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"While the city of Detroit is busy reprising its role in Robocop, all the gawky white kids from the suburbs have evidently teamed up with all the cool black kids to hang out in the rubble and start a bunch of bands the sound like Government Issue and Suburban Lawns and sometimes even, like, a really fuzzy AM-radio version of GISM. Judging by the photos on the back of this comp, marauders have already made off with all the scenefolk's women, but that's fine with me- nothing wrong with a bunch of guys getting together and reveling in their unabashed guyhood in a city with 50 percent literacy. Shit, I haven't been this excited about a place turning to hell on Earth since I invaded Baghdad." VICE MAGAZINE
"I know that I start just about every column with something along the
lines of “OH MAN, what a wild two weeks!” or “I haven’t slept in three
days, watch me write something totally cuckoo about this nutso record!”
so I am going to avoid that this time around. However, both of those
things still stand. Also, for the record I am not a wild partier—I stay
up all night and do work. A-boo-hoo-hoo. This week I want to talk about
Shiftless Decay, a new compilation on X! Records that documents the last few years of music from Detroit.
Most of the jams are sloppy, fuzzy, loud, heavy, and the like,
meaning, words that describe the experience of sweating beer and waking
up in a pile of vomit with facepaint on. Tyvek
are definitely the most “famous” band on here and if you haven’t
already accepted Tyvek into your life, THE TIME IS NOW. Do you really
want to pass up this band when the cover art for their debut full
length looks like THIS?
The comp is a lot more than Tyvek and friends though. Little Claw
(which does include a member of Tyvek, so maybe disregard the previous
statement?), now relocated to Portland and are responsible for one of
my favorite tracks on the record. This song has been featured
elsewhere, but the version on this comp is rougher, terser. Like most
of the other tracks on this comp, it is mixed loudly and to some ears
it might sound poorly recorded. You can barely make anything out in the
mix except for one very, very loud guitar and singer Kilynn’s vocals
which—on this version—sound kind of threatening. Everything else is
just a big muddled mess…and I love it! Outside of this comp, they have
songs that sound like twisted beach party movie soundtracks or which
take the sweet indie pop love song and flip it on its head, turning it
sinister
I am newly converted to Human Eye
after hearing frontman Timmy Vulgar’s side project, Timmy’s Organism,
who have a beautifully packaged new 2×7-inch on Sacred Bones. Human Eye
play a seriously damaged strain of punk with electronics thrown over
the top, which sound like the mutated and radiated tentacles they use
in their stage show. The tracks by Terrible Twos and and Heroes and Villains also warrant many repeated listens, same goes for the THTX
track. Heroes and Villains lean more to the pop side of things as far
as this comp goes, but their other work is a bit more Loop than
Postcard. At the risk of sounding trite, you know when a group of
hallucinogen-addled hippies take a road trip in the movies and there is
always some heavy, wild, and psychedelic riff-heavy song playing?
THTX’s “Monorails to Nowhere” sounds like that.
A lot of the groups featured on the comp take from psychedelia and a
lot of them seem to be fascinated with either monsters/the things
underneath your bed or your stairs or anything gooey, dirty, or
mutated. I am way into this compilation, you can get it here.
In the words of a chant from last year’s No Fun Fest “New York Sucks! Michigan Rules!”?? JAMIE JOHNS, FREAK SCENE #36, FADER MAGAZINE
Recently released on X! Records, Shiftless Decay
features an ensemble of relentless Detroit Sludge at its finest. Some
bands are worse then others, but overall this is one of the better
comps I've heard in a while! Heavy psych influenced
rock-n-roll/no-wave, in the same vein as The MC5, Blue Cheer, Stooges or Pussy Galore. Toss in some Athletic Automaton
and some more modern type noisey clang clang and you've got it! Fucking
rad! I really dug Heroes & Villains, Human Eye and The Mahonies a
lot. Put it on, turn it up, and fucking toss! BUFFALO TONES
"Detroit’s particular brands of urban decay, economic disintegration,
political corruption, science fiction-worthy crime have individually,
or as a whole, made for magazine-filling, CNN headline-grabbing content
for some time now. For a statement like Shiftless DecayShiftless Decay could have
emerged from any midsized city boasting a healthy Terminal
Boredom/Horizontal Action support network, which is just about any one
town in 2009. The socio-economic trappings of Shiftless Decay will no doubt distance it from the glut of comps choking the sub-genre at hand here, but the Let Them Eat Jellybeans or Bands that Could be God of deregulated garage-punk it’s not.
to
really work, the element of surprise is a necessity, and regardless of
the shrinking population or prevalent
watch-your-back/bootknife-required environments, it is not surprising
that these twelve bands came from an urban area of 900,000+ people,
especially a known producer of underground rock that’s been the subject
of several high-profile surveys within the past decade (remember SPIN
Magazine’s White Stripes/Dirtbombs-fueled feature?). If Newark,
Cincinnati, or Indianapolis generated a similar comp, it’d be a
different story. Furthermore, 85% of Unsurprisingly, Shiftless Decay is worth a look for the
underdogs and more challenging fare. Human Eye pulled the post-punk
instruction manual out of the garbage and illogically bled forth the
legally-insane “Fix Me First, Universe Nurse,” a scarily cathartic
break-shit/throw-chairs exercise that sends a loud and clear message of
negation to any and all future bands considering Chrome as a possible
influence. The much-touted Frustrations disappoint, as does the early
Tyvek contribution, but Terrible Twos’ “Negative Drip” burns circles
around the rest of the comp with what sounds like garage rocking a
power-violence obsession. Little Claw’s “Feeding You Your New Home” is
another amazing and unbelievably noisy spazz-out that poor THTX are
made to follow with an underwhelming Echo and the Bunnymen/Television
by way of a Ponys rip titled “Monorails to Nowhere”. The same can be
said for Heroes and Villains’ “SDWC”. The Mahonies and Fontana burn
decently somewhere between the forgettable and unforgettable displayed
elsewhere. Tentacle Lizardo and Johnny Ill Band show a tendency towards
serviceable post-punk garage that didn’t get the Human Eye memo in
time, and spacey closers Odd Clouds put a painful strain on the powers
of recall. Remember, what looks bad on paper for a proper album (three
killers and two strong contenders out of twelve) is a fine score for a
compilation." (Andrew Earles) STILL SINGLE/DUSTED MAGAZINE
6:48 PM
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