Compendiums of Clang 2024 Pt. 1
New releases from this year so far that I've given multiple, interested listens to.
To keep track of records I’ve listened to from 2024, to get my writing mojo back after some now years of it not working so well AND to generate something more than the rare drips of content. Because of that, welcome to the first edition of Compendiums of Clang.
David Nance and Mowed Sound s/t • I’ve read a few opinions now that this is Nance’s bid towards the big leagues. I wondered what big league rock niche they would hit the score. Nance & co.'s hazy vibe might attract the jam wooks or the blooze crowd, but there's always an undercurrent of scorn—heard in the voice, felt in the blare of guitar that forms a solo but don't overstay their welcome. Scorn and no noodly bits stomp over such a buzz. A larger indie crowd may not warm up to them because they don’t 100% look like they dress explosion in a JCPenney in the early 90s.
The songs here may be a bit more efficient and focused but still shaggy and weed buzzed. Maybe a bit palatable but really, previous Nance records have been too. Everything is locked in and all of the grooves are in colors of bright sunlight and colorful vegetation. It’s in the vein of David’s 2020 Staunch Honey (which was one of the first great albums of this decade.)
The biggest difference here really is that the record’s out on Third Man but it’s not like they went and hired Keith Forsey to produce or anything.
Gerycz Powers Rolin Activator • My current go-to when I wanna feel highbrow but still wanna keep it real. The duo of Jen Powers on dulcimer and guitarist Matthew Rolin weave dreamy webs, string thousands of twinkling lights, and make a soundtrack for weird cityscapes and blurred savannahs. Cloud Nothings drummer Jason Gerycz's entrancing rhythm devices provide the backdrops for them.
There are some woods behind my apartment complex that I take a walk through regularly. Back there, it’s a lot of tall pines, tons of wild flowers, many birds, a ton of skinks, a snapper turtle once in a while, an occasional deer and an often the glow & hum of the biopharmaceutical complex not too far yonder past a fence line. Any of the songs on this album work on my headphones when I go for those walks, but the title track seems to be the one I go for the most.
Lupo Cittá s/t • Chris Brokaw has done a million different projects in his three decade plus musical career. Notably for most would be Codeine, Come, Lemonheads and his solo records (including his 2022 LP Puritan, which is one of my fave albums of this decade so far.)
Aligning with Boston residents Sarah Black on guitar and bass and Jenn Gori on vocals and drums to form Lupo Cittá, this is similar to prev Brokaw project, the listener may detect glimpses and specks of things he’s been involved previously into what he is doing currently but the main thing is something that leans into something way different than the past.
Opening with Onde, it’s like entering some elaborate meditation garden located behind a sweetly odd mid century designed home. It’s rumored the elderly earth mama that tends is a high priestess of an oddball coven. Taking her advice for which flower petals to eat, the stroll will either allow levitation or planting face first. Like something from Opal’s Happy Nightmare Baby in some wrenched audio phase intensifying gravity’s vibration. Next, White Bracelet extends a hand for a proper introduction. That hand is wrapped in razorwired feedback. It’s familiar for anyone who followed up Sonic Youth with a Gories song on a college radio/mixtape, realized how much it all made sense and worked that vibe any other time it was/is needed. It’s welcomed as the best handshake in a long time for such. It’s a low ceiling room full of static hum, hiss and bliss that also states where the record voyage plans to head.
The glowing green swamp snake that slithers on Machine Operator. How Driver 13 might fool one into thinking it’s the Beach Boys Do It Again when it starts and then causes caustic burns. The fried to an almost crisp grease splattered over a colorful painting on Shawano Painting. How Gallop to El Paso is a perfect hazy day highway jam.
It is usually rare for me to LOVE every song on an album. Every single track on here never gets skipped when it is getting a spin. Outre’ rock-n-roll.
Nox Iron Knowledge • Pre-pandemic Lamont Thomas aka Obnox was a new record droppin’ machine. Between 2015 and ‘20 alone, he released eight full length LPs, one of them a double album along with a decent chunk of singles. Iron Knowledge is his first record in four years. ‘Cept for an abbreviation of the name, this record clobbers as solid as all get out that’s expected from his previous slabs.
After opening with what ladies from church sing when no one else is around, the record rollercoaster plunges into No Peace, a fissure of psychotropic smoke and made of velvet blacklight posters of Sabbath’s Vol 4. The record then takes a slow roll all over a sonic cosmopolis. Warped stoner noise rap where guitars make industrial scrapes and clipped funk gives off mental tracers which all sound like they were recorded on an old cassette tape found wet and laying under a car seat for who knows how long along with late night Quiet Storm radio show vibes but the DJ is some outjazz demiurge.
The album’s title track is a punk dub jewel that MAYBE only Lee “Scratch” Perry would be able to improve on.
OBLIQUES Demo - Not a whole lot of info on the Obliques, and their only presence in common media is what they have on their YouTube page. I got introduced to them via the Franky and the Slight Incline cats (Durham, NC’s top “just punk no need to make a little box for everything” punk band), and here’s what I know. The band is from Durham, and no one has really seen them playing out anywhere, because none of them are of legal drinking age and the rock-n-roll clubs are all usually 21 and over.
The mid-'70s loom large in what these kiddos are digging on, especially NYC/Clevo pre/proto for the snap judgment quick takes.
On "St. Petersburg" (whether it refers to the city in Fla or the former Leningrad is another thing I plan to find out eventually), the band sounds like a busted-up version of Chilton’s Like Flies On Sherbert but somehow woozier. Instead of despondency though, they’re athirst. Downright magical!
I know this is not technically a 2024 release, but it was uploaded late last year, only on YouTube (no Bandcamp, Insta, etc for these youth.… keeping it oblique, I assume). But if you’re in the Triangle, be sure to mark Friday, April 5th, on your dance card because Clangoring presents at the Cave in Chapel Hill, NC, Warsaw, Poland’s Moron’s Morons! On the bill is also the aforementioned Franky and the Slight Incline, and it might be the first time most, if anyone, get to see Obliques play live. It’s gonna be a doozy!
SLEEVENS s/t • In 2023, the Sleevens released the most exuberant yet tinged with melancholy pint raiser in ages with their 7inch with “Give My Regards To The Dancing Girls.” Their albums show that the band has more than one trick up their…ummm…sleeve. Speaking of sleeves, Sleevens singer, an Irishman with the Stef, has that brogue which sounds like he often wears his heart on one.
Hope, hopelessness, humour, darkness. A tough exterior with a tender heart. A total rock-n-roll band, which includes dudes who did service in Cheap Time and Sweet Knives, to drive it all home. The hooks here hold like a big hug from a old friend you actually miss. You can’t beat a band that pulls off Dr. Feelgood cop and it makes you wonder if that just came naturally and not intentionally like the band does on Metallic Font.
They’re an absolute blast live too.