America Has Just Elected Its First Bla...OOH LOOK CDs!

The last time anyone got anything done with a guitar

Thoughts:

Black Flag - Live '84 (SST): Found this in the used bin at Other Music where some asshole traded it in for cash....SUCKA. I now own two Flag albums, the other being 1981's Damaged. The reason for this shortage on my part is that for some reason, no matter where ya go, Black Flag records list for $15.99 or better (except for on iTunes and Amazon mp3, but subcultures thrive on tangible objects as a neat visual shorthand for transgression, so fuck it). Live '84 is a mammoth 70-minute document of a show in San Francisco featuring the Ginn-Rollins-Kira-Stevenson line-up, and hostility is in the air. First up is "The Process of Weeding Out", a clangorous eight-and-a-half minute instrumental that reads as the virtual antithesis of hardcore-the-music, but might evince hardcore-the-attitude more than any other track on here. "Weeding Out", from an instrumental EP of the same name, was intended to do just that: cull the ranks of Black Flag fans of unworthies I suppose. The rest of the record is more traditionally straight-ahead, but traditionally straight-ahead for Black Flag was to wrap a length of razor wire around the audiences neck and tighten it. A good night for a punch up.

Crystal Stilts - Alight of Night (Slumberland): The record label should have tipped me off. If the Raveonettes are the Jesus and Mary Chain taken one step closer to Spector-esque girl-pop glory, Crystal Stilts are JAMC with both feet in the gravegarage. Alight of Night is pleasant enough, but if there were an Ambien-rock genre, these guys would be Elvis and the Beatles all rolled into one. I'm not well-versed enough in New Zealand rock history to know if these guys are firmly established in any national tradition, but they certainly are part of the larger indie-rock tradition: strip away the echo and the distortion, and this might be a Travis album or something. Of course, Crystal Stilts pile the effects higher and higher, so bonus points for that. Stifling a yawn.

Lou Reed - Berlin: Live at St. Ann's Warehouse (Matador): The soundtrack to Julian Schnabel's rock doc about Reed's 2006 restaging of his failed 1973 glam-popera follow up to Transformer. The original Berlin was decadent, attempting to spin Reed's junkie chic into, I don't know, Tommy or something. The result, though studded with gems like "Lady Day", "Men of Good Fortune", and "Caroline Says II" was, for the most part, lugubriousness incarnate, a tour de force of depression and misanthropy. Needless to say, it tanked back then. Here, however, Berlin comes off as a minor work of genius. The difference is in Lou Reed's voice, which has been ruined by years of neglect, misuse, and abuse (it even seems to have developed a little bit of a...twang?). Rather than the jaded omnipresence of his younger years, Reed now evinces regretful hindsight, investing his story-songs with a previously-lacking emotional resonance. Old wine in new bottles.