CALVIN KRIME 8/21, EMPTY BOTTLE Another good noisy angry band bites the dust at the height of its powers: this Minneapolis trio’s parting shot, You’re Feeling So Attractive (Amphetamine Reptile), lurches nicely between train-wreck speed and mud-slogging slow, luring the kiddies in with a hint of sweetness and then knocking them back ten feet with a blast from the speakers. Braid and Lustre King coheadline; We Ragazzi, who have just released a very promising first seven-inch, open with intricate blasts of deep-sea riff funk.
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DISHWALLA 8/21, MARTYRS’ There’s a disturbing tendency in alt-rock that disturbs me more all the time: the elevation of solipsism to high Hollywood melodrama, the spectacle of thousands of arms doing the wave to great building sweeps of guitar while thousands of mouths scream screeds of sophomoric profundity like “When you close your eyes / Do you like what you see?” from the second track on Dishwalla’s second album, And You Think You Know What Life’s About (A&M). The bio promises that the record is the result of three years in a van being exposed to “new cultures and lifestyles [that] expanded the band’s previously myopic world view,” but also that lead sensitive soul J.R. Richards found “much more time to dwell on personal issues in my life”–to the great relief of those who find Billy Corgan too restrained, I’m sure.
SHONEN KNIFE 8/22, RECKLESS ON BROADWAY & DOUBLE DOOR Lots of grown-up women find an energizing girls-just-wanna-have-fun joy in the Spice Girls, and I’m not gonna piss on their parade–but I prefer my girl power a little more raw. That’s why the soft spot in my heart is reserved for this surprisingly long-lived Japanese trio. The new Happy Hour (Big Deal) is the band’s most consistent and listenable album in years, and perhaps ever, with more unrelentingly cute songs about fish and food (“Banana chips for you! Banana chips for me! In the afternoon, banana chips and tea”) powered by Ramonesy crunch and cheery 60s pop rhythms. And the straight-up version of the Monkees’ “Daydream Believer” that closes the album is sheer ear candy, a tooth-rotting, hyperactivity-inducing elixir of eternal youth.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Calvin Krime photo.
