Jesse Ruins makes pop with a black hole in its heart. It only takes three minutes to breeze through but the impact lasts far longer. Not disposable by a long shot. Airy vocals offset the darker tones pumped out by the murky bassline and burnt-out drum machine. Add to that some barely-thawed synth tones and the cascade of distant bells and you’ve got a track you’ll be dying to take home and meet mom, if it wasn’t for the pitch-shifted backup vocals, which hint at something much darker and dangerous lying just below the surface. (Many serial killers are polite people who keep to themselves and donate to food drives, etc.)

Jesse Ruins – Dream Analysis.mp3

Jesse Ruins Fact Sheet

Name: Jesse Ruins (or Nobuyuki Sakuma and Nah)
Hometown: Tokyo, Japan
Genre: Ophelia’s Waterlogged Mixtape
Fun fact: There is an unexplored homoerotic subtext to Jessie’s Girl, one that will only be fully explored once Prince releases a signature guitar for use with Guitar Hero. Ruins first release was distributed by Tokyo indie label Cuz Me Pain, a fact that makes me feel weirdly wonderful in ways I can’t fully explain. It’s almost like trying to catch a sneeze made of appreciative laughter.

/s/CLT

Hormonal, angular rock with a lowercase “r.” No arena-ready chord packages here. just straightforward, speedy, guitar-driven (but wait! not an actual Guitar! a badass bass player is making all that noise!) post-altrock. Pillow Talk is what happens when the brain tries to parse signals from below the waist. A lot is made about teenage lust and sexual confusion, but for the most part, it’s a whole lot simpler than that. Which complicates things. These are the complications. “He’s staring at his best friend’s breasts.” Sex fucks up everything, making conversations operate at multiple levels while trying to keep the urges at bay and the forebrain forever in pursuit of false leads and tangents. “Why can’t we just say what we like?“

Double Dagger – Pillow Talk.mp3

Double Dagger handle the frustration with tempo shifts and some dominating drumwork. Catchy enough to sing along with and noisy enough to feel liberating, all while still trapped within your own self-inflicted psychodrama.

Double Dagger Fact Sheet

Name: Double Dagger
Hometown: Baltimore, MD  (a.k.a. Home of the Motherfucking Death Set)
Genre: “Graphicdesigncore” (a.k.a. “post-punk,” “not-dubstep”)
Fun fact: If you rearrange the letters in lead singer Nolen Strals’ name, you can probably come up with some different words. Double Dagger have, unfortunately, called it a day, playing their last show on October 21, 2011 at the Ottobar in Baltimore. (I guess that’s not really a “fun” fact…)

 /s/CLT

Dinowalrus has refined its spacier tendencies into a very close approximation of Spiritualized at full strength. Plenty of tasteful organ usage and a slow build to eventual release. Deals majestically with someone using someone else’s drugs, which may also be a metaphor for a failing relationship. Sad but good and (of course), spacious.

UPDATE: Some clarification from Dinowalrus themselves:

@TimCushing That track Actually isn’t on da new album: consider it a between-album B-side–a lament to bad reviews and bandmates quitting!

— Dinowalrus (@DINOWALRUS) February 23, 2012

Dinowalrus – Actually.mp3

Dinowalrus Fact Sheet

Name: Dinowalrus (Named after a close evolutionary cousin of the halfsharkalligatorhalfman.)
Hometown: Brooklyn, NY
Genre: Open-ended rock.
Fun fact: The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world John Mayer existed. If this whole prog/space/rock thing doesn’t work out, Dinowalrus will start cranking out RATT-esque sleaze metal.

/s/CLT

Maybe I’ve been looking in the wrong places, but it’s tough as hell to find pure, unapologetic club music. I mean the kind that hasn’t been watered down into 4-minute radio friendly unit shifters or defanged by a slew of irrelevant guest vocalists in an attempt to cross over into the mainstream.

Gesaffelstein – Opr.mp3

Gesaffelstein does not fuck around. This is peak EDM. This is going-out-of-your-head-at-2-am. No concessions are made for those skirting the edge of the scene or for the “I came here for the drugs” attendees. This is for those who love tough beats, electronic noises and having their perception altered by nothing more than pummeling percussion and stuttering strobe lights. If you like this sort of thing, than you’ll love Gesaffelstein. NOT FOR TOURISTS.

Gesaffelstein – Viol.mp3

Compares very favorably to Simian Mobile Disco’s brutal return to form on Delicacies. Everything Gesaffelstein touches turns into a techno purist’s dream. Exclusionary by design but a lovingly crafted care package to the faithful.

Gesaffelstein Fact Sheet:

Real name: Archduke Mike “Levy” Gesaffelstein
Hometown: France (I’m American — this is how Europe works for us)
Genre: Fine-ass techno.
Fun fact: The built-in spelling check highlighted nearly a third of the words in this post. Gesaffelstein always performs in a suit.

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Smash – Sanctuary’s Over (The Doors vs. the Cult).mp3

Ian Astbury of the Cult always wanted to be Jim Morrison. The nonsensical poetic ramblings. The appropriation of Native American imagery and knick knacks. The impossibly tight leather trousers. Smash (who we last heard pinning the over-the-top vocals of Tim Curry to Jet’s inescapable iPod-pushing hit) finally lets him have his way, sort of. She Sells Sanctuary, the pinnacle of the Cult’s musical achievements, plays backup to Jim Morrison’s vocal meanderings, to splendid effect. Rather than being forced to meander by the Doors’ wanky backup jamming, we are instead (thankfully) propelled forward and upward by one of the finest rock tracks ever crafted. The three-note acoustic guitar strum that seems tacked on at first is what really holds Sanctuary together. And She Sells Sanctuary holds Jimbo together, turning him into a Rock Star of the highest order, rather than a drug addled poet with his dork hanging out.

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It’s easy to say calming things like “They’re in a better place now,” or “At least their suffering is over,” when you’re still in the land of the living. We can say these things because the afterlife is the cat in Schroedinger’s box as long as we remain living. But is it a “better place?” And how can we glibly state that someone’s “suffering is over?”

Royal Baths are here to remind us that the afterlife is more likely an unfriendly place, watched over by entities who begrudge the dead their recent life and are unwilling to let the deceased walk an untroubled path towards everlasting peace. Your suffering is far from over:

After death
Have to pass the test

Royal Baths – After Death.mp3

In their hands, this “test” seems like something altogether more diabolical than a simple weigh-in of your trangressions versus your good deeds. And no amount of pleading (“take my body home“) will exempt you from a trial you can’t prepare for. After Death evokes sadness and fear, a crippling combination even for those who still exist in the overworld. Starkly harrowing and reminiscent of a more focused Gun Club playing covers of White Stripes’ covers of obscure early blues classics (you know, the kind that mentioned death pretty much all time). Royal Baths aren’t here to set you at ease. They may offer to take your hand, but they won’t be offering cliched assurance. Just know that at some point, you’ll be on your own.

Royal Baths Fact Sheet

Home: Originally San Francisco, but relocated to Brooklyn, NY for sun-related reasons presumably. (Namely, less of it.)
Genre: According to their Myspace page, it is “Blues.” According to Minor Scratches, it is “Post-Goth” or “Not Dubstep.”
Albums: Litanies (2010), Better Luck Next Life (2012)
Little known fact: A recent study of music criticism discovered that the word “troubadour” and the word “mandolin” are never more than three sentences apart. Lead vocalist Jigmae Baer composes all of the Baths’ lyrics on a typewriter.

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For no apparent reason, the Jesus and Mary Chain have announced their first tour dates since their reunion in 2007. Actually, there are a couple of apparent reasons:

1. $$$
2. Recent re-issue of their entire back catalog.

For fans of the JAMC, this comes as news. It’s not exciting news. It’s not bad news. It’s simply news. Seeing as we’re only a couple of years away from the 20th anniversary of their last good album (1994′s Honey’s Dead), it makes one wonder how much longer a band like this, even as influential as they are, can continue to coast down this slope of goodwill before coming to a complete stop. It also makes one wonder whether or not it’s worth throwing down perfectly good cash money to watch two aging gentlemen replay a back catalog that suddenly nose dives at Stoned and Dethroned, never to recover again. No mention yet as to whether this will lead the Reid brothers back into the studio, but given what the last two albums did to their legacy, even diehard fans have to be hoping that it Does Not.

Then there’s the fact that your idols, like 99% of the rest of humanity, are failing to age gracefully. Jim Reid seems to be holding up well:

but William Reid seems to be well on his way toward morphing into Buzz from the Melvins:

[Compare and contrast]

It’s not as if it’s impossible to stay in shape well into (and past) your 40s. Take a look at Iggy Pop:

Sure, he’s got a face only that only a barren adoptive mother could love, but look at the muscle tone! Thirty years after that man’s death, his grave will hold nothing but a skull attached to 40 lbs of beef jerky. And that’s assuming he’ll die. Frankly, he looks like he’d just beat the shit out of the Grim Reaper and go on to compose a concept album about the whole experience, possibly collaborating with Diamanda Galas or Brian Eno or fucking Bright Eyes for that matter. Anything to confound the expectations of his fans.

The Jesus and Mary Chain don’t need to do this, fiscal reasons aside. There’s nothing to be gained artistically, and if they’re looking for a cost effective solution, they could just use animatronic dummies and Hope Sandoval, thus saving themselves the trouble of letting out William’s leather pants and venturing out into the unfriendly daylight of music festivals. A few headliner spots will pay the bills, but the legacy is long gone and compulsive touring isn’t going to change that.

Then there’s the redundancy problem. There are several bands out there right now doing a better Jesus and Mary Chain than the Chain themselves have done in close to twenty years. Why go head-to-head with your unruly offspring who are doing your legacy proud while simultaneously steamrolling your last two decade’s worth of “contributions” to the pantheon of recorded, feedback-heavy music? There’s nothing to gain here but the chance to see what the oft-used but rarely experienced term “chagrined” means.

Before we take a look/listen to the sonic forces of destruction that have taken the Chain’s game to the next level, here’s a couple of tracks to remind everyone of just how devastatingly good they were. Here’s one taken from their debut, 1985′s Psychocandy:

The Jesus & Mary Chain – Never Understand.mp3

Here’s a b-side in which they turn a George Thorogood track into something somehow slightly more menacing and infinitely more listenable:

The Jesus & Mary Chain – Who Do You Love.mp3

And here’s the last good track they cranked out, from 1998′s otherwise skippable Munki:

The Jesus & Mary Chain – Crackin’ Up.mp3

AND NOW, SIX BANDS THAT MAKE THE JAMC’S CURRENT ZOMBIFIED EXISTENCE REDUNDANT

We’ll start off with the most obvious heirs to the Chain’s distorted, leather-clad throne:

A Place to Bury Strangers

Known as the “loudest band in New York City,” (which doubtless makes them The Loudest Band in the World Not Named the Boredoms) A Place to Bury Strangers have grabbed ahold of JAMC’s legacy with both hands, crafting a Wall of Sound worth of Spector himself, if Spector had been into skull-splitting waves of feedback and basslines so distorted they threaten to weaken any lode-bearing structures within the entire metropolitan area (particularly threatening to New Jersey, as most structures have been crafted out of substandard material, thanks to the tireless efforts of skimming mob underbosses and a generally uninvolved crew of union construction workers).

Built on the back of lead Stranger Oliver Ackermann’s Death by Audio effects pedals, A Place to Bury Stranger’s music doesn’t simply beg to played loud: it downright demands it in a calm but serious tone that lets you know immediately it is Not to Be Fucked With. With a few albums and EPs under their belt, APTBS show no sign of slowing down, dialing back the volume or offering to pay for structural damage/ruptured eardrums.

A Place to Bury Strangers – Runaround.mp3

Crocodiles

San Diego’s Crocodiles may not be as sonically aggressive as A Place to Bury Strangers but they have JAMC’s blend of Velvet Underground-noise-meets-hummable-hooks song structure down cold. Not only that, but they’ve got twice the sexual/animal magnetism live (possibly more than that, given the declining ROI of the JAMC experience). While the Chain were content to stare at their shoes or the drummer or the amps, the Crocodiles give the audience something to look at as well as listen to, with charismatic frontman Brandon Welchez strutting, swaggering and sweating all over the stage. Observe them live below:

Crocodiles – Stoned to Death.mp3

With the obvious suspects dealt with, let’s take a look at some of the undercard contenders:

Stellarium

Possibly the only band on this list to challenge A Place to Bury Strangers in terms of sheer sonic destruction, Stellarium hail from the unlikeliest locale ever listed as “Country of Origin” on a shoegaze CD: Singapore. While the JAMC is an obvious influence, their sonic attack also encompasses the expansive aural fuckery of My Bloody Valentine and the overall “hugeness” of seemingly unrelated bands like King Crimson (at their loudest) and Chrome (at their heaviest).

Stellarium – Vertigo.mp3

While Vertigo provides concise proof of their membership in the Chain gang, their true power is fully unleashed in longer tracks like the 13-minute Dead Nebula, which sounds like it would take years off your life experienced live.

It starts out as a reverb-laden altrocker before suddenly discovering the gas pedal around the 2:50 mark, steadily accelerating before crashing headlong into 50-car pileup made of white noise, somehow emerging on the other side, still cruising at a breakneck speed, covered in flames. There’s a moment of silence starting at the 8-minute mark (that lasts 90 seconds), at which point the track morphs into an extremely fuzzy breakbeat workout, not entirely unlike the coda to My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, the somewhat more melodic Soon.

Ceremony

A bit of cheat, this one. Ceremony is composed of members of Skywave, Oliver Ackermann’s (A Place to Bury Strangers) former band. While not quite as ear-destroying as APTBS, Ceremony still whip up a furious amount of noise themselves. Breaking Up is pure Chainery, bleak lyrics paired with a blasts of distortion. There’s some very nice dynamic shifting going on, occasionally peeling back the layers of fuzz to reveal singular piercing tones of high-contrast feedback. Supposedly a followup to 2010′s Ceremony is in the works, but nothing can be confirmed. Hopefully so, as Ceremony have staked a solid claim to the feedback-laden future.

Ceremony – Breaking Up.mp3

Ringo Deathstarr

Speaking of Texas (and we were, eons ago in the introductory paragraphs: i.e., JAMC is touring, starting with SXSW), Austin’s Ringo Deathstarr have been franchisees of the Jesus and Mary Chain since 2005, not to mention having nailed down one of the most ridiculously cool band names in existence. As is illustrated by Some Kind of Sad, the Deathstarr know their way around the feedback/fuzz/distortion neighborhood, making stops at all things heartbroken or bleakly nihilistic. Also, like their influences, they’ve got a way with buried hooks, the kind that stay in your ear long after the ringing has died out.

Ringo Deathstarr – Some Kind of Sad.mp3

Young Boys

Last, but most certainly not least, it’s the Young Boys, the (yes) youngest member of the nu-Chain. Coming from out of nowhere (thanks to the un-Googleability of their name) with Bring ‘Em Down, perhaps the finest impersonation of the Jesus and Mary Chain yet. While some critics might find this sort of appropriation/derivation to be an affront to the betterment of rock and roll or whatever, the fact is that no one else out there sounded this much like the original, leather-clad, un-tanned, crowd-baiting, bleakly beautiful but catastrophically noisy Jesus and Mary Chain of yore for nearly 20 years, least of all the JAMC themselves. For a fan like me, this was a blast of refreshing past, delivered by the future of the genre.

Several months later and the Young Boys have struck again, offering yet another set of brilliant pop tunes carefully hidden under filthy fuzz and cavernous reverb.

Young Boys – Fell From Grace.mp3

So, the question for the Chain faithful is: do you gravitate towards the new bands giving you what you want but can’t get from the source anymore, or do you fall for the Sunk Cost Fallacy and support the latest tour, entertaining the 1% of your mind that still believes that the JAMC will return to glory once again? My money’s on the new guys. But that’s because my heart belongs to the old guys. If I can’t have them the way I want them, then I’m getting my fix elsewhere. This new wave of bands may owe a ton to the Reid brothers, but as a fan who’s purchased (and re-purchased, thank you very much format shifting!) all the albums and several compilations and singles, I don’t think we owe the Reid brothers anything.

[Oh, lord. PIL is cranking out a new album after a 20-year layoff... ]

/s/CLT

Wise Blood – Penthouse Suites.mp3

Fame and fortune. Artists strive for it and then find out that once they have it, they don’t want it anymore. As Kurt Cobain said in Stay Away, “I’d rather be dead than cool.” Then he went ahead and called his own bluff.

Wise Blood deserves fame and fortune. He cut his teeth on a spectacular set of noise-damaged soul with +. His heart and soul still belong to this genre. It’s as warped as ever even if the joyous cacophony has been dialed back. This new clarity brings his vocals to the fore and gives the emotion a bit more breathing room. + grabbed our ears, sounding like nothing before it. Now he’s come for our hearts, showing us his is slowly shattering and doing some major damage to ours.

He wants the reassurance no one can give him: that wealth and respect are on their way. We could offer this hope, not that he’d believe it anyway. He just wants to hear his internal dialogue echoed by someone else.

“Send your word
And calm my nerves
Just let me know
This world is what I deserve”

These trappings are exactly that: a trap. But to be on top, if only for a moment, might make all the heartbreak worthwhile.

“I still believe I’m meant for these things
But penthouse suites come with much bigger dreams”

The dream is a lie and the top is nothing but empty space housing yet another set of stairs. If the altitude doesn’t kill you, the fall will, like it has so many times before.

“When I think of all the ones that have quit
The ones that believed that they were picked up for this”

/s/CLT

Two from nicely (voted Most Likely To Be Pre-Judged Based on His Last Name):*:

*NOT HIS REAL LAST NAME. You may have been tipped off by the lack of initial caps or perhaps the fact that an alliterative name is generally never a real name. Born Nickolas Laurien, nicely obviously saw he would have an easier time in the entertainment industry if he dropped his unwieldy original name and switch over to something a bit more memorable. To ensure that the name was doubly memorable, rules were laid down (possibly via press kit) that nick nicely was to remain uncapitalized, much like e.e. cummings before him and ADULT. after him (except for the capitalization on the latter). (Pay attention to that period. Detroit electro duo ADULT. insists [via press kit] that the band name is to be capitalized and always {ALWAYS} followed by a full stop, even if you’re in mid-sentence. Fortunately, nicely isn’t a stickler for explicit punctuation.)

nick nicely – Treeline.mp3

Treeline is a bit of jaunty electronica that lies somewhere between Yello and the late 70′s work of Giorgio Moroder. Full of bright tones and ricocheting sounds, along with some vocal mutation. The b-side to nicely’s debut single (DCT Dreams), Treeline sounds as current as anything else out there today, leading us to one of two conclusions: a.) nicely was ahead of his time or b.) today’s music plunders the past with alarming frequency. The correct answer is “yes.” I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Great music is timeless, even if it’s over three decades old.

nick nicely – Wrottersley Road.mp3

Wrottersley Road is a different beast, kicking off with a surf guitar riff, which gives way to a muffled heartbeat kick drum (the kind of heartbeat that would get you referred to a specialist), before fading in and out of consciousness covered in washed out guitar tones and buried vocals and about a half-tonne of reverb, like some sort of Mad Professor Meets the House of Love collaboration that will never actually happen. And that is our loss, although I’ll probably feel it more than most.

/s/CLT

Secret Colours – Follow the Drone.mp3

Don’t mind if I do. (Of course, I’m a bit partial to the Drone [and lesser drones in general] so an invitation to follow is usually RSVP’ed posthaste and with alacrity [often at the same time].) Sounds like the better parts of Primal Scream’s catalog got in bed with the bluesier parts of JAMC’s catalog while sexting the Spacemen 3, resulting in a frenzied bout of metaphoric love-making that clocks in at about 4 ultra-tight minutes, rather than the Spacemen’s usual 9 minutes+ spent trying to locate/stimulate the E-chord/G-spot. Expansive, but concise.

Not from Around Here, or so you would think based on the additional “u,” but oddly enough, Secret Colours are native Chicagoans and, as is the style of the time, also available via robotic overlord Facebook.

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