensued again. Were Wussy just as great? They were even a little better. The Wussy set was intended to be the same as in Indy. The setlist looked like this:

But there was briefly weird onstage juju going on in the technical aspects of steel-guitar-land, and, after “The Great Divide,” while Travis did some surgery (or something; I’m a drummer and know little to nothing of these stringed things), Lisa, Mark, and Joe played “Majestic-12” before launching into a fantastic “Donny’s…” when Travis was ready. Then they skipped “Rainbows…” at Lisa’s instruction as a time-saving measure and roared through the rest of the set. The highlights were exactly the same as the night before.

Wussy were, once again, fantastic. Maybe even better than in Indy? Yup, ever so slightly just because the dark, indoor confines of the venue suited their music better than an outdoor stage in daylight, but that’s not even a minor quibble, let alone a complaint. Those were two killer opening sets and I’m thrilled that I saw them both. They don’t play out that often and I’ve managed to see them do four outstanding shows in the last 12 months. I’m a lucky man.

Built to Spill in Cincy? Amazing, once again. Their penchant for different sets each night? Incredible! The Cincinnati set is here, and I believe only five of the 18 songs were played the previous night. That means I saw them play 29 different songs over two nights, and I couldn’t be happier about that.

Particular highlights were “Stab” (always a highlight), opener “Living Zoo,” “Conventional Wisdom,” “Else",” “Goin’ Against Your Mind,” and “Stop the Show” (part of an encore that there was time for that night), along with another Travis appearance on “The Mountain.” But once again, it was all great. Their sets are so well-structured.

I will close by telling you that while clearly I’ve lost most of my objectivity with both of these bands, they truly both consistently deliver at a high level. They’re full of great musicians who are the nicest people, and they play hard every damn time. What more could a rock and roll tourist ask for?

First time I saw Thalia Zedek onstage was 1987. She was fronting the NYC band Live Skull and she was… fucking scary — in all the best ways. I had seen Live Skull once before — in 1986, opening for Psychic TV at a show billed as “an unprecedented event in musical terrorism.” The gig poster for that one was so good that it literally convinced my brother and me to trek from our house at the time in the Philly suburbs to NYC for the show.

At that 1986 concert, Marnie Greenholz was the bass player and lead singer of Live Skull and, quite honestly, I didn’t think Live Skull could get better than they were at that gig. They were powerful and compelling beyond any expectation I had. When I saw they were opening the Sonic Youth show a year later, my only reaction was, “Fuck yeah.” I was going to see Sonic Youth anyway, no matter who was opening; it was the Sister tour fergodssakes. Still… Live Skull as an addition to the bill? Nice. But when Live Skull took the stage, they had a new member from the year before. Greenholz was still in the band and still singing some leads, but the new person — Thalia Zedek — brought a special air of danger to the proceedings. My memory may be off, but I don’t recall her playing an instrument at that show, just prowling the stage like Nick Cave in the Birthday Party and unleashing a primal howl that shook the building.

I was in my twenties back then. I had the musical attention span of a gnat sometimes — and other times not. I dug in deep to bands or artists that blew me away at a live show, and, yet, sometimes I didn’t. I never saw Live Skull again, but I remembered Zedek’s name and thought that I’d pay attention to her next musical move….

That move was to join forces with guitarist Chris Brokaw, drummer Arthur Johnson, and bass player Sean O’Brien to form a Boston-based band called Come. Come released four albums, all between 1992 and 1998. The first two were with that lineup; the second pair swapped in a new rhythm section when Johnson and O’Brien left the band.

Other than to read somewhere that Zedek had a new band by that name, I stupidly missed all that, until 1999 when I went to the Matador Records 10th anniversary gig at Irving Plaza and, while I was there primarily to see Yo La Tengo, I caught a set from Come. They were dark and powerful, and I dug them. I heard elements of the Gun Club, the Blues Explosion, and, yes, the Birthday Party in their music.

Did I immediately buy all the Come records? No, but I did get the first two of their albums. Then the band split up within a couple more years, and I never saw them again, until Saturday night at Johnny Brenda’s in Philly.

27 years goes by in a flash.

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Enter Silkworm into the equation. Back in the early 2000s, I bought a copy of their Lifestyle album. I liked it quite a bit; I recall at the time that, in an absolute case of over-simplification, I described it as: “Pavement with more balls.” It was so good that I bought their 1996 Firewater album and I liked that even more. Did I see them live?

No, in a continuing theme for this piece, I did not. In an awful tragedy, the band broke up in 2005 when drummer Michael Dahlquist was killed in an car crash caused by a woman who was trying to end her own life.

What I only learned later was that Silkworm had a significant pre-Firewater history with guitarist/vocalist Joel R.L. Phelps in the band. Phelps — along with drummer Dahlquist, bassist/vocalist Tim Midyett and guitarist/vocalist Andy Cohen — were the original members, but Phelps left the band in 1994, eventually pursuing a solo career that can only be described as one that inspires slavish devotion in his small, but utterly committed, fanbase.

Truly. I know more than one person who describes Joel Phelps as “my favorite living musician.”

Well, when Steve Albini died in 2025, Silkworm — Cohen and Midyett, with Phelps and drummer Jeff Panall — played a set at his memorial. They enjoyed that time playing together, and so they did a few more shows in 2025. They liked those too, so then they booked a short 2026 tour that included four dates (Philly, D.C., Brooklyn, and Boston) with a reunited Come opening.

I saw the announcement and I was in, with zero hesitation. I’m old enough that “See every show that you want to see now before either you die or that band stops touring” is a governing ethos of my existence. Come and Silkworm, together? Two of my “never quite got around to properly digging into them” bands of the ‘90s (and early ‘00s in the case of Silkworm)? Allow me to make amends, Universe. Fuck yeah.

Let’s talk about that show….

Johnny Brenda’s in Philly is a great venue. It holds 250 people on two levels and there are clear sightlines for almost everyone. This particular gig was, for whatever reason, the one that sold out of the four combined Silkworm/Come dates.

I’ll cut to the chase: it was fantastic.

Every up-and-coming band should take lessons from Come. They’re tight as hell. They do not fuck around between songs. They played 40 minutes — a perfect amount of time for an opening set (unless, like me, you were hoping for even more). Their guitar players are rarely doing the same exact thing; instead, their parts are skillfully interwoven. The bass player is locked in hard to the drummer. And — as is my habit here — let’s talk about that drummer for a moment.

Arthur Johnson is the engine in this band. His dynamics — punctuating the starts, stops, twists, and turns of the arrangements and the rising and falling intensities of a given song — are spot-on, always. I hear a lot of similarities to early Uncle Tupelo in Come’s stops and starts; they hit a chord, along with a simultaneous whack of a crash cymbal and the kick drum, and, just as Johnson grabs the cymbal to mute it, and the amps briefly go silent, all the air gets sucked out of the room. Then… BOOM, back in they go. I live for that shit and they do it multiple times in many of their songs. That approach is powerful on the studio recordings, but live it’s a whole other universe of perfection.

What stood out in Come’s eight-song set? How about everything? Really. They just never quit delivering an A+ clinic on live performance. Zedek’s vocal roar is matched only by the kerranging chord-play between her and Brokaw. But, if you want specific highlights, I’ll give a special note to the driving intensity of “SVK” (Sharon v. Karen), and the slow build of set-closer “Off to One Side.” I caught the latter on video, which you can find here if you want to dig into that.

“I’m exhausted in the best way, and that was only the opener!” I said to a friend between bands.

A lesser band would have been intimidated by that Come set. Silkworm took it as a challenge, and they delivered.

The current lineup of Silkworm — with three lead vocalists taking turns — is truly something special. The set never fixated on one vocalist for long, switching back and forth between their respective songs, and what really blew me away was how on every song — not just the ones with their own lead vocal — Phelps, Cohen, and Midyett dug in hard and played the shit out of each one. Their were no egos to be found.

And the attack… wow. Phelps and Cohen had so many dueling guitar parts that Thin Lizzy came to mind at times, or Crazy Horse. It was absolutely glorious.

The band came roaring out of the gate with “Couldn’t You Wait?” and never let up. I saw a recent Chicago set of theirs described as “all bangers” and this Philly one could wear that description proudly as well.

Like the Come set, the Silkworm show truly was all highlights, but I particularly dug: the way “Couldn’t You Wait?” frantically upped the energy level immediately, how “Insomnia” and “Raging Bull” both eclipsed their already-powerful studio versions, how “Little Sister” and “Don’t Look Back” rocked hard and morphed into nearly classic-rock, and how the extra guitar squall of “Nerves” was nearly punishing. There was something particularly sweet about Phelps helping out on the acoustic “The Bones” that closed the night (see the pic below), and then there was maybe the catchiest song in the entire Silkworm catalog — “Treat the New Guy Right" — the live version of which you can view here if you want to subject yourself to my questionable video/camera work.

I’ll give a special drummer shout-out to Jeff Panall, who took on the formidable task of replicating the drum parts of Michael Dahlquist, whom Steve Albini once called “the most enthusiastic drummer I ever met.” Panall wisely chose to play in his own, somewhat more-subdued style, rather than, say, to pummel the drum kit into submission as I’ve seen Dahlquist do in videos from the ‘90s. But not for a second did I question Panall’s place in the band. He’s doing a hell of a job back there.

What an absolute fucking delight of a show that was: two formidable bands flat-out going for it in a loud, tight compelling bill that the rest of 2026 is going to have to work hard to eclipse. I only hope they both keep at it — touring together or separately — because I (clearly) have a lot of lost live-show ground to make up with both bands.

Since regrouping in 2012, after 13 years away, Greg Dulli and his bandmates — okay, some old ones and some new — have had a hell of a run. Do to the Beast (2014) and In Spades (2017) were outstanding returns to form, supported by tours that have consistently upped the ante even further in terms of energy and attack, and even when the somewhat difficult third reunion album, 2022’s How Do You Burn?, wasn’t quite up to the high quality of its two predecessors, the tour that followed featured a band that was still firing on all cylinders.

Fast-forward to 2026 and there’s a new Afghan Whigs album ready for summer release, a couple of new singles — the solid “House of I” and the absolutely fucking fantastic (more about that later) “Duvateen” — already available, and a “40th Anniversary” US tour that just stopped by one of my favorite Philly venues — Union Transfer.

I’m happy to report that not only have the Afghan Whigs not lost a step live; they delivered a tight, compact, compelling show that was positively punk-rock in its pacing. Hell yes.

(Big thanks to Deb Lengyel who took — and owns the rights to — all the photos in this post, except the one of the setlist. That one belongs to Mike Haller; thanks to him too!).

This time around the Afghan Whigs are, in addition to Greg Dulli, the equally ever-present John Curley on bass, Christopher Thorn on guitar, Rick Nelson on guitar/keyboards/violin/mellotron, newcomer Bryan Lee Brown on drums (replacing Patrick Keeler who is currently in Jack White’s band), and long-time/part-time backup vocalist Steve Myers.

In keeping with a continuing theme on this blog that acknowledges outstanding drumming, I’ll tell you that any concern that anyone might have had that the formidable Mr. Keeler might not be adequately replaced on drums when he left the band can be put to rest. Bryan Lee Brown is taking names and kicking ass back there. Sure, “Parked Outside” is an easy “warmup the limbs” opener, but the second song — “I’m Her Slave” from the Congregation (1992) album — has a main riff in 13/8 that will fully and completely fuck you up if you’re a drummer not entirely on top of your game. BLB ripped through that one with power and ease, and I knew immediately that he was up to the job of drumming for the Whigs.

The rest of the band? Someone — Dulli, I suspect — made the call that this tour was going to be no-frills/all-killer/no-talking-filler affair, and damn if that approach didn’t fully suit the moment. The last thing you want on a 40th-anniversary tour is a band that moves so slowly between songs that the breaks start to seem as long as the songs. No danger of that here. The Whigs tore through this set. Mere seconds separated most of the songs.

As is fitting to a retrospective/anniversary tour, the setlist drew from every album of the Afghan Whigs’ career that you can readily get your hands on these days (only their hard-to-find debut Big Top Halloween was ignored).

Highlights? It truly was all great, but the tightly-wound “I’m Her Slave” particularly made me think, “Well, damn, they’ve still got it,” early on. Similarly, the first of the new singles, “House of I,” propelled by Brown’s tom work, easily surpassed its studio version for intensity and drive. Speaking of improving on the recording, “Catch a Colt” was a real revelation in that regard. I told you before that How Do You Burn? is my least favorite of the recent AW albums, but the live take on “Catch…” from that record was fantastic, and it’s sending me back to take another listen to the whole album. (Perhaps a reevaluation is in order? Could be).

More predictably, four of my favorite Whigs songs were absolute standouts in the Philly set. “My Enemy” was the seething beast it always is. “Demon in Profile” has been a fixture in the band’s sets since the In Spades record was released, and with good reason. It’s like a great lost Stax single come to life decades later. The live version has always smoked and smoldered at all the right spots and the Philly version was no exception. Then there was the finest moment of the whole show for me: the double-whammy of new single “Duvateen” straight into “Summer’s Kiss.”

“Duvateen” is the best thing the Whigs have done since In Spades. Lyrically, Dulli is reflecting on mortality as Rick Nelson’s piano shapes the verse before the chorus punches in hard. I usually shy away from the tired old term “mature” to describe lyrical content, but, well… shit, Greg Dulli’s gotten all philosophical on us in his early sixties and I’m here for it. Sending that one into “Summer’s Kiss” — the most Who’s Next-worthy song in the Whigs’ catalog — was a stroke of setlist-creation genius. The studio “Summer’s Kiss,” on the Black Love (1996) album, is great — my favorite Afghan Whigs song if forced to choose — but in the reunion years of the band, Patrick Keeler always gave it a needed boost of Keith Moon on the drums, an approach that I’m happy to say Bryan Lee Brown is not only continuing, but doing with expert skill and dynamics. Dulli even worked in a few Townshend windmills, as one does. The only thing missing was a Daltrey microphone-swing. It was all… perfect.

It wasn’t just the pacing of the set that made this gig really stand out; the band just truly seemed to be having a great time, and there is nothing like a band that is clearly enjoying the ride. Greg Dulli made sure to shout-out both the Sixers (“Sixers, beat the fucking Celtics, please?”) and the Khyber Pass Pub, along with 15-years-gone Philly punk legend Mikey Wild (“We played this one” — “Son of the South” — “for 20 minutes at the Khyber Pass back in the day. We smoked all our cigarettes, smoked all Mikey Wild’s cigarettes….”). And the band introductions at the end included heartfelt thanks to John Curley for being around for every twist and turn of the Whigs’ tenure, and to Steve Myers, who has been a frequent fixture at their shows since 1996.

Simply put, the Afghan Whigs still “got it,” and all the reasons why were on full display in Philly on Friday night. Keep the reunion going, gentlemen.

They did not disappoint. Let’s Active brought harmony-filled power-pop, including a stunning version of Big Star’s “Back of a Car” that inspired me to track down that band’s then-hard-to-find discography, a decision I never regretted. And the Hoodoo Gurus? They did exactly what I expected: played an amped-up set full of originals that reeked of both ‘60s garage and power-pop influences. Their debut album, Stoneage Romeos, just released in the spring of 1984, was on full display and their live set introduced just a little extra distortion and grit to the proceedings. It was a stunning night of music.

More recently, I got in a conversation that music-obsessives are undoubtedly familiar with: the best debut albums ever. I started listing my contenders and realized that Stoneage Romeos was fighting hard for inclusion, and it’s enough of a dark-horse candidate amidst all the more predictable choices that I thought I’d give it a spin here in the 6 AM Record Club and tell you just why I love it so much.

First off, let’s briefly discuss which version of this album I’m discussing — the Aussie original or the American one. The songs on both are the same, but the song order is considerably different. That’s the Aussie cover above, and this is the American one:

I think the Aussie album cover is clearly better, invoking trashy/absurdist/chic ‘60s films like:

And, as we’ll see, trashy absurdist ‘60s chic is exactly the currency of this first Hoodoo Gurus album.

But the track order? I actually like the American one a bit better, but only for a simple reason: it’s what I owned and listened to for nearly 40 years. Familiarity, and all that. But to keep things as uncomplicated as possible, I’m going to play, and discuss, the Aussie version here because it happens to be the one that is most readily available on streaming services, as well as in the version physical product released in 2024 when the album was remastered and reissued worldwide for the album’s 40th anniversary.

So let’s go, or, as the band would say, “Let’s all turn on.”

History Lesson (Part 1)

Although Stoneage Romeos wasn’t released until 1984, the band had already been around for a few years. Le Hoodoo Gurus (yes, the “Le” was in there at first) began in 1981 in Sydney, but three of four members at the time had roots in the Perth underground, far away on the western coast of Australia. Guitarist/vocalist Dave Faulkner and drummer James Baker had spent a brief time in the Victims, whose “Television Addict” occasionally gets covered by the Gurus to this day, and Baker and guitarist Roddy Radalj had been in the Scientists together. Guitar player Kimble Rendall came from Sydney punks XL Capris.

Wait, you say… three guitars? Who was playing bass? No one was playing bass in Le Hoodoo Gurus. They got a lot of questions about that fact. They got so sick of the questions that they even wrote a song about it. More about that in a moment….

That version of the band released a 1982 Aussie single called “Leilani” about a woman sacrificed to a volcano to appease “the gods” while her lover helplessly watched. Very “One Million Years B.C.,” eh? Around this same time, changes in the band were afoot…

History Lesson (Part 2)

By the time the “Leilani” single was released, Rendall had left the band. He was replaced by (gasp!) a bass player named Clyde Bramley. Shortly thereafter, the “Le” was dropped from the band name, and then Radalj split, annoyed at Rendall’s departure, and he was replaced by guitarist Brad Shepherd, who had spent time with Bramley in the Hitmen. The Stoneage Romeos lineup of the band was complete (although by the time I saw the band on their first U.S. tour in late 1984, drummer Baker had been sacked in favor of Mark Kingsmill).

Stoneage Romeos

The beauty of recording a debut album often is that a band has a wealth of material from a few years to draw upon. The Gurus were no exception. Stoneage Romeos includes a remake of “Leilani” that absolutely blows away the original single version with more grit and intensity (particularly from the guitars) and better production (Bramley’s yell of “Ungawa!” at a critical moment is particularly hilarious and… perfect). They also recorded three other songs that dated back to the Radalj days — “Let’s All Turn On,” “Arthur,” and “Death Ship” — each of which were credited to Faulkner and Radalj (along with Baker on “Let’s All Turn On”). Radalj further unwittingly played a part in the lyrics of the absurdly catchy “I Want You Back,” which listeners likely assumed was Faulkner’s paean to a lost love, but no; it was directed at Radalj’s untimely departure from the band.

This album is a veritable kitchen sink full of every conceivable influence this band had. Almost all of those influences date back to the 1960s.

When asked about Stoneage Romeos in connection with the 2024 anniversary edition of the album, Dave Faulkner said, “When we were in the studio making Stoneage Romeos we felt like kids in a candy shop, throwing all manner of instruments and ‘ear-ticklers’ into the mix as we attempted to squeeze all our musical influences on to one album. It got a bit unhinged at times but producer/engineer Alan Thorne kept a cool head and a steady hand. Together, we captured something special and it still sounds great to me.”

It certainly does. Stoneage Romeos is full of Nuggets-ish garage rock, edgy power pop that sounds like “Shake Some Action”-era Flamin’ Groovies, even a tribute to the Cramps, plus references in the album title and credits/thanks to ‘50s and ‘60s television (as just one example, “Stone Age Romeos” was a Three Stooges short), and a gloriously trashy feel that screams — quite accurately as it turns out — “I bet this band absolutely kicks ass live.”

And here’s the thing: this album never stops being great, from start to finish. They “go big” on the opening “Let’s All Turn On,” listing influences — musical and otherwise (“Who wears short shorts? We wear short shorts!”) left and right in a high-speed, catchy-as-hell blast. Then “I Want You Back” works that groovy/Groovies vibe. And then there’s “Arthur.”

Remember back when I told you the three-guitar version of the band had gotten so tired of questions about why they didn’t have a bass player that they wrote a song about it? That song is “Arthur,” and once again, they “went big,” creating an entire story of how their bass player — the namesake of the song — died in a car crash and “no one could take his place,” so they plowed onward with three guitars. It was all complete fiction, and all brilliant. Were they troubled about including it on an album where they clearly had a bass player at that point? Nope. Good thing. It’s a standout on a record full of classics.

For pure unbridled homage, it’s hard to beat “Dig It Up” — a song so Cramps-like that you expect Lux Interior to make a vocal appearance — and for pure lyrical genius amidst a hook-filled rocker, “Tojo” quite possibly takes the first prize. It was years before my Yankee self figured out that the “Tracy” referenced in the “Tojo” lyrics wasn’t an “angry” woman in the “bad mood,” that Faulkner sings about, but a tropical cyclone that devastated the northern city of Darwin at Christmas 1974 (“Tracy, won’t you listen this is Christmas! Don’t you go. David, believe me, I wouldn’t miss this for the world. I’ve got to blow”), and that while World War II Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo “never made it to Darwin,” Cyclone Tracy certainly did (“That year Santa never came”). The Japan/WWII themes continue in “I Was a Kamikaze Pilot” (“They gave me a plane, but I couldn’t fly it home,” so the pilot in the song lives happily on an island where he landed the plane after engine trouble). And the garage-rock references that started back at the leadoff track on the album return in “In the Echo Chamber” where Faulkner is kidnapped by a mad sound scientist (“It was like a Phil Spector nightmare”).

But the band’s garage influences occasionally take a breather too. The power-pop side of the band shines with gorgeous melodies unadulterated by fuzz and distortion on both “Zanzibar” — where the protagonist goes on about that Tanzanian destination before revealing that he’s never actually been there, and yet also doubts the veracity of the person he’s been speaking to (“I have never been to Zanzibar. I always thought it was too far. You’re not who you say you are”) — and on “My Girl” (who, it turns out, sadly doesn’t love the singer “at all”).

While all four musicians on Stoneage Romeos shine in their respective roles, I’d be remiss in my duty as a fellow drummer to fail to enthusiastically note that James Baker’s drumming on this entire record is a perfect fit. He’s a bit of a caveman — in the best way — always taking a simple/direct approach and, really, anything flashier here would be absurd. On Stoneage Romeos, Baker drums like a combination of the groove and swing of Hal Blaine backing ‘60s girl groups, the buzzing simple energy of Marky Ramone, and the tribal thump of Teresa Nervosa and King Coffey. He always played the catchiest, and most obvious, patterns, and it’s fucking fantastic every time. Every Gurus drummer that has followed him has been absolutely compelled to play Baker’s Stoneage Romeos parts just like he wrote them, because nothing else would work as well. Mr. Baker left the building in 2025 and the musical world misses him profoundly.

If I haven’t made it clear already, I love the Stoneage Romeos album unconditionally. It’s more garage-rock than later (also fantastic) Hoodoo Gurus releases, but it also has loads of gorgeous, catchy power-pop. The album incorporates an enormous range of references — lyrical and musical — which somehow avoid being a confusing hodgepodge and instead seem like pure unadulterated genius at every turn. Stoneage Romeos truly is one of the best debut albums ever recorded.

— Warren Ellis (violin, keyboards for Dirty Three), on the Scared to Dance podcast, episode 8, January 15, 2026.

All color photos ©2026 Steve Kirsch/ All B&W photos © 2026 Kristin Thomson

With that quote, Warren Ellis somehow neatly wraps together all the elements of the Dirty Three live experience. He and his bandmates — Jim White on drums and Mick Turner on guitar — create powerful art that randomly combines some of the poetic (albeit of the instrumental variety), the savage, the sacred, the profane, the funny, and the deadly serious. And they go out of their way to leave the boldest of impressions. A Dirty Three live show is quite unlike a concert from anyone else.

Sure, you can find some common ground with other merchants of instrumental indie rock — Godspeed You! Black Emperor particularly come to mind — but no one sounds just like Dirty Three.

I learned that fact for the first time slightly more than 30 years ago at a Philly Sonic Youth show, which the Dirty Three opened. I didn’t know who they were at the time, but I was impressed. It’s tough to hold a crowd’s interest when the opening act is instrumental, but they managed that feat well. They were touring their dynamic, powerful self-titled first album, and their substantial sonic attack was interrupted only by Warren Ellis’ between-song banter. He looked even more out of place in 1995 with the very same “I have just stumbled out of Jethro Tull circa Songs From the Wood and I do not give even one small fuck” look that he sports today, and, as I recall, he didn’t announce a single song with the correct title back then — instead making up long, nonsensical monikers for each one. He was hilarious; they were great.

Fast forward many years, and not much has changed. But there are differences. Most notably, the most recent album — Love Changes Everything (2024) — is considerably subdued. Not completely subdued, by any means, but enough that I wondered how it would translate into a live setting. That was a very silly concern in hindsight.

The current live set consistently opens and closes with a suite of songs that, respectively, open and close Love Changes Everything. In between, the band hits its ‘90s catalog for anywhere between four and seven songs on a given night. That might not sound like a lot, you think? Oh ye of little faith and understanding. This is a band that does not feel remotely shackled by the studio arrangements — or studio lengths — of its songs. The shows on this tour have ranged from slightly over two hours to more than three hours depending on the night, the venue, the crowd, and undoubtedly the whims of the band. In Philly we got a blistering 2.5 hours and no one left feeling robbed.

Each of the players in Dirty Three has a role that is well-defined, but slightly off-kilter from what you might expect if unfamiliar with the band. Jim White is the utter antithesis of a pocket drummer. He’s painting back there, sometimes just adding texture; other times he picks up the entire bucket of sonic colors and splashes it everywhere. His attack is formidable, but so is his restraint when he opts to apply it. Generally, his restraint and attack both surface on a given song. He’s a master of pulling back on the reins when necessary and letting it rip when not. Guitar guy Mick Turner is the secret hero, rarely taking the spotlight, but his rhythm playing is the glue that holds the whole operation together. Ellis is, perhaps predictably, capable of utter mayhem, except sometimes he’s channeling utter beauty, also often on the same song. And make no mistake: they are intently listening to one another, trading glances and cues, often huddled close together, Crazy Horse-style, as if a puck is about to drop at an onstage hockey game. I have a feeling that no two shows on a given tour are quite the same. Collective emotion and mood are driving the bus.

That description of the respective roles of White, Turner, and Ellis is true on album, but it’s considerably magnified at a live show. I went into this one, as I noted, a bit wary of the more subdued newest record. Those songs rely more on piano than many older Dirty Three material, but Warren Ellis’ live piano playing has nothing to do with, say, something uniformly vanilla and awful like Billy Joel. It’s more Thelonius Monk, but figuratively wielding a nail gun or a hatchet when necessary. Not content with the chaos his hands can cause on the keyboard, Ellis’ left heel routinely rose up to crash down on a low note or three. The material from Love Changes Everything in the front part of the set was much more boisterous than the album tracks, and the two songs from that album that closed the show were, to my ears, almost unrecognizable — in all the best ways — from their studio counterparts. That difference is not just Ellis’ doing. White’s attack was often relentless, especially on the show-closers, and even Turner turned up the kerrang of his chords. A somewhat subdued new album? Fuck that. One never got the impression that this was a band about to dwell long on a quiet note.

The older material in the middle of the set — perhaps because I’ve been more familiar with it for a much longer time — was more easily recognizable, but still, in every sense, the band refused to take a complacent path on any of those songs. “Indian Love Song” was a staggering 30 minutes long, for cryinoutloud. And, my god, they played the hell out of it, pausing only for an interlude where Ellis’ hilarious storytelling side took over for a while on a quiet section after which he led the audience in a chant designed to wake both dead rockstars and deceased beloved pets. Yes, really. That part may have gone on longer than absolutely “necessary,” but what the fuck is “necessary” after all? This is the bargain you strike with the band: they will destroy worlds for much of their set, if only you’ll indulge Warren’s garrulous ways on the microphone for a bit.

“Sea Above, Sky Below” was dedicated to Steve Albini, who recorded the Ocean Songs album that it and its set-mate “Authentic Celestial Music” reside on. And right before a stunning “Some Summers They Drop Like Flys",” Warren Ellis waxed poetic on the fact that, in a band where all the members are in their 60s, they try to just enjoy the ride these days, with a firm eye on the ticking clock of life. At another point, he contrasted his ‘90s approach with the present day: “Back then I was on heroin and I’d wake up with a bottle of whiskey and a bunch of drugs on the nightstand; now it’s sparkling water and a bag of unsalted cashews.”

He’s a riot, and also a poet. He also really hates Seinfeld. (The final Seinfeld episode apparently aired on the same night as a Dirty Three gig that was poorly attended as a result).

Suffice it to say that this gig was a keeper. It had been 23 years since the last Dirty Three show in Philly, and it’s pretty likely that if another 23 pass without a return visit, well, they won’t ever return. Let’s hope they’ve got at least one more American tour in them. I’ll be there for sure; if you have any interest in a band that presents a challenging, unique, powerful live experience that so dwarfs their already fantastic studio efforts, you should be there too. Here’s hoping….

As a result, mistakes clearly were made by those big labels (Candlebox, anyone? I didn’t think so), and were prevalent enough that they led me to head almost completely for indie labels for the next few years. Sebadoh, Tsunami, Superchunk, Yo La Tengo, Pavement, and others dominated my listening, and I just flat-out ignored most major-label bands for quite a while.

I avoided some pretty mediocre music that way, but I also missed some serious keepers that took me years to catch up on.

For example: the Afghan Whigs. A hell of a band. I didn’t really learn that fact until 2012 when they staged a reunion, and I saw a video from a show on that tour and lost my fucking mind over my previous foolishness in ignoring them. I’ve since seen them a lot and, yet, still I regret not having been at any of their 1990s gigs.

But there is another shining example: Buffalo Tom. The Boston three-piece had done their first, self-titled, 1989 album for legendary indie label SST, and while technically they jumped to an RCA-affiliated major for their 1990 sophomore effort, Birdbrain, I had missed all that somehow, perhaps because of a review or two that mentioned just how much they seemed like second-tier Dinosaur, Jr. clones to the reviewer(s) in question — a tag that stuck a little harder because of J. Mascis’ involvement with the first two records. Unfair of me to put such stock in reviews, especially over-generalized ones? Absolutely. But that’s what happened. I already loved Dino, Jr. and didn’t figure I needed an alleged soundalike. This was also back in the days when I (and other music fanatics) didn’t have streaming to “try out” a band. It was “read a review and buy the album, often unheard, and hope it’s a good one.” Simply put, I only had so much money to take risks on unknown bands, and Buffalo Tom didn’t make the cut for me at the time, through absolutely no fault of their own. Who made the cut at the time? To name but one, Uncle Tupelo, but that’s a story for another day….

Anyway, in 1992 when Buffalo Tom — still on a major label — released their third album, Let Me Come Over, I continued to miss out on the band entirely. Somehow even their presence that year with a solid song on an album I owned and liked a lot — the vaunted No Alternative compilation — didn’t change that fact. I just never dug in, completely ignoring them throughout the 1990s. Mea culpa, my friends.

Fast forward to 2014 or so. I’m in the kitchen and my wife is playing a mix (either from an iPod or Spotify). Our musical tastes overlap quite a bit, but not 100%, so most of what I’m hearing are songs she’s chosen that I already know and like, and then… and a song comes on that I have never heard before. But I love it. I immediately need to know who it is and what the song is. It’s Buffalo Tom and the song is “Staples” from that third album.

Within a couple hours, I’ve played “Staples” at least five times in a row before letting the rest of Let Me Come Over course through my system for the very first time. I’m so hooked. I’ve never looked back. I’m instantly a Buffalo Tom fan. I explore the whole catalog. It’s great. They’re great, but Let Me Come Over remains my favorite. I can’t believe that my early-’90s anti-major-label prejudice has once again turned out to be misplaced in such a significant way.

All of that introductory blahblahblah brings us to today’s entry in the 6 AM Record Club: Let Me Come Over. What an album!

The truly flawless record — an album with no skip-worthy songs — is a rare breed. But on Let Me Come Over, Buffalo Tom achieved just that. The “Dino, Jr. clone” tag that some reviewers gave the band for the first two albums was unfair as a blanket condemnation, or even a blanket description, but not entirely off-base as a too-pithy synopsis of what seems like the main source for the band’s sound and attack on those records. There were some songs that really stood out on those albums and a few that didn’t. On the other hand, LMCO succeeds as an album with a 1.000 batting average on song quality because the band broadened their songwriting and sonic approaches, but still left a sizable amount of grit.

There are many layers to most of these songs. Acoustic guitars are heard amidst the electrics. Paul Kolderie and Sean Slade at Fort Apache studios removed some of the mud from the band’s sound on the first two albums, yet retained the attack and urgency, amidst songs that don’t always have to rock hard to make an impact. The word “maturity” gets thrown around a lot when describing certain bands’ development, but it’s not always a good thing. For instance, I’ll take the early Replacements over the more “mature” Don’t Tell a Soul/All Shook Down version every time, or the I.R.S. years of R.E.M. over anything more “mature” that followed. But sometimes — and LMCO is a shining example — a more “mature” approach sees a band combine its strengths from its prior output with a new twist that makes everything even better.

Buffalo Tom can be a tough band to describe to a person unfamiliar with their sound, and obviously that sound changed over time. The best comparison I can think of for the LMCO album is “a touch of Dinosaur, Jr. from the early records blended with Soul Asylum from the late ‘80s.” Not the slam/bang more Hüsker Dü-influenced Soul Asylum of their first couple albums — and certainly not the smoother version that came much later — but more of the slightly slowed-down, but still urgent approach of their Hang Time record. It’s an imperfect comparison for sure, but both bands were living in rarefied air at the time songwriting-wise. They retained their grit and grime and raggedy-at-times feel, but the songs weren’t of a singular nature, and there is undoubtedly more polish to the production, yet not a glossy sheen.

I could go track by track through this album and tell you how fantastic each song is, but instead I’m going to focus on two things that really make this record stand out for me: the drumming of Tom Maginnis and the sequencing/order of the songs. It’s an album that hits hard from the outset, and then perfectly ebbs and flows with a song order that really enhances the overall journey through the record.

Tom Maginnis is what I call a “guitar player’s drummer.” His playing is intimately tied to the right hand of guitarist/primary-vocalist Bill Janovitz. Janovitz picks up the pace, or otherwise changes his strumming pattern, and Maginnis takes the bait each time, in the best of ways. He plays with a punch and urgency that takes already great songwriting to the next level. On “Staples,” sure Maginnis initially follows the bass line from Chris Colbourn that begins the song, but when Janovitz starts slashing and burning on guitar, Maginnis ups the dynamic ante himself, never overplaying, always faithful to the song, but powerful as hell. The song begins with a gallop, and while the gallop never relents, it gets punctuated with fills and crashes that are perfectly synced to wherever Janovitz takes the song. It’s a goddamn masterclass in how to enhance a song with drums without running it over.

On the more uptempo rockers — “Mountains of Your Head,” Colbourn’s “Darl,” “Velvet Roof,” and “Saving Grace” — Maginnis continues to employ the muscular approach that he has on “Staples” with great success. Every one of those songs would be diminished with a conservative drummer with a more “tick/tock” vanilla approach. But arguably he’s equally (or even more) impressive on a slower-paced song like “Stymied” — where his purposely rushed snare-hit on the “two” beat brings to mind the jagged attack of Steve Earle (the drummer, not the Nashville guy) on the main riff of the verse in the Afghan Whigs’ “Gentlemen” — or on the album closer “Crutch,” where Maginnis expertly navigates in and out of a standard 4/4 beat with a more laid-back, but never laconic, style.

In fact, the only time Maginnis could ever be described as “laconic” is on Colbourn’s “I’m Not There,” which has an uncharacteristically Stones-y vibe to it, albeit it not a rocking one. Think more “Beast of Burden” than “Brown Sugar.” It’s a great song and, again proving his worth to the entire record (and the band), Maginnis doesn’t seek to impose his will on it. He steps back and just rides the (groovier) dynamics. Then there’s “Porchlight,” where Maginnis’ brief foray into a half-time section in each of the choruses brilliantly provides character to an already great song.

But enough about the drummer from this (obviously) biased fellow drummer. Let’s talk sequencing of these songs for a moment or two. It’s important to note that you could scramble the track order here entirely and the individual songs themselves would still hold up; the songwriting is that good. But, nevertheless, whoever decided to pace this record in the order that the songs appear is a goddamn genius.

LMCO consistently gives the listener just enough breathing space between the faster-paced rockers to never get samey. The attack of “Staples” is followed by the power ballad “Taillights Fade” that is likely the most “famous” song on the album. Then “Mountains of Your Head” rocks hard before the folkier strum of “Mineral” leads right back into the punch of “Darl.” “Larry” (about a beloved cat) is a 6/8 slower piece that could lead the listener to relax just enough to get one’s doors blown off by the blast of “Velvet Roof,” which is so compelling and direct that it doesn’t even need a chorus. “I’m Not There” then detours into the vaguely Stones-y territory I mentioned above before “Stymied” hits hard, but not fast, in an a manner that is just disorienting enough (in a good way) that the relatively straightforward pace of “Porchlight” operates as a fine re-orientation for the listener. “Frozen Lake” — an acoustic beauty that reminds me of the fantastic solo shows that Bill Janovitz played online during the early days of COVID-19 in 2000 — sounds like an album closer, and LMCO would still be a genius offering from the band if it were. But instead, there are still two songs to go, and once again, they are sequenced with skill. “Saving Grace” is a joyful rocker that makes me want to turn up the volume, roll down the car windows, and drive faster than is remotely allowed, and “Crutch” has much of the same vibe as “Frozen Lake” but with the whole band involved in creating that melancholic feel. It’s a perfect end to a fantastic album.

Buffalo Tom is an ongoing enterprise — albeit with a markedly slower pace of album releases and relatively infrequent touring. I got lucky enough to see them in New York in 2017 for the 25th anniversary of LMCO and they played a two-set stunner: one set of all LMCO and one set of lots from the “rest.” Their sound has continued to evolve on post-LMCO releases. Some folks even prefer one or both of the two somewhat more polished albums — 1993’s Big Red Letter Day or 1995’s Sleepy Eyed — that immediately followed LMCO. I love ‘em all, including the albums that they’ve released more recently, but the absolutely flawless content and pacing of LMCO that brilliantly mixes grit, melody, and attack is impossible to beat in my estimation. Listen to them all, but give LMCO some special consideration, if you would. It’s the perfect soundtrack to what Hunter Thompson called “driv[ing] fast on lonely roads with nothing in mind but falling in love and not getting arrested.” Turn it up.

But, a few weeks prior to the tour stop here, I had noticed that they were bringing along an Aussie band called Chimers to open the show.

I had two thoughts, both completely — and comically — wrong as it turns out: (1) “I’ve seen them before! They were there last year at the Merge Records 35th anniversary shows in Carrboro, NC,” and (2) “That’s an unusual choice. They are a jangly-guitar band full of perfect vocal harmonies and, while they were very good when I saw them, I don’t see them as a great match for The Saints.”

I’m a moron.

That Aussie band that I saw in North Carolina?

Quivers. Not Chimers.

I realized my mistake when I read something about Chimers that described them as “a duo.” Quivers are a four-piece. After briefly feeling like an idiot, I investigated and saw that Chimers’ most recent release is an album from 2024 called Through Today. With still a couple of weeks before their show with The Saints, I dug into that record.

That’s when I quickly learned what a perfect opener they’d be for The Saints. Their Through Today record soon became one of my favorite albums from 2024, and today on the 6 AM Record Club, we’ll explore why.

The opening song on Through Today — “3 am” — was also the lead single from the record, and it accomplishes two things with ease. First, it perfectly sets the tone for the rest of the album, defiantly declaring that this is the band’s sound, so if you love this one, you’ll almost certainly love the rest; if not, seeya, pal. Secondly, it grabs the listener by the throat immediately, demanding attention.

There are many ways to start an album. Chimers chose to do it dramatically. Imagine you’re standing in front of a heavy door. It’s closed, and you can’t hear a thing from the other side. You open it quickly and boom! The sound of a freight train thundering past just a few feet away overwhelms you. Opening that door…. That’s how “3 am” starts. No hesitation. No clever riffing from a single instrument before the band kicks into gear. Just 0-80 miles per hour in one moment. (A brief note: if you click that link to the song above, which is actually to the “3 am” music video, at the very beginning you’ll hear an engineer talking about “take one,” followed by the click of drumsticks. None of that is on the album. The album version begins at 0:06 on that link. Boom. Good call).

Perfectly represented by “3 am,” Chimers’ sound is simple and brutally effective: shouted/expressive lead vocals (but often slightly buried in the mix), clanging guitar, and pounding drums that are expertly synced to those guitar parts, bringing to mind no drummer more obvious than Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth. Add some critically-placed stops and starts — ala early Uncle Tupelo — and the listener is presented with a powerful formula that the band rarely abandons over the course of the 33-minute album. This album punches fast, hard, and nearly unrelentingly.

The guitars are played by Padraic Skehan, an Irish emigrant to Australia. His wife/musical partner, Binx, is that Steve Shelley-esque drummer. They both handle lead vocals, but Padraic does the lion’s share of those. However, on “3 am,” Binx jumps in for a rare lead-singing stint on the bridge before the last verse. They trade vocals a bit on that final part, and like any good single, the song ends by 2:25 or so and leaves you wanting more.

I’m a drummer, so I’m going to dwell on Binx’s playing a bit more, because I’m so damn impressed with how she so confidently and urgently turns what are already very good songs into great ones. Her playing here is almost all accents and patterns rather than a lot of fills, and those accents — sometimes floor/snare and more often crash/snare, always with a very active kick pedal, fit like puzzle pieces with Padraic’s beautifully kerranging chords. This isn’t King Crimson and Binx smartly doesn’t try to make it such, instead playing to and emphasizing the in-your-face strengths of each song. It’s all punk rock as hell, but Padraic lets up on the guitar assault at times just enough to provide sonic breathing space to make the critics — and me — put the word “post” in front of “punk” to describe it. Through Today is plainly more Fugazi and Burma than Stiff Little Fingers, but not all that far removed from SLF either.

I could go track by track through the entire record, but my metaphor and adjective generator might go on the fritz and crap out before I’m finished enthusiastically raving about all the songs. Instead, I’ll just hit the highlights of what follows “3 am,” but really: they’re all highlights. Chimers are so fucking good at what they’re doing here.

“People Listen (To the Radio)” contains two parts that distinguish it from the rest of the record while still fitting into the tight, intense flow of the album: (1) a meandering, atmospheric beginning that lasts for 25 or so seconds before the band’s trademark pummeling delivery launches, and (2) a skronky blast of saxophone on the solo/bridge, by Kirsty Tickle of the band Party Dozen, that when played over the already formidable roar of the band, briefly brings to mind the Stooges’ “1970” in the most pleasing and chaotic of ways. Didn’t Lester Bangs say, “The capital of Australia is Detroit” (or was that someone else)? Anyway, an Aussie band with a Stooges angle is never a surprise, but always welcome.

At only 1:46, “Generator” is “the short song” and it does just what you want “the short song” to do on an album: be a melodic-as-hell earworm and leave the listener wanting more. Mission accomplished.

When I first heard “Gossip,” the part of my brain that has taken over the job of writing setlists for every band I’ve ever been in over the past 45 years thought: “That would be a hell of a set opener.” Apparently whichever member of Chimers is writing the setlists agrees. They opened a lot of shows with that one on the recent US tour and a quick listen tells you why. “Gossip” has a long, nearly one-minute, opening section of guitar, and then guitar and drums, before the main riff — and Binx’s frantic, fantastic drum part — begins. It’s the polar opposite of the concise approach of “Generator” or “3 am” by giving the listener a long time to acclimate. It even has a bit of a false ending at the three-minute mark, and then slams back in for the lengthy coda. If forced to choose, I’d call it one of the very best songs on a nearly perfect record.

“Shadow Boxing” is a bit of a sleeper on the record. It sits between “Gossip” and my absolute favorite song on the album, “Glossary” — which we’ll get to in a second — and so I probably ignored its merits early on in my listening, but god, it’s a keeper, from its driving tempo to a slightly start/stop Uncle Tupelo feel in places to a genius “heartbeat” pause on the kick drum by Binx near the end that could be the death knell for the song, but nope. They have another 15 seconds of flat-out bashing to do. Compelling fucking stuff, and I could wring their necks for not playing it live when I saw them. (Kidding! But I do wish they’d played it).

I’ve probably walked around with “Glossary” embedded on repeat in my brain for more days in the past three months than any other song by anyone. Really. Indict me for being a sad sucker for loud/soft juxtapositions, and I will plead guilty immediately, Your Honor. “Glossary” has all that. It’s a genius exercise in dynamics and slashing guitar chords. The urgent drum pattern changes up for the coda, but doesn’t lose a bit of intensity, and then there’s even a stray “Whoa!” yelled by Padraic away from the mic on one of the stops toward the end of the song. I love that shit, all of it. It’s the best song on the album.

“An Echo” is not only Binx’s chance to sing lead, but it’s a true diversion/departure for the band. The trademark attack of the rest of the record is gone on that one in favor of a something that sounds like I’d imagine the Dirty Three would with vocals. There’s a fiddle played by Jordan Ireland of the band The Middle East that gives it all a tinge of Appalachia, and even a looseness to the playing that is the antithesis of the rest of the record, but that difference really works to make “An Echo” not only a fine song unto itself, but a brief palate-cleanser of sorts.

Back to that trademark sound, the album closer, “Common,” is another stunner that the band doesn’t seem to play live very often, and I’ll boldly make the suggestion that they need to change that decision. At a whisker over four minutes, it’s the longest song on the album, and, much like “Gossip,” it involves a build into a frenzy of an anthemic guitar-driven finish. Whoever made the call to put this song as the final track made an ace decision. It just works in that position better than any other song on this record would.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a tip of the hat to Jono Boulet, also of Party Dozen, who engineered the album, and to the band members and Tim Pittman who produced it. Having seen a barnburner of a set from Chimers in Philly when they opened for The Saints in November 2025, I can attest that more so than Chimers’ first, self-titled record, Through Today nearly completely captures the live sound of Chimers.

I’ll fess up that I’m usually a wee bit skeptical at the outset of two-piece bands, particularly live. In my estimation, most guitar/drums duos need a bass player, or at least another guitar, to provide that critical bottom end, but that’s not true of Chimers. Unlike so many of those bands, the word “thin” would never be used to describe Chimers’ live sound. As a drummer, I won’t pretend to understand what sorcery and alchemy Padraic is invoking to get a guitar sound that is covering the low and high ends of everything so well, and just flat-out roaring to a degree that the band doesn’t lose an ounce of their sonic impact in a live setting. But he’s doing that job well.

You know that absolutely ecstatic feeling you get when you discover a new-to-you band that just fires on every cylinder and manages to give you a jolt of electricity every time you play their music? That’s what this Chimers record does for me. It’s a rare accomplishment to create something where that visceral impact is so fully realized. Here’s hoping they keep doing that, over and over for a while.

Oh, and yeah, here’s hoping they come back to play Philly again fucking pronto too, but I realize that’s a big ask. Wollongong is a long way away.

Ron Peno died in 2023 after a years-long struggle with esophageal cancer (and Welsh himself is being treated for lung cancer as of the writing of this piece), ending the long run — sometimes interrupted, but never forgotten — of The Died Pretty. Between 1986 and 2000, the band released eight studio albums. All are worth your while, but the absolute standouts for me are their debut, Free Dirt, and their fourth album, Doughboy Hollow. Much like the two Scrawl albums that I wrote about recently, these two records are both so good, and yet so different from one another, that it seemed criminal to write about one without letting you in on the treasures of the other. The 6 AM Record Club is in session, with two albums. Let’s dig in….

When the Free Dirt album was released in 1986, the band were already well-versed in creating some fantastic material. Not only had Ron Peno co-written the legendary “Igloo” during his short time in the Screaming Tribesmen in the early ‘80s, but The Died Pretty had already released three notable singles themselves (“Out of the Unknown,” “Mirror Blues,” and “Stoneage Cinderella”) plus an EP (Next to Nothing) that had garnered some substantial critical buzz, with sizable references to the Doors as well as to the New York punk scene of the '70s. But while those earlier Died Pretty releases involve great individual songs, Free Dirt is the creative zenith of the band’s early years because of the cohesiveness of the overall album. It truly feels like a carefully-crafted, unified statement. And what a statement it is.

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I’m going to take a few-sentence detour for a moment to tell you that the version of Free Dirt that I’m talking about here is the original 1986 Aussie pressing. It starts with “Life to Go (Landsakes)” and ends with “Through Another Door.” Later versions flipped sides one and two for U.S. release. Either track order is just fine and the songs are the same on both, but the very first time I heard the album was the original Aussie version, so let’s go with that. For what it’s worth, at least over on the evil empire at Spotify, the current version of Free Dirt follows the Aussie order, and then adds a boatload of other material, including live songs, the early singles, and the Next to Nothing EP.

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I have a bit of Jeffrey Lee Pierce comparison to make when it comes to Ron Peno. You might recall that I told you in my recent piece on a Gun Club album that I love when JLP sings a subdued verse and then absolutely soars on a chorus? Ron Peno does the same, but arguably with even more swagger than JLP normally had.

And swagger and swing is how Free Dirt begins right from the start. “Life to Go (Landsakes)” begins the album in epic fashion with drums that lead the band into a deliberate, but forceful and, yes, swaggering groove that they work for the entire song. From the beginning of the band, The Died Pretty had distinguished themselves from some of their guitar-heavy peers in the Aussie scene at the time by adding keyboards to their attack, but not backing off the guitar firepower one bit. On their earlier singles and the EP, those keys were almost always an organ, but on Free Dirt there’s piano as well, and on “Life to Go (Landsakes)” that piano adds an almost Americana vibe. Peno sings the verse in a low-register, almost spoken, and then howls on the chorus. The effect is powerful and the rest of the band follows Peno’s dynamic lead, culminating with a paint-peeler of a solo from Brett Myers and extraordinary drumming from Chris Welsh that both lead into Peno’s final chorus. “Life to Go (Landsakes)” is a fantastic, cinematic way to begin a record.

That formula worked so well on “Life to Go” that the band nearly repeats it, just without the prominent piano, on the next song, “Just Skin,” with equally spectacular results. Peno lowers the attack on the verse, and lets loose on the chorus; the rest of the band rides that wave. Having described Myers’ previous solo as a paint-peeler, I’ll just say that the three-plus minute one that closes “Just Skin” takes whatever several steps are past paint-peeling. Ron Asheton and Andy Gill would both be very proud.

Side one of Free Dirt closes with two songs that seem like cousins, for a while. “The 2000 Year Old Murder” works a quieter vibe to great effect, and it’s that same quiet approach that begins (and ends) “Next to Nothing,” but there is where the similarity ends, because the middle section of “Next to Nothing” is, seemingly out of nowhere, a tribal blast that evokes the Stooges on “1970” or on the title track of the Fun House album. It features all of Brett Myers’ guitar pyrotechnics on the solo, but with a gloriously chaotic sax joining the party. “Next to Nothing” is exhausting in all the best ways. What a song to close an album side.

Side one is so perfect that side two of Free Dirt has a lot to live up to, but the band acquits itself well, albeit often quite differently than on the first side. “Blue Sky Day,” along with “Round and Round,” are driving melodic rockers — a bit similar in attack to the “Stoneage Cinderella” single that was recorded around the same time as the album, but issued separately — pushing harder on tempo than anything else on Free Dirt. “Wig Out” is a waltz-ish stomp that I bet worked even better in a live setting, and it leads into “Laughing Boy,” which harkens back a bit to the wider-open groove/sound of the first side of the record, with Brett Myers slashing chords and a solo around an insistent rhythm section that expertly follows Peno’s vocals that are never less than committed to the cause of powerful dynamics.

For its closing track, Free Dirt abruptly shifts gears on “Through Another Door,” a country rocker that brings a steel guitar and a rare Brett Myers lead vocal into the mix, and somehow — despite bearing little obvious similarity to the rest of the record — the song really works as a finisher. It’s like Whiskeytown dropped by to finish out a Doors/Stooges/Stones collaboration and everyone got along well. Indeed, I’ll lean on the Stones for an analogy: Myers’ vocal on “Through Another Door” provides the same kind of perfect juxtaposition of singing styles that Keef does to Mick when he takes on a vocal like “Happy” or “Memory Motel.” Are those the same as Jagger songs? Usually not at all, but the Stones are so skilled that they make the contrast in vocalists a strength; The Died Pretty work that same vibe perfectly on “Through Another Door,” ending a powerful debut album with an unexpected, but fantastic twist.

How could The Died Pretty ever equal the majesty of Free Dirt, you ask? By heading in an entirely different direction by the time of their fourth album. Let’s talk about Doughboy Hollow.

I read somewhere that Doughboy Hollow is one of Dave Faulkner’s favorite albums, and that makes perfect sense. The Hoodoo Gurus are all about melody and hooks, and so it’s no surprise that the DP album Faulkner treasures the most is this one. Musically speaking, Doughboy Hollow is power-pop glory, a stark contrast to the darker vibe of Free Dirt. Lyrically, though, it’s not all sunshine and lollipops, but some sadder/darker lyrical themes are often so encased in hooks — instrumental and vocal — that the listener could easily miss the darkness entirely the first time through.

Doughboy Hollow begins so differently from Free Dirt that you could swear it’s not the same band. “Doused” starts with a quiet guitar line and then the band joins, with Peno crooning the verse, as it slowly builds into a profoundly catchy chorus, driven as much or more by Brett Myers’ gorgeous backing vocal as by Peno’s lead. I don’t have a clue what this song is about. I can’t find the lyrics anywhere, and… it doesn’t matter. That’s how hook-filled this one is. Eventually, with Myers and Peno trading vocal lines on the coda, the song soars powerfully as anything on Free Dirt, but it takes a while to get there and the journey is well worth it. As an opening statement, “Doused” is as effective as possible to convey that this is not a band to be trifled with and it’s also not an album that is going to sound a lot like The Died Pretty of the mid-’80s. That trend continues unabated through the rest of the record.

Whether it’s the bouncing piano line of John Hoey’s that begins “D.C.”, the almost stadium-rock guitar/drums beginning of “Sweetheart,” or the piano intro to “Godbless,” the songs that immediately follow “Doused” could make you check the cover and the credits to be sure that these are the same musicians as on Free Dirt. And that’s no criticism at all. These songs are fantastic; they’re just operating in a different universe from that prior album. “D.C.” sounds like a love song, which it basically is, but it’s a paean to Ron Peno’s deceased friend David Cox, not a romantic ode. “This is just to say goodbye,” Peno tells us repeatedly in the coda of “D.C.” It’s sad as hell once you’re hip to the context, but, my god, it’s hook-filled.

But remember, this is still The Died Pretty and even if they’re playing power pop, they can still rip a head clean off its body, just done a little differently, maybe more subtlely, than before. The bridge of “Sweetheart” is a fucking masterpiece of tension and release and there are those darker lyrics amidst the sunny melody: “This town has bad dreams, and no one can hear our screams, over and over again” Peno wails on the bridge. And then that “Over and over again” part that you just loved so much? Fuck it. So did Ron, so after Myers plays a brief but soaring solo that has Will Sergeant overtones, Ron Peno sings that “over and over” bridge again — just with more power this time. Every single time I hear it, I’m dead. Dead, I tell you, and we are only three songs in.

Oh, and that quiet piano intro to “Godbless?” That’s about the last truly quiet part of that song. That’s not to say that Brett Myers whips out any of his old Free Dirt/Ron Asheton-isms on his guitar; he doesn’t go that far, but the song does have an overall Who’s Next undertone to it, albeit in the most Australian of ways — with lyrics that reference early-’80s Sydney power-pop masters the Sunnyboys: “So here I am, alone with you. The Sunnyboys? God bless them, and god bless you.”

“Satisfied” has a lyrical theme that isn’t far from the Replacements’ “Unsatisfied,” and it starts off as gently as many of its predecessors on Doughboy Hollow, but eventually grows into a near stadium-esque power ballad, with Ron Peno’s “Ooh ooh oh-oh” echoing over and over at the coda. In fact — obviously, since I’ve already used the word “coda” more times in this piece than ever in my life — killer codas are a frequent theme on the album, amidst all the other hooks. “Stop Myself” is an unabashedly optimistic anthem. “I will not stop myself from trying,” Peno sings with more soaring backing vocals from Myers, and then, with chiming guitar circling all around him, he repeats, “Color my world out there,” ad infinitum in the coda to such an absurd degree that you’ll be singing that one for hours after hearing it. Will the hooks ever stop?

Well… yes, momentarily. “The Battle of Stanmore” is, for me, a brief sonic throwback to “Wig Out” on Free Dirt. It’s much shorter than that one, but it still seems like a song that works ever so okay on record, but really is mostly something to be appreciated live. Having seen a live video of Peno barking “The Battle of Stanmore” through a megaphone, I can assure you that the song works quite well there, but it is a hair out of place on Doughboy Hollow, if you ask me.

From there, the album alternates between two smoother/quieter songs — “The Love Song” and “Out in the Rain” — and two guitar-driven anthems: “Disaster” and the album-closing “Turn Your Head,” the latter of which has another one of those memorable DP codas, with Peno howling “Turn and walk away” with typical power over and over until the song, and the album, fades away.

The Died Pretty are, sadly, no more now that Ron Peno is no longer with us. But let’s never forget just how fucking good they were. The whole catalog is worth exploring, but start with these two strikingly different albums. You won’t regret it. Turn ‘em up.

Finally, fellow-drummer fist bumps and good healing wishes to the legend Chris Welsh. Get better, man. And thanks for all the music.