Wino & Conny Ochs Heavy Kingdom
Exile On Mainstream
Yes, another Wino album. Although, to be fair, I think the world would stop spinning if Scott Weinrich laid his guitar down, so the fact that he’s back again so quickly after 2010′s solo acoustic album, Adrift, and 2011′s self-titled Premonition 13 album is good news for the doom master’s legions and anyone who prefers our planet to remain on its axis. This particular collaboration with German singer/songwriter Conny Ochs, who released his own solo acoustic album, Raw Love Songs, last year, took form when Ochs spent time on the road with Wino during the Adrift tour, and the result of their union is Heavy Kingdom, a deeply dark folk record that rings with the quiet impetus of candlelit tales in dusty chambers. Backed by nothing more than the pure power of the voices and guitars of Wino and Ochs, Heavy Kingdom shows surprising range in its raw soul, the iron fist of Wino fitting wonderfully and seamlessly into Ochs’ troubadour grip. Hand in hand they explore mystic wilds and cowboy plains, often times straddling the divide, but always striving to drag a song’s natural beauty out of the stirring shadows from which it is borne, especially on vivid stand-outs “Vulture By the Vines,” “Traces of Blood,” “Here Comes the Siren,” “Labour of Love,” and the title track. Despite its low tide of energy, Heavy Kingdom offers just enough intense arrangements and electric fragments to pull you along. Oh, and it seems one album wasn’t enough for this duo, so keep a look out for Wino and Ochs together again on the Latitudes session Labour of Love.
UK power trio Stubb step out of some foggy way-back machine, blown fuzzboxes and torn blotting paper spilling out about them, mere casualties of a road long traveled, and set their phasers to super-stun. Their mission, no doubt decreed by the God of untamed sideburns, paisley blouses, and flaming guitars, is to zap you with psych rays and fry your mind with electric blues, thereby enslaving you to the almighty groove. Resistance to this deliciously heavy tone is futile, so I’d surrender now if I were you, because Stubb’s self-titled debut album boasts enough in-your-face bass and righteous riffs to blast you to smithereens. Of course, that’s speaking only of the atomic shock of songs like “Road,” “Soul Mover,” and “Hard Hearted Woman,” and should your defenses allow you to absorb that 70s-bred hyper-blow, you’ll surely find yourself at the mercy of their alternate modes of attack, like the cosmic chorus melody of “Scale the Mountain,” the pagan folk of “Crosses You Bear,” and the acid rock of “Crying River”. Even though there’s plenty of opportunity for Stubb to let their wah-wah solos and freak jams run amok, they refuse to drag the album out and do a killer job of keeping their retro static short and sweet. Oh, and Stubb called on ally Tony Reed (Mos Generator, Stone Axe, HeavyPink) to mix and and master this one (and provide additional guitar on “Crying River”), so that ought to tell you that they’re taking this whole invasion thing pretty seriously. Yes, mission accomplished, I’d say.
Tilts’ self-titled debut full-length is one of those pledge jobs — you know, where a band raises a certain amount of money directly from fans and uses that money to make an album. The amount of money a person pledges determines the package they receive, be it a digital download, a record, a record and a t-shirt, etc., and only those people who pledge get the tunes. It’s the print-on-demand model applied to music (a model also recently successfully employed by Ginger Wildheart for his triple album project), and it is thanks to about 117 backers that this here attack of supercharged indie power pop is gonna meet an invested audience. Tilts is a remixed and remastered collection of the St. Louis band’s first three EPs (Cassingle, Sidepipin’, Contractors to Her Majesty’s Forces) and sizzles like a schoolgirl on an electric fence, and if there were such a thing as dance halls anymore, this album would sweep ‘em in a big way. Tilts (who feature Torche’s newest member Andrew Elstner in their ranks) are simply addictive, and do all sorts of dirty, wonderful things with this album by turning it into a sonic smorgasbord; you’ll taste all kinds of rock here, like Southern (“Mexiqo”), garage (“It Helps”), alt (“Whatever Happened”), fuzz (“Palm Reader”), desert (“Sidepipin’”), and even a nod to Van Halen (“Hot for Pizza”). Hell, wait until you hear the heavy they lay down on “Contractors to Her Majesty’s Forces” and “Strongbow”. Simply put, Tilts is overloaded with catchy, hip shock n’ roll that’s been put on a pedestal made of gumdrops and nails. Everything great in a spin, really, and record store geeks and smarmy critics are gonna go ga-ga for this. Assuming they pledged, that is.
Wino & Conny Ochs
Stubb
Tilts