Glitter Wizard

Listen, there’s a million bands out there, and you can generally get by without knowing about or hearing 99 per cent of ‘em, but every once in awhile you’ll discover a band who takes complete control of that select one per cent and it’s like the sonic Gods have smiled upon you and showered you with electric riches. There’s no other way to preface the glory that is Glitter Wizard, whose name ranks among the one of the best I’ve come across in years, because their cosmic psych-punk is gonna hit you like one thousand crotch lasers to the face. I mean, just look at that cover — it’s like a Monty Python sketch of AC/DC’s “Jailbreak” video; tell me you don’t want to dive right in and embrace its silly madness? And you might think the songs will come across as shtick-based whimsy, but I’m here to tell you that there’s a real power behind the muddled space rock this San Fransisco band blasts through. In fact, it’s a whole mess of genre-melting goodness, from riff-ripe opener “ABACA” (I would have liked to have heard this song on Red Fang’s new album) to garage pop closer “Summertime,” and all the glam punk (“I Don’t Like You”), flute-filled prog (“Mirror Man”), and organ-fried doom (“Spider” and “Warsawng”) in between, and Solar Hits touches on — and shifts — essential paradigms within the rock n’ roll stratus of today’s thriving throwback culture. And it’s all done in freaky, fuzzed-out fashion, whether a song is two-and-a-half minutes long or seven-and-a-half minutes long, so you’re gonna have one hell of a time with this one. You could throw a whole slew of bands into a blender to get this kind of star-shake, but I think if you include the Science Fiction Idols, Hawkwind, Danava, and Uncle Bad Touch — and maybe some moon rock, acid, and black candles as well — you’ll find the twisted flower power of Glitter Wizard tastes really fuckin’ good.

Stream the entirety of Solar Hits right here! Buy it while you’re there!

The Nuclears

Sometimes you come across a band too big for their platform boots, a gang of cigarette suckers with stars for eyes who’ll turn any storage closet in any bar into their own personal dressing room. The singer’s got a $150 scarf wrapped around his neck even though he looks like he can’t afford to eat. He’s all ribs, eyeliner, and petulant posturing while his band plays the dutiful, leather-jacketed longhairs, masters of their bloozy craft. The Nuclears are that band. Or they fucking sound like it, anyway. And while there’s no doubt that this New York-by-way-of-Washington band’s sound drips with elements of a champagne n’ limousine glam rock, it’s the raw power and punk rock attitude that really propels this self-titled debut, making it a drunken, desperate mess of rock n’ roll energy. Flat out, this album sizzles the second it drops, it’s first half a shakin’ jukebox of ragged riffs and shout-along glory; there’s not a song amongst “Pay Yer Dues,” “Get Me Outta Here,” “A Blindfold & A Cigarette,” “Get Up!,” and “Tanzen Macht Frei” that hasn’t been touched by a handful of essentially influential bands like The Ramones, The Stooges, early Aerosmith, and Hanoi Rocks. Now, the train could’ve kept a-rollin’ right along and everything would’ve been super fine, but the album’s second half goes off the tracks a bit thanks to a grouping of songs whose styles and sounds are all over the map. There’s not a bad song in the bunch, per se, but they don’t deliver the same flow and punch as the first-half songs; the near seven minute “Eclipso” has shades of Black Sabbath (particularly “Children of the Grave”) running throughout, “Fast Cars & Loud Guitars” and “Rock & Roll Riot” (both of which would’ve been totally at home on the first half) are gutter rock numbers that do The Dictators proud, “Turn On You” is an organ-fried gospel/soul song, and “You Can Make It” brings the Rolling Stones’ country n’ blues to life. Listen, all that second-half confusion aside, there’s something endearingly blue about The Nuclears, like a well-earned thigh bruise, and even though they’re not entirely new to the scene (ex-Drag Citizen singer Nick Vivid has some miles under him), they’re on the cusp of stumbling into a whole heap of hot action. And when that happens, brother, we’re gonna be dealing with one confident, bad-ass, braggadocios bunch.

Listen to “Get Me Outta Here” from The Nuclears!

Biters

So, are the Biters the biggest band in the world yet? I think we need to look into it. They have to be by now. Have to be. They’re circling the skies above Tokyo at this very moment in a private jet piloted by a chimp in aviator shades and a rhinestone vest, right? Well, while I wait for confirmation on this, I’m gonna try to wrap my head around another EP from Atlanta’s shock n’ awesome rock n’ roll show, because, truth be told, I’m still not over the first two yet. With album-of-the-year hardware still warm in their hands, the Biters refuse to take their cheetah-skinned shoes off of the accelerator for even a minute, intent on driving headlong into candy-land in the middle of the starry night instead of slowing down to enjoy the ride. But can you blame ‘em? Tuk and Co. are pumping out hits like a gumball machine with a broken dispenser and the resulting sugar high is beyond euphoric. Like the previous two EPs, All Chewed Up is a glam-pop junkie’s dream come true, but manages to separate itself slightly by offering a few extra songs (seven instead of the customary five) and adding Bolan (“Rock N Roll Loser”) and Poon (“[Oh Yeah] The Bitch Wants More”) to the roll call of influences that already includes Nielsen and Thunders. The Biters do it again, my friends. The question is, how many more times are they gonna do it before the year is out?

Listen to “Born To Cry” from All Chewed Up!

The Adjusters

One of my favourite albums last year was The Adjusters’ debut, Reckless Relations. It was a real slick n’ sleazy punk rock record, and an awfully wonderful surprise to boot, too, seeing as how The Adjusters are a bunch of juveniles. Thankfully, juveniles and delinquency go hand-in-hand, and if you’re going to devote your life to safety pin suicide, you need to spoil the disenfranchised with a sound they can dance to. Well, The Adjusters are back — slightly older and hopefully none the wiser — with a brand new single, …Always in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time, and while it doesn’t quite match the raw unpredictability of their debut, it does posses a stronger sense of craftsmanship and melody. Side A’s offering, “Wrong Place, Wrong Time,” is a street savvy ivory n’ blues rocker that sounds something like the Dead Boys bustin’ jukeboxes in a soda shop, while the flip-side’s “You Gotta Say” is a true pop gem bolstered by a Stones-inspired country n’ glam riff and a bunch of ‘woo-hoos’ that roll right along with it. Okay, so it turns out The Adjusters are a little bit wiser, but they still pack enough greasy gumption to give you the two-fingered salute.

Listen to “You Gotta Say” from …Always in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time!

Social Distortion
Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes

It took about eight years after White Light, White Heat, White Trash for Social Distortion to drop Sex, Love and Rock ‘n’ Roll on us, but its bitter edge ripped something hard, and the straight-up hot rod rock was more than equal to the time it took to make. Now another seven years have passed and Mike Ness and his boys (now including Jonny Wickersham on guitar, Brent Harding on bass, and Josh Freese on drums) have returned once more with Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes, a laid back, almost antithetical musical entity to what came before, the emphasis of the album’s action akin to reminiscing in a rocking chair instead of brawling in a back alley. I’m certainly willing to cut Ness some slack because he’s one of the few untouchables out there — and he’s been doing it for nearly 30 years — but with the exception of riff-proud opener “Road Zombie,” the Exile on Main St. blues of “California (Hustle and Flow)” and “Can’t Take it With You” (both complete with back-up soul singers), and the Thunders street glam of “Machine Gun Blues,” the songs lack a lot of the band’s signature knuckle tattoo grit and O.C. psycho stamina. What’s left are a bunch of mellow cow punk songs that might have a better run on the reported acoustic album that the band was/is supposed to be making. Regardless though, it’s nice to finally hear another Social Distortion record, and I’ll gladly take their rock n’ roll (even if it is a tad deflated) over most others’.

Listen to “Machine Gun Blues” from Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes!

High On Fire’s Snakes for the Divine, The Sword’s Warp Riders, Year of No Light’s Ausserwelt, Agalloch’s Marrow of the Spirit, Tweak Bird’s Tweak Bird, Souvenir’s Young America’s The Name of the Snake, and The Adjusters’ Reckless Relations. Every single one of ‘em is highly recommended.

Shit, I don’t think I can stop there. Okay, let’s also add Night Horse’s Perdition Hymns, Alcest’s Écailles de lune, Dead Trooper’s Cynicist, Brother Dege’s Folksongs of the American Longhair, Trap Them’s Filth Rations, the Melvins’ The Bride Screamed Murder, Electric Wizard’s Black Masses, Torche’s Songs for Singles, Violent Soho’s Violent Soho, Daughters’ Daughters, and Year Long Disaster’s Black Magic; All Mysteries Revealed. I could probably keep going, but these stand-outs will have to do.

As for songs, there was Black Mountain’s “The Hair Song” and “Sadie,” and Sweet Apple’s “Do You Remember,” and “Flying Up a Mountain,” but there were two others I had a tendency to play over and over again all year long, and those were Against Me!’s “Spanish Moss” and The Sword’s “Night City.”

But now, let’s just get this damn year-end thing over with…

The Best Song and Album(s) of the Year

Yeah, they go together, because both of them come courtesy of the one band that made me scream like a teenage groupie this year, the Biters. I have a tendency here to lean toward the heavy and doom-ridden, but I’m a long-lost sleaze rocker at heart, and underneath this beard is an eye-lined magpie capable of flight, and the Biters’ two releases this year, their self-titled 10″ and It’s OK to Like Biters EP (with 10 songs between the two of ‘em, I’m just gonna go ahead and count ‘em as one), took me higher than all others. Insanely catchy hooks, magical melodies, and power pop goodness abound on these glitter n’ glam-filled slabs of wax. Simply put, the Biters released some really fucking great rock n’ roll music this year.

Any one of the 10 songs on these two EPs could hold up as song of the year, but it’s just easiest to give the dubious nod to the song with the video, and since there were two of those, we’ll let them share this award. Although, to be fair, video or not, “Hang Around” was always my runaway choice as song of the year. Anyway, “Hang Around” and “Melody for Lovers” are perfect examples of the Biters’ top down, summer fun, drunk n’ fuck spirit, and shining beacons in the otherwise black world I’ve created here. So, enjoy the songs, although I’m not sure how you couldn’t enjoy them…

And onward we head into 2011! Thanks for your audience and your beardication. It’s nice to know that someone out there somewhere digs it. Now here’s a look at some of the stuff we should be hearing next year…

Social Distortion, Motorhead, Grails, Omega Massif, Ironweed, Black Tide, Earth, Roadsaw, The Might Cloud, Suplecs, Birds of Avalon, Blackfield, Wino, Gideon Smith and the Dixie Damned, Dixie Witch, Graveyard, and some band called Chocolate Love Factory.

Oh, and I’ll be introducing some killer Broken Beard shirts!

Tweak Bird
Tweak Bird

The brothers Bird, the oft-shirtless duo from Illinois or outer-space, I can’t remember which, have returned with a proper full-length (as opposed to 2008′s seven-song Reservations), self-titled and much ado about everything. The knotty fuzz Tweak Bird is able to strangle out of drums and a baritone guitar is impressively grotesque; pair that with gamma ray vocals, some saxophone and flute, an appropriate obsession with Marc Bolan, and the knob-noodlin’ skills of the Deaf Nephews (Dale Crover of Melvins and Toshi Kasai of Big Business) and you get ten heavy, spacey, progressive pop blasts influenced by all the necessary evils. Tweak Bird’s design is such that they eliminate the need to linger, spoof glam over jam, and even though they offer two of their longest songs to date (“A Sun/Ahh Ahh” and “Distant Airways”), they still microwave the hell out of the stoner mandate and stomp all over the stardust. This album is as weird as it is wonderful — an outlier, a rare breed.

Check out the videos for “Lights in Lines” and “A Sun/Ahh Ahh” from Tweak Bird!

The Adjusters
Reckless Relations

Snarky, shameless, sleazy, Bator-bitin’ rock n’ roll from a bunch of finicky young upstarts that, by all accounts, oughtta be playing video games or workin’ some mindless part-time job after school, not signing themselves up for dereliction duty, cursed to mumble and stumble their way through a life of whiskey-swillin’ and ne’er-do-wellin’. The righteous punk rock that drips off of Reckless Relations, The Adjusters’ debut full-length, easily does their homeland proud (that’s England, in case you’re wondering) and will ignite in you a raging flame of hope for rock n’ roll’s oft bleak and soggy future. I mean, just dig all that twinklin’ ivory, man! And those teenage riffs with the blues-infused solos and glam pop hooks. Killer! The Adjusters hand out fistfuls of silk scarf pomp and back alley stomp in equal measures here; name your favourite old school degenerates and I guarantee they sound just like ‘em. But the kicker with these lads is that they also sound like the best part of every decade since the 50s, which includes, but is not inclusive to, Chuck Berry, The Stooges, The Joneses, and hell, even Social Distortion. I don’t think I’ve heard raw, glistening energy like this since Silver’s 2004 debut, White Diary, and that album is fucking brilliant. If they keep this up, The Adjusters are well on their way to being bloody brilliant as well.

Listen to “Kickin’ Down the Doors” from Reckless Relations!

Biters
Biters 10″ EP

From The Heart Attacks to Poison Arrows to Biters, the long road of rock n’ roll glory for singer/guitarist Tuk has been littered with trashy riffs, drug problems, and dead ends. The usual suicide story that sticks to every tight-pant Thunders junkie like a safety pin on a worn out leather jacket lands a lot closer to sad than success, but if the stigma doesn’t kill ya, it can only make you stronger, right? Probably, which is why Tuk hopes his latest bubblegum machine, Biters, will break through the bastard cliches and avoid the inevitable burst that comes when you sink your teeth into the cheap, sticky solution of reckless days and wasted nights. Whether that happens remains to be seen, but for now our springboard is this self-titled EP, and goddamn it if it’s not screamin’ at me like a gaggle of teenage groupies. With the five deliciously catchy glam punk ditties on board here, I don’t know how the Biters are ever going to avoid burnin’ out in the gutter like a bunch of high school dropouts. This is some magic marker mayhem, man, part Cheap Trick power pop, part New York Dolls lipstick rock, and all jukebox jive. If the Biters aren’t the biggest band in the world real soon, we’re all doomed.

Check out the Biters performing “Hang Around”!

Bad Taste Barbies
Bad Taste Barbies

I don’t know if this six-song offering from Britain’s Bad Taste Barbies is an ugly, low-rent, tin can glam rock demo or a transmission from Planet Trash that’s been intercepted and cleverly repackaged for distribution throughout the global drag community, but any cartoon character who likes to suckle at the heaving bosom of all things fabulously fetish will go gaga for the sugarcoated proto-punk and lipstick sleaze-pop found here. Responsible for this mascara mess are a quad of means and queens – known individually as Crystal Grenade, Kurt Dirt, P. Baby Fontaine, and Stu Gibson (yep, he’s back and stranger than ever) – who beat the hell out of decent decorum with steel stilettos and cat claw riffs.

Bad Taste Barbies is all tongues and teeth, a blast of cult culture lightning that singes and scorns, full of candy-laced cache, demented in its tabloid approach to catty barbs and teenage fanaticism (I can’t even begin to explain the hard-ons they have for British talk show host Jeremy Kyle and the B-52s’ Cindy Wilson). While songs like “Sleaze Monkey,” “TV Trash,” and “Love Sick” come off as playful odes to the best Boy bands out there – those being the Dead Boys, Toilet Boys, and Dogshit Boys, naturally – the self-titled track relies heavily on the kind of techno-inspired pop punch you might hear in da club, “Cindy” is a platinum-plated new wave lullaby, and “Party in Hell” sounds like The Meatmen and Zodiac Mindwarp doing just that with open-mouthed blow-up dolls for dates. It’s a whole lotta bad fun and filthy action, really, with Crystal Grenade and Kurt Dirt going back and forth like a couple o’ alley cats in a dumpster fighting over some fish bones. So, if you’re the kind of glitter junkie that digs obscure disaster bands like 63 Monroe, Queen Bee, Trashcan Darlings, KariNations, and the Sparkling Bombs, then Bad Taste Barbies will satisfy the pervert in you.

Listen to “Sleaze Monkey” from Bad Taste Barbies!