Souvenir’s Young America
The Name of the Snake
Init Records

Souvenir’s Young America hollow out a small part of your mind in order to separate themselves from the dense din of all the instrumental post-rock and experimental metal out there, and in that crater they lay something so remarkably vast, so terribly scary, that a mere whisper of its presence alerts you to your certain doom. Not that the Virginia band’s latest album, The Name of the Snake, is abundantly evil, it’s just that it exudes a numbing solitude that borders on hallucination desolation. The four songs laid down here (you get three bonus tracks from their September Songs EP as well if you happen to have the CD) moan like a five-hundred-year-old desert wind, beat on the old, dry, cracked earth like a chain-gang of ghosts, and lead you on a callous, lonely walk through the valley of the shadow of death. The star of this album, however, is the harp. The heavy momentum on “Water (Forgetting the Past),” “Vanishing (Remaining),” and “Amnesia (A Victor’s History)” isn’t disrupted by the haunting harmonica that calls you home with a totem’s tongue; instead they work together in some kind of brazen, taunting harmony. The backwoods brass and cowboy harmonica of “Dust (Erasing the Future),” the album’s commandeering ballad, is for outlaws only, and captures the spirit of wide open, starry nights and circling, hungry vultures. Again, the dichotomy of hope and desperation abounds. You don’t get the same old epic, aural sound scape with SYA that you do with other bands of their ilk. What you get instead is the distinct, suffocating, and palpable feeling that the end is near. Deep, awesome stuff.

Listen to “Vanishing (Remaining)” from The Name of the Snake!

Jay Bennett
Kicking at the Perfumed Air
The Jay Bennett Foundation

This posthumous release of Jay Bennett’s final album, Kicking at the Perfumed Air, comes to us courtesy of his family and friends, who brought Bennett’s production notes together to complete the project, and the good people at The Jay Bennett Foundation, who have released it as a free download (donations graciously accepted). Bennett, best known for his work with Wilco, has released a number of solo albums since his departure from his former band, and while most of them contain dark, haunting indie-blues songs spurred on my Bennett’s inner demons, Kicking at the Perfumed Air captures the songwriter in a lighter mood, incorporating a richer, multi-instrumental sound. I’d never describe Bennett’s songwriting as grandiose because it’s smothered in too much desperation and soul for that kind of label, but he comes close to reaching that watermark on a few songs here, including “Second Last Call,” “Hotel Song,” and “Invitation,” which boast an up-beat country flavour. Others, like “Footprints” and “When Heaven Held the World” draw you back into Jay’s lonely, broken universe like a midnight stroll through a dusty ghost town. Finally, I couldn’t think of a better way to end Bennett’s final album than with “Beer,” the quintessential ballad — funny, sad, poignant, and starkly beautiful. Bennett’s songwriting brilliance was remarkable and unmistakable, and now, like Elliott Smith and Cranford Nix before him, he’s gone. But, hopefully, not forgotten.

Listen to “Beer” from Kicking at the Perfumed Air!

Download Kicking at the Perfumed Air here!

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Beat the Devil’s Tattoo
Abstract Dragon/Vagrant

Friends and I used to have discussions about who we would let into our cool club (the adult kind, not the school boy kind) if we ever owned one. The kind of place where only the hippest cats on planet earth would be allowed to drink, fuck, and create. Not that excluding people is necessarily cool, but we considered it more of a human dress code, if you will. And to be alive certainly wasn’t a prerequisite. In fact, it always turned out that the guest list created during any given discussion included mostly dead heroes. Somehow, death made you cooler. So, who would be allowed into such an exclusive club? Well, people like Neal Cassady, Pierre Trudeau, Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Joe Strummer, Charles Bukowski, Sailor Jerry, Janis Joplin, and Tom Waits, that’s who. There was always an argument over whether Johnny Cash should make it in or not. Being tagged as a bible thumper has its drawbacks. Anyway, I always used to, and still do, imagine the ever-evolving line-up of house bands that would play this club. Thee Hypnotics every once in awhile. The Stooges once a week. And Black Rebel Motorcycle Club as often as possible.

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