Fuck Rock 'N Roll, I'd Rather Read A Book

The fact that main Dead Wives honcho Mike Falcone is the drummer in Speedy Ortiz is probably the least interesting thing about the new Dead Wives cassette, which doesn't prevent his really-on-top-of-stuff label from displaying it in at least five different places as soon as you open up the e-mail. Despite all of that (and the fact that they misspell his name, too-- gee, I gotta get me one of these cushy publicists jobs one of these days. Hey, Erick Bradshaw, think it'll work?), it's still a record that's well worth your time checking out, and comes totally recommended on this end. Now, if you could only find a link to order the darn cassette... never mind, I'll just click on one of the spots where it says "Speedy Ortiz", and that should do it. Same difference, right?

Fake Best Of 2013

Dead Wives -

"Honeycrunch"

Bunny's a Swine -

"Barnburner"

Fake -

"Bent"

Solids -

"Blame Confusion"

The Problem Is Not The Problem, The Problem Is Your Attitude About The Problem

Dead Wives just released two insanely great tracks as part of a 5-song demo that they recorded during the blizzard that we had a couple of weeks ago, and then posted the other day on their Bandcamp when nobody was looking. Somehow I get the feeling that Dead Wives would be a lot bigger with the current '90s revival crowd if they had picked a name that was sexier -- like Speedy X or something -- but as it is, they may not have the better name but they've got the better songs. The two new songs are near-perfect (i.e. short, catchy, recorded like total shit) and sound like Sebadoh/Guided By Voices more than ever, so check 'em out here:

Dead Wives, "Pharmacist"


Dead Wives, "Away From View"


One old thing that I've had hanging around is the "Milk & Water" EP, one of the earliest Dead Wives demos dating back to 2007. If I've got my fact straight, which I often don't, this EP was a solo recording effort by Dead Wives frontman Mike Falcone (who has also spent time drumming for Ovlov and Speedy Ortiz, a couple of the aforementioned slightly-more-publicized '90s-type bands, so whatever). I've posted a couple of tracks from the EP before, but I don't think the whole thing has ever appeared anywhere -- not even on the Dead Wives bandcamp or their blog -- and it's kinda neat, so I'm going to post most of it here, minus the untitled final track which is just a noise collage sorta thingy.

I managed to catch Dead Wives' first-ever full band show (and their second one, too) back in 2010, and at the time I thought they sounded a lot like some '90s Danbury bands like Creature Did and Atlas, besides the obvious Dino Jr./GBV references. This demo has a bunch of those Nirvana/Creature Did/grunge-type songs, but you'll also get some curveballs, like "Lofi Daze", which I think is one of the best GBV-type pop songs to ever come out of CT, and "Young Sun" which is a dead ringer for major-label starting-to-suck era Sonic Youth. Even crazier, if I had you to cover your eyes and then played "Wildfire" you'd swear that it was a Damien Pratt song, except that nobody knows who Damien Pratt is. "Crash Landing" and "Mild" were eventually re-recorded for 2011's "Scuz Bucket", and I'll bet by now even Dead Wives themselves probably couldn't care to listen the rest of this, which makes it about equal to everything else that I post on this blog.




Dead Wives -

"Crash Landing"

"MILD"

"Lofi Daze"

"Covered in Shit"

"Yawn"

"Young Sun"

"Wildfire"

I Sure Could Use Somewhere To Drown

Cafe Nine was already packed by the time I got there at around quarter after 10 last night, which is unusual for a show with just two local bands. Turns out there had already been an earlier jazzbo show, and it was just that everybody hadn't left yet (duh, me). Anyway, Dead Wives went on around 11, and holy shit they actually sounded tight this time, or at least relatively tight compared to the two times I saw 'em at Popeye's Garage. Dead Wives' on-stage presentation is so low-key (hence the name, I guess) that they're never going to blow people away, but they've got such great songs that it almost doesn't matter. Their sound is almost directly Creature Did/'90s Danbury-related, though I'm sure they've heard none of those bands, it's just a coincidence and they're really just ripping off Nirvana/Dinosaur Jr./Madonna/Jesus & Mary Chain... Estrogen Highs played a set of almost all new songs, save for a couple ("Alley Man", "Weed Queen", "I Am Tradition", plus maybe one more) and another cover of "Quality of Armor". Mark and Wes traded instruments for a few songs, including the GBV cover if I remember correctly, which had Stefan requesting that "anyone can just grab the mike and sing along if they want to", but nobody did. That's a Popeye's-only thing, I guess. The new album-- "Irrelevant Future" on Trouble In Mind-- is supposedly being mastered by Mikey Young this very second, and should be a corker, very much along the lines of "Friends & Relatives" with a couple of huffers thrown in. Both of last night's sets were being recorded by the Wicked Squid mobile unit, so there was a huge cable running out the back door to an RV parked outside, with a blanket covering the cable on the sidewalk so that nobody tripped over it. So someone eventually is gonna have a decent live set of Dead Wives and all-new Estrogen Highs songs on their hard drive someday, though I know it's not gonna be me.




Estrogen Highs - For All I Know

We Will Become Strangers Faster Now

Popeye's Garage finished off their six-month run with a couple of strong local bills last weekend, including Field Recordings, Ghost of Chance, Dead Wives, and Escalator on Friday. This was actually my second time seeing Dead Wives (a local Danbury band) at Popeye's Garage; the first time was at the "Everybody Gets Rich" show back in July, which might've been Dead Wives' first show ever, even though they've existed as a home-recording project for a while now. The first time I saw them, I thought to myself, "wow, these guys are a dead ringer for a lot of the mid-90's Danbury area bands" (Creature Did, Atlas, Nevertheless, and so forth). The second time around, some Sebadoh, Dino Jr., and Guided By Voices started to creep into the equation, thought that was mostly because I'd since had a chance to listen to some of the demos. And while in person Dead Wives might not exactly bowl anyone over just yet-- the singer/guitarist can play a bit, but has almost no discernible singing ability, and the drummer constantly overplays himself-- the demos are a lot better than I expected. The transparently-titled "Lofi Daze" might be the catchiest song I've heard from any Connecticut band all year, even though it was recorded in '07, and "Crash Landing" is about as close to classic, early Nevertheless as you can get. I'm posting my three favorite Dead Wives tracks here, but there are several more on the two demos I have that are just as good. If any of these tracks interest you at all, you can download the most recent Dead Wives demo, "Demon Priest", in its entirety right here.

As I'd said before, I was looking forward to my first chance at seeing Ghost of Chance live, since their CD has some pretty decent Lilys/Teenage Fanclub-type songs on it (see "Jennifer", posted below, which has a hook and a half), but I think I'll have to see them again in a different room to get a better impression. Layers of sound, two guitars always doing different things, hushed vocals buried a bit in the mix, etc. etc-- it's an approach that works fine on the CD, but in a live setting I found myself wanting for something to grab onto, and not getting it. I'm not writing them off just yet, though, because I'm pretty sure the problem was with my ears, and not with Ghost of Chance.

The Field Recordings have a new album coming out, finally, called "The Elastic Nostalgia"; the photo shoot for the album cover was yesterday, though I don't know how it came out (actually, it's next week-- well, whatever). You can hear one of the tracks from the album ("We Will Become Strangers Faster Now", probably the track I like the most so far) on SoundCloud right now, though who knows how long it'll stay up. Although I don't think anything will top the last time I saw them at Larry's in Danbury, or the CT Indie house show before the cops showed up, their set on Friday was a pretty good example of what this band can accomplish on stage, even if the between-song jokes were kept to a minimum, and I don't remember them playing "Fixed Points" at all. Sometimes I walk around, looking at the merch and stuff, and I miss things like that.

Escalator played last, and their set was actually my favorite one of the night. It was sorta funny to see how the crowd situation was the reverse of what it had been up to that point; for the first three bands, everyone stood against the back of the room, but when Escalator played, everyone there was standing right up against the band (Stefan even crowd-surfed once). I think most people expect Escalator to be doom or sludge, because they're a two-piece, but they're really not; some of their riffs are about as speed-metal as a genuine hardcore band can get, and all of their songs are heavy and punchy as fuck. There's a new recording in the can, I'm told-- recorded somewhere in Brooklyn or NYC if I remember correctly-- and I can't wait to hear it, because when it comes out, I'm pretty sure it's going to be a monster.


Dead Wives -

"Horrified"

"Crash Landing"

"Lofi Daze"

The Field Recordings -

"Automatica"

Ghost of Chance -

"Jennifer"

Escalator -

"Phosphenes"