TERA MELOS

I’m usually hard pressed to pick out my year end albums. Typically I become hyper-obsessed with music I discover that had come from decades earlier, and those become my “favourite albums of that year” and usually my favourite of all time. I dug into my brain and searched through my 2011 music rolodex to find my favourites of the last year. Incidentally I didn’t have to dig very deep which was cool. That  aside, I’d also like to add that it’s always curious to me reading year end lists- almost every blog/website has a copy and pasted list of each other’s albums, and subsequently most individuals lists are very similar (if not, slightly changed) versions of what you read on the Internet. Obviously, and yes, it is very obvious, people like what they like. I would never challenge that, it just seems odd to me. I don’t even know what Ii mean by that exactly, haha. I suppose I’d just like to have faith that people out there aren’t just liking art because someone else told them what they should and shouldn’t gravitate towards. Oh whatever, it doesn’t matter anyways. It’s all just invisible waves floating around! with all that said- HERE ARE THE ALBUMS THAT YOU SHOULD GRAVITATE TOWARDS ;D  (winky face + big smile)

My first introduction to Mike Watt was reading “get in the van,” by Henry Rollins, when I was a teenager. He talks about black flag being on tour with the minutemen and how watt would never shut up in the van and turned him (Henry) on to a lot of good jazz music. Anyhow, 10 years after first reading about the guy, I’m hanging out with him in japan. Tera melos played with Mike Watt and the missingmen in October of 2010, just as mike was releasing this record. “Hyphenated-man” is essentially one long piece of music, broken up into a bunch of little parts. It’s what you’d call a “rock opera.” In this case, it’s very little parts, mostly between one and two minutes. Live, the band performs the entire record- each song, consecutively, back to back. It really was amazing. The individual pieces themselves are wacky, jangly and incredibly punchy- similar to the minutemen’s vibe, but on a whole different level. It’s true- when you tour with watt he “won’t shut up,” and that’s one of my favourite things about him. He also told us that touring with tera melos reminded him of touring with “the flag in the 80’s.” wow, wow, wow.

 I have massive respect for battles. Just a fat pile of steaming respect. Prior to Gloss Drop I’d just thought of them as a cool, interesting band. Then gloss drop came out and before I’d actually heard the album we played a festival with them in Ireland. I got to watch them from side stage. Battles are a “musician’s” band, more so they are a “gear nerd/effect enthusiast/thinking man’s” band. In other words, what they are doing is especially interesting to me because I’m familiar with the creative process that goes into writing/performing that kind of music. So watching a band like this from the side stage is particularly exciting because you get to see the inner workings close up. There’s a lot of “more than meets the eye” (or “ear” in this case) type stuff going on in battles. So that in and of itself really was enough to get me more stoked on them. I bumped into Dave, the bass player, at a dance club later that night and he was just as pleasant as can be. We chatted for awhile about the ups and downs of playing weird music and had a few “real talk” moments. So that upped my stokedness like, another 100%. Then I eventually heard gloss drop and it shot up another 100%. So we’re currently looking at a fat pile of steaming respect that weighs in at about 300%.

 When vince, our original drummer, quit the band a few years ago we were screwed. We didn’t know anyone that could fill his stinky drum shoes so we turned to the Internet and began the epic search of whatever year that was (the details are a little hazy, as I was pretty stressed and uncertain of our future). Eventually we would cross paths with the almighty, moustached man- John Clardy. The rest is history. Of course that has nothing to do with CSS. However, before we met john we’d tried out a handful of drummers and received lots of video submissions. One of the potential, very capable drummers became a good friend of ours. His name is J.R. a couple years later he joined another band. It was a subpop band I had never heard of. I went to see them in San Francisco. They were rad. It was CSS. They’re a band from san paulo, brazil that consists of 4 attractive girls, 3 of which are gay, another gay guy and J.R. as I understand it they sort of developed out of the dance/fashion scene in san paulo and then blew up. I guess they’re easily classified as electro-dance-rock, similar to the sounds, but what sets them apart is their undeniable presence and swagger, that of which could only come out of a foreign country. The last song on la liberacion is called “fuck everything.” At the end of “fuck everything” there is a bit of silence, then there’s a surprise jolt of noise for awhile and finally the singer’s voice- “hi my name is lovefoxxx and I’m 12 years old. I like going to the pub with the gays, I like buying pencils and pens, I like cooking and I like… cookies.” There is no better way to end an album. Love it.

 I kind of cheated on this one. I’d only remembered that Lindsey Buckingham released a new record this year after circuit sweet asked me to contribute to this. When I was thinking about my favourite recent releases I’d realised that I had completely missed this when it came out. So technically I have only been listening to this album for the last couple of days, but LB can do no wrong in my book. It’s interesting to me that you don’t hear more people talking about him. He’s released a lot of good, interesting music since 1981 (all outside of fleetwood mac). He’s an insanely good, unique guitar player and his records always have really cool production values. I guess he’s not as hip to reference as say…

Between bootlegged versions of the original smile, The Beach Boys’ “smiley smile,” Brian Wilson’s “smile” and seeing BW perform the entire album in 2005- I had a pretty good idea as to what the true ”smile” was supposed to be. This record has always reminded me of the Disneyland ride Splash Mountain. If you haven’t been on splash mountain- it’s a log ride that takes you through the story of Br’er Rabbit. He leaves his rabbit hole to find his “laughing place” and Br’er Fox and Br’er Bear are trying to kill him. You travel through different parts of the mountain while song and dance illustrate the story. The ride is designed to have seamless music linked through each scene you visit. “Smile” has a very similar feel. it’s very thematic and weaves a story of American culture together through a weird/humorous maze of pop music. It’s a legendary recording that’s taken 40+ years to see a proper release (up until now it’s been the most famous “lost” album of any band). It’s great to finally hear the way brian wilson had initially intended for it to be heard, or at least as close as it is possible to hear it four decades later. I’d like to add that it seems to be a very trendy thing to name drop the beach boys in reviews of other bands or in describing one’s own band. Throwing together a few vocal harmonies and then sending the entire mix through a reverb patch does not make a band akin to the beach boys. I don’t mean to seem crabby about this, but as a BIG beach boys fan it bothers me to so carelessly toss around comparisons of one of the greatest, smartest, most musical bands ever.

I couldn’t pin down a particular show we played that stood out above the rest (because there are way too many). I texted Nate, our bass player and asked him. He’s right there with me. There are a recent handful that come to mind: 

El Rey theater in Los Angeles w/ Boris- packed, massive room with tons of family and friends. Last night of tour with Boris. We played/sounded real good. Henry Rollins said he would have been there but had a a radio show to do, which he played us on.

Every show we played with Melt Banana- high energy and uninhibited crowds. Melt banana told us that we are a “very special band” and can’t wait to tour with us again. Tuggin on my heart strings. Shit.

Red 7 in Austin, Texas w/ Russian Circles and Boris- sold out barn burner. As we were setting up the sound guys were having an issue with something. So we were just standing there, ready to play, in front of a sweaty, ready-to-rage crowd for a good 5 minutes. There was a thick tension in the air, and then we slammed into our set and all the tension was released in a super positive way. 

England, Ireland and Scotland- I think I mentioned this in a previous Circuit Sweet interview, but finally getting to play Europe, even if it was just barely scraping the European surface, was an amazing experience for us.  We’ve been driving around America for a long time and to expand our travel destinations is really one of the best things we can hope for. A lot of people told us that that we’d regret going, that we probably wouldn’t have a good time, lose a ton of money and would be calling home crying about how awful it was. While financially it did set us back, it was quite the opposite in terms of everything else. Hopefully this last year’s trip was our first of many to come!

The best gig I attended this year was actually 10 gigs, and that was Melt Banana. In October Tera Melos toured with them for 8 shows and then I saw them a couple of times after that. I think they might be the best live band I’ve ever seen. In fact, they just are. I was able to determine that based on a couple of things- first and foremost they are an amazing band. Musically they destroy the “box” in which we all try and remain outside of. Sonically they move airwaves harder than any band I’ve heard/seen. The other crazy thing I noticed was how I was feeling while I watching them. It was this crazy adrenaline rush that I hadn’t felt since I was a teenager going to punk shows. 

Other rad shows from this year- The Stooges, The Pixies, Weezer (performing the blue album), Aphex Twin and Deerhoof.

2012 plans: